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| '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.
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| Ercolano! |
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| A rather well-maintained chapel inside a house? |
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| Roman shop sign |
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| 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.
