Adventures in Sorrento & Capri

In my opinion, I have saved the best of our Italy trip for last. When I was in Italy in 2005 we stayed a couple nights in a little hotel in Sorrento on the southwest coast of Italy in an area called Amalfi. From there we visited Pompeii and the Isle of Capri. I thought it was a lovely area that made me think of Southern California. Certainly not a bad comparison but it didn't really impress me. When I planned our trip in 2007 I knew I wanted to visit the area again to show Paul and my cousins both Pompeii and Capri but we only planned to spend two nights there because I didn't think we'd need more than a couple days to see what there was to see.

Sorrento's sea cliffs are impressive and lined with luxury hotels. I arranged for our hotel through our travel agent so I didn't know it was in this area. When we arrived in Sorrento we found our hotel to be the most beautiful place we had ever stayed anywhere.

It was set high on a cliff overlooking the Bay of Naples. From the two balconies of our room we could see across to the city of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. And we had views of both the sunrise and sunset. It was spectacular. When you see tourists coming to the courtyard of your hotel to take their photos of the locale you know you have found The Spot.

Here are some photos from our hotel, Bellevue Syrene.

Through the gates to the hotel.

The rooms were all decorated differently and in fabulous colors. This was our incredible room.

Here is Paul calling home to extend our stay in Sorrento an additional two days. This was at the end of our trip and it was the most fabulous way to finish our stay in Italy.

One of the sitting areas of our hotel.

From our balcony

Our hotel is the yellow building on the cliff straight ahead.

We were able to take an elevator down to the beach and walk along to the dock to take a boat ride over to the Isle of Capri. Here are some photos of Capri.

Adventures in Pompeii---La parte due

Here are additional photos of our visit to Pompeii. It is said that some of the most fascinating clues about the lives of the people of Pompeii can be found in the numerous brothels in the city. If that's true, they must have been a fun crowd, and an apparently wealthy city.

This is a photo of a carving of male genitalia in the street. I guess the implication was This way to the Fun House.

The brothel we toured was a small building with a center hallway. Along the aisle on either side were cubicles or private chambers. Over the doorways of the rooms were frescoes of the women apparently to be found inside plying their trade on the stone couches.

The erotic frescoes that line the interior of the building are quite well preserved and very descriptive. There certainly was not as much room as the frescoes would lead you to believe. The rooms are only about 5 feet wide. As they are lined up one after another I had to wonder about the privacy. Can you imagine the sound bouncing off the stone walls?

Then there was this dude. I'm guessing he was a legend in his own mind.

Pompeii must have been a fun town until that dark day in 79 A.D.

Adventures in Pompeii

When we visited Italy in 2007 I was anxious for Paul to see Pompeii. I had been fascinated by the site during my visit in 2005 and couldn't wait to show him what I found most interesting.

Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Along with Herculaneum, its sister city, Pompeii was destroyed, and its 20,000 citizens and buildings completely buried, during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in AD 79.

The volcano collapsed roofs and buried Pompeii under 60 feet of ash and pumice, and it was lost for nearly 1,700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1748. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire.

When I visited in '05 we had a tour guide who called himself Mimmo. He conducted the tour in the persona of a slave who was living in Pompeii at the time of the eruption. He wasn't dressed in costume but just took us through the tour with his narration in the first person. Here's Mimmo:

These were some of the slave quarters. When the excavations got to this area they found bodies of slaves still chained to the walls and in some cases they also discovered bodies of noblewomen with them. The theory was that the women had rushed to the slaves to try to free them during the volcano eruption only to be entombed with them.



In the 1700's when the excavations began they found empty pockets in the rubble and determined that they must have been bodies that had decayed over the centuries. They devised a method to fill those pockets with a plaster mixture and dug the mold out after it dried. Below is one of the bodies. The detail was incredible. You could see the straps on the sandals as well as the belt around the victim's waist.




During my first visit, the sight that most took my breath away were the ruts in the cobblestones made by the cart tracks nearly 2,000 years ago!


Here are some more photos of Pompeii.

Adventures in Florence

I thought by now most everyone would be tired of my travelog but I got such nice comments on my Adventures in Venice post....You like me, really like me.......that I thought for the next two Mondays I'd continue posting photos from other cities visited in Italy.

So today class we are going to talk about Florence. Of all the cities I have visited in Italy, I liked Florence the best and would opt to return there first. It's a very easy city to get around, not confusing like Rome and Venice. Located in the region of Tuscany, Florence is on the Arno River and is thought of as the heart of the Renaissance. The architecture is beautiful and there are so many galleries and museums I don't think you could ever see them all.

The Arno River has six bridges, the oldest of which is the Ponte Vecchio, shown above. Originally lined with fishmongers, butchers and tanners, the shops were later occupied by goldsmiths and jewelers. Anyone who knows me can tell you I've been in a few jewelry stores in my life. Well, I have NEVER seen as much jewelry as I did in these shops on the Ponte Vecchio. These little shuttered shops you see above hold some of the most amazing displays I have ever seen.

The current bridge was rebuilt after a flood in 1345. During World War II it was the only bridge across the Arno that the fleeing Germans did not destroy. On November 4, 1966, the bridge miraculously withstood a tremendous flood of the Arno which damaged many buildings.

This is the monument to Benvenuto Cellini, the most famous Florentine goldsmith. When I was there in 2005 the fences around the Cellini Monument were full of padlocks with indelible writings, hung up by lovers who believe that it is a symbol of an indissoluble relationship; the keys to these padlocks are then symbolically thrown into the Arno River, where nobody can ever retrieve them. When I returned in 2007, all the padlocks were gone and there was a sign saying anyone caught attaching a padlock to the fence would be fined.

Most photos of the skyline of Florence include Il Duomo an incredibly beautiful cathedral that is covered in red, white and green marble. Begun in 1296 and finally consecreated in 1436 it has an enourmous octagonal dome that was the largest in the world when it was built.

An amazing view that pops into sight as you turn a corner in the city.

The interior of the Filippo Brunelleschi's dome.

The color and detail of the marble on the Duomo are exquisite.

Here's my real Adventure in Florence, the handsome Italian I brought home with me

Adventures in Venice

In 2007 I went back to Italy for two weeks but this time with Paul and my cousins, Don and Chris. We flew first to Venice and then traveled south. I had been to Venice once before but for a very short time. I had been reading about the city since my first visit and was very anxious to go back and see more.

This is Paul at one spot where you can access a gondola on a back canal. The flowers all over the city were lovely.

A fascinating and enchanting city, Venice can also be a maddening place to try to get around. As you probably know, the streets of Venice are mostly canals. In fact, there are no wheeled vehicles of any sort in the city. You walk or take a water taxi or water bus to get around. And it can be very confusing with its maze of streets and web of canals and lots of dead-ends. Even with a map, it's a difficult place to navigate. And good luck asking a Venetian for directions!

This is the Grand Canal and truly the Main Street of Venice. This might have been taken while standing on the Rialto Bridge.

No visit to Venice would be complete without a gondola ride, despite the price. These photos were taken from the boat as we glided through the back streets of this unique and romantic city.



Balconies were full of flowers AND hanging laundry in many cases.

You see boats of all kinds tied up to the buildings. They are the only method of transportation other than walking. And, of course, commerce moves on the water as well. Monday morning when we left, there were all sorts of work boats and delivery boats navigating the canals along with the taxis and personal watercraft.

See the flowers. And the crowds! We stayed right in the city which is the only way to really get a feel for Venice. Most tourists come into the city for the day and then leave in late afternoon on the Vaporetta (water bus).

In the gondola on The Grand Canal. That's the Rialto Bridge straight ahead.

This is taken from the Campanile or bell tower which is the tallest structure in Venice. The current tower is a 20th century recreation of the 8th century original which collapsed without warning into a pile of bricks in 1902.

And here we are leaving the city in a private water taxi taking us to the train station for points south. Venice is truly an enchanting place. You have to see it to really understand it.