I Hope You Like Lemons...

After a wild day in Naples, we've spent the last couple of days on the beautiful Amalfi coast, in the town of Sorrento. The first thing you notice as you come into town on the train (called the Circumvesuviana because it runs around Vesuvius) are the lemon groves. Here, where there is some of the most expensive real estate anywhere, lemon groves grow right in the middle of town and on all the hills along this beautiful coast. And what kind of souvenir can you buy here? Lemons! Lemons in all shapes and sizes including one that is almost as big as a grapefruit. Also, lemon soap, lemon candies, lemon plates, bowls and cups, clocks that look lemons, porcelain lemons, wooden lemons, lemon jewelry and probably the best of all, lemoncello, that delicious after dinner drink that is so famous here.

Besides the lemons, another reason to come here is that it is close to the ancient Roman town of Pompeii. You probably know that Pompeii was a prominent town that had the unfortunate luck of being located right next to a big, nasty volcano named Vesuvius. No one knew that this was actually a volcano until in August, 79AD, it literally blew its top. A big, hot pyro clastic flow reached Pompeii in a few minutes and covered the town in ash. After a few days of this, the town was covered in about 30 feet of ash and was perfectly preserved. Flash forward about 1700 years and Pompeii was discovered and has seen continuous excavation and study until this very day. The town is huge and had about 20,000 residents and is by far the best place to see what a Roman town looked like. We arrived on the train when it opened and practically had it to ourselves for the first 2 hours.

Travel note...it's always best to arrive in these types of places as early as possible, as the big tour groups rarely arrive until well after breakfast.

It was great just walking around the town, going into the old houses, seeing beautiful mosaics and paintings, all original. You really get an idea of how people lived here, at least the rich ones. There are even bodies of the inhabitants you can see. When the person died, the ash covered him and he was preserved. Eventually, the body deteriorated and created a cavity in the now solid ash. This was discovered by archaeologists, plaster was poured in the cavity, and a perfect impression of a body was created, including hair, clothes, etc. A bit spooky to look at, for sure.

Pompeii gets about 5 million visitors every year and I think about 2 million of those were there the day we visited. After two hours wandering around on our own, all of Pompeii was inundated by hordes of school kids, every one of them constantly screaming at the top of their lungs. This, plus the fact that I hadn't been drinking enough water or eating much food, gave me a slight case of heat stroke and it was hard to enjoy the last hour or so of our visit.

A ten minute train ride from Pompeii is the other buried town of Herculaneum. These unfortunate folks didn't get smothered by hot ash, but by 60 feet of slimy, boiling mud. This somehow preserved the buildings much better and many even have their original wood parts, although a bit charred.

Okay, enough about ruins and dead bodies. What you really want to know is what we are eating. The food so far isn't as good as the food in the north of Italy, but we've had a couple of memorable meals. In Naples, we ate at the second most famous pizzeria there, Cafe Trianon. (The most famous, Pizzaria Michele, had a one hour wait). We had a Margarita pizza, the most simple with just tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil (the color of the Italian flag) and another with 7 (yes, seven!!) types of cheese. They were delicious, especially the cheesy one with its bubbling, gooey goodness! The other great meal was in Sorrento, at the Leone Rosso (the Red Lion). Our first course was a carpaccio of octopus with Florentine fennel. This was marvelous, as somehow they pounded the octopus into round pieces and then cut it into incredibly thin slices. With some very good olive oil and the fennel, this was unreal. This was followed by a rigatoni with a tomato sauce with eggplant, basil and sausage. YUM!!! Last, but not least, was a frito misto...fresh fish, calamari and shrimp fried to crunchy perfection. With the little sardines you could eat the whole fish, head, bones, everything. Next door was Gelateria David. The best flavor was called Veneziana, which was dark chocolate with A LOT of rum.

Today, Saturday, we are on the train to Siracusa. It's a crowded, old train that has seen its better days. We are in a cabin with some nice Italians and a drunk, crazy guy, but nice guy that apparently doesn't enjoy bathing. But earlier today we took the 6:30 am bus to Amalfi. The famous Amalfi road is closed for repairs, so we came over the mountain, which was amazing. The last 10 kilometers or so goes straight down a 1000 meter mountain with incredible views. The town of Amalfi is beautiful, but only a 15 minute walk away is the town of Atrani, which has somehow escaped the touristic craziness of the rest of the towns here. A nice little piazza with little restaurants and beautiful buildings climbing up the hillsides on both sides of the canyon. Hardly any tourists and very typical of what you would hope to find here. We had an omelette with farm fresh eggs and melted, yummy cheese, washed down with a thick, sweet doppio espresso. I wouldn't mind coming back here someday and spending a few days.

As I am typing this, they have put our whole train on a huge ferry for the 3 kilometer ride over to Sicily. The train will drive off the ferry and head down to Siracusa, passing by the currently erupting Mt. Etna. Tomorrow we'll head up to the town of Modica for the big Festa di St. Giorgio, the town's patron saint. Should be a good party!

So here are some pictures, not in order...