Last Day in Rome - the pickpockets hit

We spent the entire day at Vatican City and had a great time. The history and art are incredible. We even got to go to mass. On the way back to the hotel around 6 p.m the subway got supercrowded and we were all packed in. There was a lot of jostling and contact. When we emerged from the train - my raincoat zippered pocket was open and the kleenex were hanging out of the top. Being really quick-witted,(NOT!) I was perplexed. Same thing for Bob. Then we figured out that the woman and man who had shoved their way onto the train at the next to last stop were working together. Luckily we had on money belts and our pockets were empty of valuables. We had read about the pickpockets and sure enough, we experienced them.
Other than that experience (and the constant onslaught of beggars) we had a great time here in the city. We even went to the opera. (first and last) . I still prefer the quiet unpopulated areas of sicily but Bob liked the hubbub of the city. Italy was great to us. Tomorrow we fly home.

Exhausting day in Rome

While Bob ran in the Rome marathon, Paula cozied up to a local. (Tiberius has promised me the world (as he knows it)). We got lost and walked for >6 hours but saw a lot of the city. All 28 bones in each foot are screaming in pain. Tomorrow we tour the Vatican.

Damn Carthaginians!

We have been way too cool wearing our new sunglasses and boots and drinking little cups of espresso, riding scooters and smoking cigarettes to blog. But now that is out of our systems, here's an update: in Agrigento we learned that the Carthaginians (Hannibel and Gela) brougt 50 elephants and destroyed everything. Sicily has just been rife with takeovers from the Greeks, to the Romans,the Saracens, Normans, Spanish, Arabs. We went to Segesta and saw the temple there, then onto Erice, a medieval walled city high on a mountain overlooking the sea. We have been in Palermo for 2 days and we have seen 3 civil strikes within 2 blocks of our hotel. The guidebooks all say what a pit Palermo is - with pickpockets, muggers, theives but the people here have been absolutely wonderful to us. Sure, the streets are full of trash, horses, dogs, cars, buses, motorcycles and people - but what city isn't? We went to Teatre Massimo (scene of the final act of Godfather III) and saw the ballet Coppelia and then returned for a third time to our favorite bar the Bar Liberte, where they treat us like royalty. We took the bus to Monreale and saw the fabulous mosaics in perhaps the most beautiful church in the world. Tomorrow it is off to Rome.

Agrigento - Valley of the Temples

View from our room in the day. View from our room at night.

Caltigerone and Morgantina

(Picture from the Sicily Puppet Museum)
Beautiful day driving from Siracusa to the interior of Sicily. Bob had made an offhand remark to our Taoromina hotel manager, Paolo, that I had Morganti blood. He said “Ah, Morgantina!” and then told us about an excavation of a bronze age Greek town called “ Morgantine.” We made our way to the site (2 hrs. with a bit of confusion). I had expected brown, scrubby landscape but since it is springtime we were rewarded with lush green vistas. Our route on this back roads sojourn took us through hundreds of lemon and orange groves. The trees were so full of ripe fruit that, at one point, the sides of the two lane road were lined with big, fat oranges that had fallen from the trees. We found the huge site that is a Princeton excavation and we stumbled on a wonderful little “cucina Contadina” that was empty – but open. Named “EYEXEI” after a mosaic found on-site. Lunch was a delicious Sicilian meal of grilled lamb, rabbit, sausage and maybe chicken, two kinds pasta, great breads, green salads with fennel, a good local wine made from the Nero d’aviola grape and dessert of strawberry semifreddo, almond semifreddo and a warm, sweet ricotta ravioli. Earlier in the day we had stopped in Caltigerone which is famous for its ceramics. The town has >100 ceramic decorated steps which connect the old town to the new town. It was just by dumb luck that we pulled in the side mirrors and aimed the car down the narrow streets into the old town. The GPS was useless because in this situation an old town like this looks like a plate of spaghetti on the GPS screen. On one hairpin turn I noticed the steps and then we found parking! It was a miracle!

Siracusa and Ortygia

Today is a beautiful day in Siracusa - a little chilly but that is good for all the walking and climbing steps that we did. If we had posted any pics from yesterday they would have been a big square of gray. It was just miserable yesterday. Even if you tried to carry an umbrella, it was turned inside out by the wind. Today we saw countless umbrellas lying broken on the sidewalks. We did a little exploring yesterday but came back to the room soaked and chilled. We ended up watching Peter Pan, the movie, in Italian. The hotel is one of those old, 18ft ceilings, spare, marble/tile buildings so we never quite warmed up. We couldn't figure out the buses (yet) so even though we had bought tickets -today- we still ended up walking from the island of ortygia (where we are staying) to the Greek Theatre and Roman Theatre ruins, and the Archeological Museum that are all across town.

florence Trevelyan's Follies

In the late 1800’s Mrs Trevelyan was “invited /encouraged” to leave Britain after she had a dalliance with Edward, the future king. An avid botanist and ornithologist, she came to Taormina and built a lovely garden of exotic plants and quirky buildings of follies and a small home. The property is now the public garden of the town. Her home and gardens are built overlooking the Ionian Sea and face toward Mt. Etna. They are situated below the Ancient Greek Theatre. Supposedly the gardens contain many exotic plants – but to our East Coast eyes, every garden here looks exotic. Anyway, as was common at the time, she used a mixture of building materials – some contemporary, others from the Greeks or Romans and recycled from the many ruins that the town was built upon. One garden folly was in the shape of a pagoda, the other was called “The Beehive” and it is a conglomeration of rooms or cells. It is cobbled together from Greek columns, Roman blocks, lava , bricks, rock disks and liberal use of arches. It was interesting to read (in another document) that Edward VII visited Taormina in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hmmmmmm, wonder if he paid his old “friend” Mrs. Trevelyan a visit?

Ex Votos in Taormina Musuem

Ex Votos are paintings that express thanks to God for a miracle. The ones we saw at the Popular Culture and Folklore Museum were from the early 1800’s. They were the size of a legal sheet of paper and were in gratitude for some pretty odd miracles. Among the miracles detailed were: being saved from an attack by cats, the corollary attack by dogs or wolves, protection from loss of an eye when shooting arrows (surely nonna had warned him of the danger), falling through the roof, dodging a train, etc. etc. If we had to create an Ex Voto, ours would be thanking God for the miracle of the GPS system that saves the marriages of travelers trying to negotiate the treacherous roads of Italy.

Volcano alert!

We spent the day in Taormina - where Truman Capote wrote "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and Tennessee Williams wrote "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". The town is built like a lasagna with many layers: a town with Roman Ruins, Greek ruins on top of that: Norman, Arab, Medieval layers - all surrounded by the Ionian Sea, the NAXOS Bay and in the shadow of Mt. Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe. The building materials from one era are used in subsequent times. This afternoon there were some ashes falling from the sky and I was certain that we were experiencing an eruption. It turns out that Friday must be "Burn your trash day" because there were little fires all over the hillside below our hotel.

Sicilia

We had a wild ferry ride from Naples to Taormina, Sicily. The sea was turbulent for the first few hours. The ferry would be a great place to meet men. There must have been 10 men for every woman on the boat. It seemed very odd. It is like a small cruise ship with a casino, wine bar, restaurants, dancing. Thank goodness Bob was there to protect our honor. We arrived in Sicily to a full rainbow over Palermo. Since it was rush hour traffic was crazy. There appears to be no such thing as official lanes - it's just how many cars can cram into the space. But no one is vicious or angry. Taormina is in sight of Mt. Etna which was shrouded in the blackest, lowest clouds I have ever seen. Our hotel is gorgeous and we have plenty of space. Tonight we will be having appetizers in the lobby in front of the fireplace (it was sunny but chilly) We took the bus to Castelmola - a town of stone built on the top of a mountain.

Food facts

A rainy day in Sorrento and soon we leave to catch the ferry in Naples for an overnight passage to Sicily. Luckily we have a cabin so we may be able to hide from the cold, rainy weather which will probably make for a wild ride. The gelati has been delicious everywhere. Breakfast at the hotel has been a huge buffet of sweets, a buffet of fruits and cereals, and a sidebar of eggs. But the best thing (that we discovered on day 2) is the stainless steel orange juicer that we found on the side of the buffet. They bring in oranges from the garden and you can have really fresh juice that you squeeze yourself. The down side is that the juicer sounds like a Boeing 747 taking off. (So we don't like it when other people discover the secret.) We went to dinner at a local restaurant and I had the strozzopreti (priest choker )noodles with shrimp scampi. Apparently in this area the priest were not always looked upon kindly and this speically shaped noodle was created. You can wikipedia the noodles for a description. The breads are out of this world - soft inside, crusty outside. Limoncello is a locally made product because there are lemon and orange trees everywhere! Tasty. The streets are lined with orange trees that are loaded with fruit. I'll post food pictures when I get back to using my own computer. Now, onto the wet, curvy road that runs along the water.

Como dice (how do you say?) STOP Feeding us!

We spent so much time waiting for the bus to bring us back to Sorrento from Positano (almost 3 hours waiting) that we built this small hut AND then had time to buy this horse! Today we took the city bus to Positano. Apparently schedules don't mean much here. The bus left an hour late. It dropped us off at the top of town and we hiked the 1.5 mi to the beach. It was the 1st beach where we ever found sea glass. But after a few hours walking we decided to hike back up the steep 1.5 mi road to the bus stop. There we waited for more than two hours and there were no buses to be seen running either direction. So, we hiked back down to the beach and looked for the Tourist Info office - but of course that wasn't open in off season. So we hiked back up the steep hill and waited another hour and a half. Finally, a bus came! We cheered, we danced the tarantella, we sold the hut and gave away the horse.

Sorrento

We left Virginia and the tall mounds of dirty snow behind. We landed in Rome around 8 a.m. and were one of the few people to get a rental car. Saturday must be laundry day in italy because most of the balconies in the apartment buildings had laundry drying on them. Here in Sorrento it's chilly - in the 50's but there are ripe orange and lemon trees everywhere. The hotel garden has camellias and rosemary bushes in bloom. Cyclamen and birds of paradise are all around. A rooster crowing woke us up this morning (in town). We took the train to Pompei and saw orange and lemon "groves" right up to the railroad tracks. Everyone with some land seems to have fruit trees and gardens. Now i understand my Italian grandfather's need to garden a little better. But enough of the beauty, we drove from Rome and were surprised to see vendors at toll booths trying to sell stuffed animals or trinkets to you while you wait in line to pay the toll. Also, the scooter riders are INSANE! We were in a long line of traffic going up twisty two lane roads. The motorcylists and scooter riders were weaving in and out of traffic and riding down the middle of road at full speed - showing no fear. The other bizarre thing was having little children (maybe 3 or 4 years old) going from train car to train car begging for money. Pompeii was amazing - so much bigger and more technologically advanced than we had imagined. We spent about 5 hours there. No one seems to want to hear my Italian. It is pitiful that we must only be in tourist traps because everyone is speaking English to us.