The Long Road Home

They got us up at about 3:30 AM to make a 6:45 AM flight up to Frankfurt, where we have an hour layover before we catch the flight back to Portland. We're scheduled to get into PDX at 11:20 AM. I hope to grab a moment in Frankfurt and post this for y'all when you wake up Wednesday. (Happy birthday, Jill!)

Photo: Assisi

Many of the kids were planning to stay up and get real tired so they could sleep on the planes. I slept a bit on the first plane and hope to get some snoring done on the second as well. I've never been able to sleep on planes or buses before this trip, but I've managed to get some solid snoozing done on the bus (and for an hour on the boat ride to Naples yesterday.)

Photo: Florence

Looking back, I have to say that Kate has gotten better and better at travel throughout our journey. She's also better about walking everywhere while we've been here. She's been an absolute trooper in the heat - and even the native Italians have been saying it's been extreme. Her working command of Italian is better than ever, and she's not shy about using it. She says "No!" to the hawkers of fake rolexes and purses with a finality I can only hope to emulate, and they leave her alone after that!

The other kids have similarly done great - they've all gotten along well with each other and with those around them. If they've missed home very much, they haven't shown it. But that's natural - there's been so much to see and do. Taking this trip has been good for their sense of independence and security in the world, in addition to showing them one of the great nations of Europe.

Photo: Fresco from the Vatican City

For myself, I'll be pleased if I walked off a few pounds over here. But with all the great pasta, pizza, and other yummies we've had, I'm not betting on it.

I'll post all this when we get home to Portland. Time for the last lap!


Photo: St. Anthony's in Padua

Pompeii - Sorrento - Capri

Pompeii - Sorrento - Capri

The smaller towns of Italy are much less developed than the cities, it seems. Or maybe it's just the major tourist cities. Where Florence and Venice and Rome had Internet cafes and Internet access in the hotels, that wasn't the case in Assisi, Termini, and for some unfathomable reason, in the last hotel we visited in Rome.

Photo: the forum in Pompeii with Vesuvio in the background

Then the lines for the Lufthansa flight from Rome to Frankfurt were so long that they were boarding our flight as we arrived at the gate, and the same in Frankfurt - so no time to buy an hour of wireless in the airports. Oh well, saves some money, and I'll just pick up from last time and string together all the posts I've written since then.

Photo: Sorrento view from the docks

Let's see - when I last posted, we were just leaving Rome for our extension trip to the southern part of Italy. We got on the road Monday morning and headed down towards Naples to visit Pompeii and then to stay on the Amalfi Coast near Sorrento.

Our Visit to Pompeii:

The trip to Pompeii was good - we had a nice lunch of Pizza and Salad just outside the ruins and then took our stroll through the ancient town. The ruins are remarkably well-preserved and worth the time to go and see them. But the town was redsicovered in the 1700s and was repeatedly plundered since. I expect that they keep the tourists out of the really significant and undisturbed areas.

One odd thing is that many feral dogs live in the ruins, and they are tolerated there. Most of the covered (and therefore shady) rooms had a dog sleeping through the heat of the day while we were there. But most of the ruins are open to the sky. We toured the theaters, markets, temples, and some homes. The Pompeiians actually had a pretty standard mediterranean idea for homes - an atrium surrounded by bedrooms and other rooms, and a garden out back. You can see the same basic design in use today in southern Italy and in California.

Photo: Kate in Pompeii

Of course, no visit to Pompeii would be complete without a visit to the elaborate Roman baths and to one of the many brothels. The brothel they have open to tourists has several frescoes showing explicit depictions of the services available to the ancient Romans. I remarked that it was the original graphical user interface - just point and er, um, click...

Then our Italian guide told us that the brothel was like McDonalds for Pompeiians, because the menu was painted on the wall. At that point at least 5 people simultaneously exclaimed "You want fries with that?"

Photo: The least pornographic Pompeiian brothel fresco

In fairness, I'll note that all the comedy came from the adults. The kids' responses ranged from silent to giggling to horrified. Kate told me she needed "extra strength mindsoap" after seeing that particular museum. The "EF" in EF Tours stands for "Education First" and I feel certain that education (of a certain sort, anyway) happened that day.

Sorrento and Termini:

After Pompeii, we went into the coastal town of Sorrento, bypassing Naples entirely (and after seeing it later, I'm just as happy about that. Naples is like the south side of Chicago with a dash of South Central Los Angeles, but without the friendly old world charm of those places.

Photo: Bouganvillea, Clock, and Kate in Anacapri

Sorrento, on the other hand, is the Carmel-by-the-Sea of the Amalfi Coast. We had a couple of hours to walk around and shop, which we did with gusto! Sorrento is all about lemons - they have these lemons the size of large grapefruit there, so you get lemon granita, lemon gelato, lemon on the pasta, lemon on the meat and fish, and of course, Limoncello to drink. And they have lemon t-shirts, lemons on the ceramics, lemon paintings - and of course, magnets, calendars, posters, and T-shirts of the Pompeiian brothel paintings! I would have bought a calendar, but poor Kate would probably have screamed and run off into the Appenines.

After our afternoon in Sorrento, we headed up the hills - and I do mean up! We took this little winding road up to the village of Termini, which is a couple blocks long and a block wide, perched up on the side of the mountains. We had a great balcony, great view of Capri, but no A/C and no Internet. Dinner was nice - fish and pasta with a cream and ham sauce, and the innkeeper was an English lady who came to visit and stayed. She's married to a local man, but she told us with pride that after 27 years, she still imports the hotel's tea from England.

Photo: Alexa Rodriguez, Aubrey Brown, and Kate Zurschmeide in their hotel room window in Termini

Isolo Capri

In the morning, we got up and took the bus back down into Sorrento and caught the big ferry to Capri. Capri is a small island, but part of the same mountain range that includes Termini. It's just a mile or two offshore. Once we got off the ferry we got right onto a small boat for the island tour. Like most limestone islands, the water has cut all kinds of grottoes and caves into the stone, and the boat was small enough to nose right into most of them, but not the famous "Blue Grotto" which can be reached only in a rowboat. There are many, many really truly expensive yachts all around Capri.

Photo: Anacapri view

After the boat ride, we rode the funicular cable car up to the town of Anacapri on the hill. It's a little breezier (but still sauna-hot) up there, so Kate and I declined the trip to the very hot botanical gardens in favor of a stop for lunch in the Ristorante Isodoro. The Aria Condizionata had much to offer us, and the Pizze we ordered were fabulous for 7 Euros each. Kate had Margherita (your basic cheese pizza) and I had Marinara, which lacks the cheese but includes slices of garlic, basil, and onion. Yummy! Then we went for gelato (of course) and I had the local Limone and Kate had mint chip.

But most everything else on Capri is even more expensive than Sorrento, which is more expensive than everywhere else, so apart from some Gelato and a birthday present for Jill, we just window-shopped.

Photo: Naples harbor - yes it was that hazy!

Our Last Night in Italy

About 2:30, we boarded a huge ferry for Naples and took a 2-hour ride into the city's harbor - the water changes distinctly from blue to brown in the harbor, and the haze was unbelieveable. In all the distance shots from Sorrento, Capri, and Naples, it looks like I'm shooting in fog, and that's just what the air was like! The saving grace was that we got right on the motorway and headed north back to Rome - we're actually getting some thundershowers - finally, after 11 days of steambath, the skies are ready to cut loose and cool us off a bit.

Our last hotel was very posh by Italian tourist hotel standards - It was the Hotel La Meridienne - and it was the second place with a pool. We had already purchased pool caps in Assisi, so we were all set. But we got in at 6:40, and for reasons known only to the management and the demons of hell itself, they close their pool at 6:00 PM. As the Italians say: Bastarde! And it means the exact same thing as in English!

But we were treated to a fantastic thunderstorm, with one lightning strike about 100 yards from the hotel. I happened to be looking out the open window when it hit and I about jumped out of my skin! Chris - my roommate - had his back to the window and said he saw the flash reflected off the wall behind me. The thunder was immediate and sounded like someone set off a bomb.

Photo: Aubrey Brown, Katie Platter, Megan Ferguson, Alison Hackelman, Shawna Hackelman, Kyle Smith, and Susan Smith on the boat tour of Capri

So, up to this point, this was supposed to be the last post from Italy, but for all its poshness, the Hotel Meridienne does not offer Internet access. Bastarde! So I'm posting this from Tualatin after a long journey and a longer sleep.

Photo: Kate with a tall ship in the background on the boat tour of Capri