Day 11: Vesuvius to Carmignano

'The Hermitage'

We woke early to the smell of crackling sausage and the constant screams of an overindulged two year old. After a quick peek out of our balcony to the mass of Vesuvius, we packed our bags and navigated our way carefully down the narrow winding spiral staircase from our attic room. 'Mama' (she still wouldn't reveal her actual name) had laid out tea, coffee, milk, and a few plastic wrapped croissants. We admired the rest of their collection of unusual art while we ate as quickly as we could. 'Mama' kept coming in to check if we had finished, or if we needed directions to where we were going, and when were we going? Now? Soon? Geez. OK. So after smiling and nodding after she rattled off a string of more of her dubious directions, we were off.

Luckily our trusty navigatrix was more on top of the local geography than Mama was, though the Italians love to post signs for lookout points that haven't existed for approximately 50 years. Or are locked with chains in the middle of the day. One such fruitless venture led us to a road (more of an overgrown path really) that bypassed some ancient, rusty, and beautiful gates, one of which had long since fallen off its hinges. There was no sign, so I immediately jumped out of the car to explore, leaving Matt protesting loudly about broken glass (it was everywhere), proper footwear (I was in beach flip flops) and bums living there (quite likely). All good points, but I was off.


Matt followed and we found our way into the fascinating ruin of what seemed to be an extremely grand hotel from the late 1800s, overlooking the towns below from halfway up Vesuvius. It was all beautifully painted, and the architecture was gorgeous and intricately detailed. There were also piles of broken bottles in very corner, mounds of ancient (possibly original) bedding nd a few holes in the floor that went down to the floor below. Windows were smashed and shutters banging in the wind. We spent about 20 minutes inside and wisely decided against ascending the grand staircase. Later we googled and found it was the old hotel Hermitage, built by Thomas Cook two years before Vesuvius erupted in 1908 (good one, Tom).


Resolving to just go straight to the top and not follow any more signs, we found our way to a large gravel lot that seemed more promising, with little booths selling trinkets (mainly and inexplicably phallic symbols carved from volcanic rock). An aggressive guy in a sweat stained grey shirt authoritatively told us to park in that spot and to pay him two euros fifty when we came back. Yeah right. So we smiled good naturedly and parked in a different spot before we realized that we didn't have enough cash for the tickets to go up. Hmmm. Quickly solved by smiling sweetly and asking for due biglietti estudianti (the old man can still pass for a student apparently).

The climb was pretty tough, even in tennis shoes, though we saw one crazy woman attempting in heels and a skirt-- excellent volcano climbing wear. We were primarily motivated by the constant stream of older and fatter people coming down the hill.

We got to the top, where I was amused to see they were selling volcanic rocks by the hundreds. Hilarious since they looked exactly the same as the millions of rocks we had just scrambled up. I pocketed a few from the ground, and climbed to the side of the crater, where it really hits you that this is a LIVE volcano. There is still a part of the crater that constantly emits a hazy column of twisty grey smoke. Seeing how huge the crater was really put the original eruption into perspective – over half the mountain actually blew off and the resulting ash, lava, and rock was what had taken thousands of years to be cleaned out of the ill fated Pompeii and Herculaneum, where we were headed next.



We carefully climbed back down and found our car and our sweaty grey shirted amico. It was fairly obvious he didn't work there and was just an opportunist, so when he demanded his 2.50, Matt instead suggested he pay us 2.50 instead. He seemed less keen on this proposition, and we sped off as fast as our little Oopi would go.

We then went to Herculaneum to see the rest of the ruins. After finding parking behind a pizzeria, we headed in. It was really similar to Pompeii, though much smaller, and it had been buried in lava, not ash. A lot of the actual relics have been sent all over the world and annoyingly, many seem to be in London at the British Museum. Hmm. It was still amazing to walk around this unbelievably well preserved city and see their grand frescoes, water fountains and baths from thousands of years ago.

Ercolano!

A rather well-maintained chapel inside a house?

Roman shop sign

Tiled floor inside the women's baths

We took a final visit to the crypts below, where there were piles of skeletons (presumably pre-eruption). By this time it was about 3pm, and we were really hungry.


You wouldn't expect it to be tough to find a cafe in a touristy town in Italy. We didn't either. After finding a parking spot in the city center and working out the ticketing (no easy feat), we then wandered to cafe after cafe to find that they were ALL closed. We were about to give up and just et back on the autostrada to Tuscany when I saw a tiny little cafe that seemed open, though it was deserted. I found a little man inside (I mean really little, like up to Matt's waist) who told me in Italian that we could have some panini di melanzane. I was fairly certain this meant eggplant sandwich, and even more certain I would have eaten anything anyway. We agreed and he proceeded to move more slowly than I have ever seen a human move while making a sandwich. After about half an hour, we had finished our drinks and were still waiting for our sandwiches, which he kept toasting and re toasting. I thought Matt was going to lose it.


We finally got our sandwiches and sped back to the car, which mercifully was still there. We then drove the four or five hours north, past Rome, as cars disregarded all traffic laws and attempted to kill us repeatedly at very high speeds.

The rest of the trip passed mainly without incident, and we arrived at Isabella's b&b at dusk. She came to meet us and show us around, explaining that it is actually an ex monastery from the 1500s (why not). Our room was beautiful and we settled in for the night.