Well, our big, gigantic vacation for the year is over. We took a road trip through Italy for three weeks and it was amazing. I knew it would be way too much for me to recall it all afterwards, so I kept a trip diary. Here you can take a virtual vacation, going through one day each week, the same way we did. I’ve also divided the photos into days (although one day we were lazy and did nothing and took no photos, so that day has none), so you can click through those day by day as well. The only thing we never found out by the end of our trip, despite having asked an Italian, was what on earth happened on the 20th of September? Everywhere we went we saw streets and piazzas named the 20th of September, but what happened? If you can make it through the whole thing with us, you’ll find out!

Day 1: Filderstadt to Iseo
Day 2: Cremona
Day 3: Iseo to Bologna via Verona
Day 4: Bologna to Siena
Day 5: Florence and Lago Trasimeno (Passignano)
Day 6: Castello and Perugia
Day 7: Assisi to Monopoli
Day 8: Monopoli Beaches
Day 9: Castel del Monte – Basilica St Nicholas – Monopoli
Day 10: Grotte di Castellana – Alberobello – Lecce – Otranto
Day 11: Roca Vecchia to Gallipoli
Day 12: Santa Maria al Bagno
Day 13: Matera
Day 14: Vesuvius – Pompei – Dinner
Day 15: Beach – Pontecagnano Faiano
Day 16: Salerno
Day 17: Amalfi Coast and Positano
Day 18: Castiglione della Pescaia
Day 19: Milano
Italy 2009

Day 1: Filderstadt to Iseo
We drove from home to Iseo, Italy on Lago d’Iseo. We left with 96,000 km on the car. We left at 10:00 in the morning with the car packed to the gills. We stopped in Bregenz, Austria and made sandwiches and walked along the lake eating them. We thought originally we would reach Iseo at 4:30. We didn’t go over the Splügen Pass; we went over a different one, which I’m not sure what it was called, because I fell asleep. We stopped at an overlook from Silvaplanasee and it was really pretty. It was one of the most brilliant blues I’ve ever seen in water. We drove through St. Moritz, which I thought would be like a James Bond town with ritzy casinos à la Kitzbühl, but I was wrong. Our vinegar spilt and we stopped along the road to clean it. As we did, two hunters came down from the mountains carrying a mountain goat they’d shot. One of them asked for a ride to his car, so we gave it to him. He really smelled like a mountain goat. We crossed the border into Italy only to discover we needed to go through another pass to reach Iseo. So we went over the mountains again. There we hit traffic. We’d chosen Camping Iseo as our fist stop and their reception closes at 8:00 pm. I finally got Flo to call to see if they’d still take us if we were late. They would. Flo finally left the main road with the traffic to drive directly lakeside through the towns – and ran into more traffic! No idea what everyone was doing north and returning south. We finally arrived at 8:30 (10.5 hours of driving!) and got a great campground really cheap – about Eur20 a night. Directly on the water. Got the tent up and went to find food. I had gnocchi with tomato mozzarella sauce. Very, very good. It began to storm while we ate. Got a little wet on the walk back. It POURED all night long and into morning. Our tent stayed dry! Good little Aldi tent. I woke up a dozen times, scared that it was leaking, and checked it, but it was always dry.

Day 2: Cremona
We got up at 10:00 today and made our way to Cremona, home of the world famous Stradivari violins. A one hour trip south on the toll highway, the center is a beautiful medieval town. I wanted to go because Lonely Planet said there are over 100 violin workshops that can be visited. Three problems: 1) We got there during midday break on a 2) Monday and 3) None of the shops are open for free or without appointment. Which we didn’t know right away, so we just walked around town in the rain for a while. Eventually we ate lunch at a Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant (Ristorante Centrale), because we couldn’t find any other one that was open. I had tortelli ricotta, which was good and Flo had pesto that looked like cooked spinach, but tasted amazing. I mean really amazing. I’ve only had pesto that good one other time in my life and that was in Como a few years ago. The waitress was a gray-haired gramma in white chef’s coat shuffling about in pink Crocs. She reminded me of my relatives – doing nothing but shuffling about serving food. The ceilings in the restaurant were high and the décor was very 70s. Flo said the toilets were a hole in the floor. After lunch, we went to the tourist office (finally open at 3:00), where they explained that most violin workshops are NOT open to the public and the ones that are cost Eur40 per person for 40 minutes by appointment. So that was a big disappointment. Even the museum was closed (Monday). So we took their advice and paid Eur3,50 per person to see the city collection of violins. They all kind of looked the same, but there was a sheet explaining about them, which made them cool. Some of them were REALLY old! – from the 1500s! And they were in fantastic condition. Then we went into the cathedral across the piazza and it was IMPRESSIVE. I loved the outside a lot. It had these walkways around the top, which I found fascinating. It was partly brick and partly pink/white marble. There was a tower and the façade was much taller than the rest, which I also thought was unique. Inside had so much beautiful stuff – the ceilings were the best – vaulted ceilings and all painted with blues and golds – very rich. We took the long way home. Even Italian barns are beautiful, with archways and made of brick with pillars. I like how they often make terraces on the roof of a room. That’s brilliant. We stopped at the store and bought a salad for dinner, then grilled and ate. Planned a little for tomorrow and walked into town. Iseo has a lovely center with small piazzas ad old buildings. Of course any town on the water is lovely. Lots of fashion in the windows for lots of money.

Day 3: Iseo to Bologna via Verona
We decided spontaneously to visit Verona today. We got up at 8 and had everything showered, breakfasted, cleaned, packed and checked out by 9:30. I thought it would take longer. We stopped in town at a bakery where I bought one small pastry – a dough crust cup filled with vanilla pudding and dusted with powdered sugar. It was very yummy, but almost too sweet. I forget what it was called. We drove to Verona, where we paid Eur6 (Flo) and and Eur 4,50 (me) to see the Roman amphitheater, which is now the opera house. It was very cool. You could really imagine Romans there. Verona was dirty. It is a well-preserved city with lots of expensive shopping and amazing architecture. The whale bone did not fall on us – we’re evidently not just. We didn’t go in Juliet’s house, but at least looked at the courtyard/balcony. Apparently a family named Capuletto really did live there back in the day and so even though the story of Romeo and Juliet is total fiction, there’s a whole tourist market in Verona for looking at Juliet’s balcony. Then we drove slow roads to Bologna and found a campground, set up our tent and cooked in the rain. It really poured. We planned our route for tomorrow and undercooked the rice, then ate in the tent – difficult! We saw a statue of Dante in Verona and drank cappuccinos (my first – I decided I would learn to drink coffee while in Italy and since all they drink are espresso-based drinks…). I’ve noticed many houses on the side of the road stand empty – no glass in the windows, no paint, no interior at all, just shells with roofs and I wonder why they’re so. I got a giant blister on my right baby toe and fixed it with a bandaid, but hope tomorrow is nice enough for open shoes.

Day 4: Bologna to Siena
It was an absolute nightmare getting into Bologna. I would’ve given up. (NOTES ON THE PHONE) We packed up our stuff this morning in the rain. It’s been such miserable weather. We also saw Bologna in the rain. The guidebook says Bologna is called Big Red, partly because of the red buildings and partly because of the politics. We weren’t there long enough to see the politics. In fact, there were only a couple of things I wanted to see and then we would leave again. When we walked in, we saw two tall towers. They looked crooked, but I’m not sure if that was just my perspective or if they really were tilted. Where we parked seemed not quite residential, but also not downtown. So the walk we had into the city was kind of neat, because (my impression anyway, was that) we walked through where the real people live. We walked past shops that didn’t look geared to tourists and past buildings that didn’t particularly look like upscale apartment buildings and despite that, someone lived there. The sidewalks were more like arcades, in that they had vaulted ceilings over them and archways with pillars on the street side. That was also quite nice. We walked into the downtown area and saw a big cathedral, which we didn’t go in. There was also a big fountain of Neptune that was rather, uh, explicit. I’d read that there was a square area in the old part of the city where many shops selling tasty things are found and I thought it sounded interesting, particularly as Bologna is known as the culinary capital of Italy. We stopped in a small bakery and I bought a tiny canoli filled with lemon cream. It was so good! It wasn’t too sugary and didn’t have this sort of sour milk flavor that I’ve tasted in Italian bakeries in America. We walked around a while longer and stopped in a deli. It was like going to Willy Wonka’s, except it wasn’t chocolate, it was salami and cheese and antipasti! It took us a long time to figure out what we wanted and also to recognize that you had to pull a ticket with a number in order to be served. They had giant hams hanging from the ceiling, mounds of cheeses and the place was tiny. There was barely enough room to get a line of people through, as in, you had to go through single file. We bought a chunk of parmesan (I mean, Parma itself isn’t that far from Bologna, we were in parmesan country) and some other cheese that we can’t remember the name of. It was very good, anyway. Then we walked around trying to find another thing listed in the book – a whispering gallery, where you can stand in one corner and whisper and the other person in the other corner can hear you. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it and so we just left. We stopped at the car to make a couple of sandwiches with our new cheese and they were quite yummy. Then we drove to the next campground halfway between Florence and Siena, but it looked like rain and we didn’t feel like camping in the rain again. We stopped at a tourist office in the tiny town of Barberino val d’Elsa. Who would’ve thought that such a small town would have a tourist office? Does Chatham have one? This town is smaller than Chatham. The girl spoke English quite well and called a couple of hotels and bed and breakfasts for us. We looked around and found nothing cheap, so we finally went to the one the girl in the office had found for us. Il Paretaio, it was called. It’s Eur80 per night and it’s REALLY nice! It’s a farmhouse from the 1700s where they make their own olive oil and also have a renowned dressage school. They have probably 12 or 15 horses that you can sign up to ride and have lessons or take a horse ride to a wine tasting. The floors were all big flagstone and terra cotta tiles, the fireplace in the dining room was big enough to put a small table and two chairs in and there were high ceilings. Our room was quite roomy (oops, a little redundant), with a big bed surrounded in a mosquito net. I find that romantic. Flo thought it was practical. There are horse prints and trinkets all over the place, but at least there’s a reason, I guess. In the evening we drove into Siena. I love Siena! Red brick buildings, medieval street designs (Unesco World Heritage Site, like most of Italy, it seems), Italian flair, a horse race every year, pottery, designer clothes, hills, artistic street lamps, Tuscany… a pigeon pooped right on Flo’s shoulder. We stopped at the Gothic cathedral, but it cost Eur6 just to go in (so we didn’t) and it was so over the top gaudy. They used different colors of marble and it was really just – I hate to say it like this, but – kind of an eyesore in comparison to the simpler, brick buildings all around. My favorite church so far is still Cremona. Also in Siena we stumbled across a parade where a whole bunch of people just walked through the streets wearing Mickey Mouse hats and behind them was a marching band. Our waiter said it was to celebrate the victory of the horse race in 1609 (or 1604?). Not sure what Mickey Mouse had to do with that… We also ate ice cream and I’d forgotten how big the scoops are in Italy, so I’d ordered two, but stopped her after one. Her colleague was very impressed that an American wanted less of something instead of more and only charged me a euro instead of two. We also bought an olive wood wine holder for three bottles and talked the saleswoman down to Eur35 because there was a tiny chip in the wood. There were way more American tourists in Siena than anywhere else we’ve been so far. Siena also has a series of escalators that go from the bottom of the hill, at the giant city wall, to the top, where the gaudy cathedral is. That was pretty cool, as it’s actually in the mountain. The first one is open on one side and then it turns a corner and another corner and goes up for a long time. Back in the B&B, Flo and I just kept thinking how much my mom would like a place like that.

Day 5: Florence to Lago Trasimeno (Passignano)
Breakfast at the B&B doesn’t hold a candle to the one after our wedding, but that was quite extraordinary. Florence was not at all what we expected. It was dirty. The architecture was not impressive when you take into account the way the other cities look. There were way too many tourists. The galleries had too long waiting lines to bother going in unless you’ve actually planned a whole day to wait. Parts of the city smelled really bad. It seemed like the city as a whole knew dumb Americans would come there no matter what, so they made no effort to keep it nice. The cathedral (or basilica? What’s the difference?) is one of those baroque wonders where it’s three or four different colors of marble and extremely over the top, like in Siena, but even worse. I did like the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), which had buildings along the edge of it, but sort of outside of it (kind of like little tumor houses), so the back sides of them were supported with poles going between the side of the bridge and the bottom of the house. The only dumb thing is the cute little buildings are mostly kitschy tourist shops selling gold jewelry and stuff. We did eat lunch there. We bought two sandwiches and iced tea at a grocery store and sat in the park. My feet (I wore my espadrilles) were killing me and I saw later that I got a HUGE blister (at least the size of a dime) on the ball of my foot. No fun. We also tried the famous Florentine tripe burger for Eur2,70. It actually wasn’t that bad if you didn’t look at it. Unfortunately we’d forgotten about it till after we’d eaten lunch and weren’t hungry enough to finish.
From there we drove toward Umbria and decided to stop early at Lago Trasimeno and have a relaxed evening. When we decided that it was 5 pm. By the time we found a campground, it was 6! We tried to find one where you could camp directly on the water, but it ended up we weren’t on shore anyway, but that was mostly because of two arrogant Italians and their annoying little white dogs, who hogged all the shore space with their giant camper. The campground was OK, but it only had two out of five tents in the rating system in our camping guide. The toilets and showers were not too stellar. We noticed driving into Umbria that they grow a lot of rocks there. Still many vineyards and olive groves, but we saw entire fields of just dirt and rock, plus the hills are hillier than the flatter parts of Tuscany; I guess because Umbria is in the Apennines. We went into town for dinner (after a bizarre trio of Frenchies set up camp next to us – who goes camping alone with their grandparents?). The town is called Passignano and we thought we’d walk a bit first. We walked along the water and then turned inland. We saw a big castle type thing on the hill and wanted to walk up to it. We found out later it’s called Rocca Medieval. So we had to go up. I LOVE hilltowns. We had to go up all kinds of stairs (good for staying fit) and through passageways and around corners. It was so amazing and chaotic and medieval the way the streets and alleys were laid out. For some doorways you had to go up a couple stairs to get in, for others down below the street level and then there were terraces and corners to front doors and windows onto the street. It’s so hard to describe. I hope our photos do it justice. The Rocca was closed for the night, but the walk up there was worth the whole trip. At dinner, it was fine. I had pesto, but it wasn’t as good as the pesto Flo had the first day in Cremona.

Day 6: Passignano to Perugia to Assisi
We went back to town today to go in the castle (Eur2 per person), but it was really just outer walls. No guts at all. Then we drove in the direction of Perugia. We stopped first at the tourist info office and got a map of the wine route, so we drove to one of the wineries on the route called Castello di Magione. It was open and a very friendly man was there. But the building! It’s a castle that belongs to the Knights of Malta. It was simply absolutely gorgeous and words don’t describe, so I hope also here that the pictures do it justice. I had a feeling when I got there like the building was really old and had seen a lot of history and when I get somewhere like that it just gives me shivers. We tasted two wines and bought a bottle of each – both from that winery, although they sell others as well. My bottle: Eur 12; Flo’s: Eur8. We also got to see their wine cellar, which was not as mysterious as I was expecting, but still had an air of magic in it.
Then we drove into Perugia. It was a bit difficult making out where we were and where we had to park to reach the center. We finally parked somewhere and walked up to the top. It was similar to Passignanao and Siena in layout and architecture with lots of stairs and alleyways and buildings seeming to connect to each other in the most unexpected of places. While Siena was red brick and the rest of Tuscany is yellow stucco, Umbria is gray stone and I love it. It has character. We ate lunch (I got eight pieces of ravioli for a buck apiece and was still hungry after. Stupid.) and drank an espresso. It went down quickly, but painfully. Many of the buildings seemed to be in the cellar (based on the vaulted ceilings), but were at street level… not sure why that. Perugia’s sign is the griffin, which I appreciate – anything with wings! We considered going in the art gallery, but didn’t have enough time. The shopping street is small; in fact the city seemed small, but big enough. They apparently have two universities there and a ton of students, but I didn’t notice an overwhelming obnoxious aura like near many universities. We saw a nun near the church, on the steps of which is where people hang out. We walked a bit out of the center to see a medieval garden we read about in Lonely Planet, but it wasn’t all we were hoping for. It was supposed to resemble the Garden of Eden somehow and have all these sign describing things like the Cosmic Tree (whatever that is), but first, it didn’t look like the Garden of Eden of my imaginations. It was too orderly, no organic chaos at all. Second, half the plants were in really bad shape, as in dead or dying. It looked like no one cared for them at all, when in fact, the garden is located at the back of a church where there also seemed to be a school attached, so actually there should be enough people around to take care of it. Third, nothing was in English, so we didn’t know what we were looking at. They may have described the Cosmic Tree, but we wouldn’t have known it! But it was still worth a little detour just to say we’d done something different.
Then we got in the car and drove to Assisi. We were afraid the basilica would be closed (according to Lonely Planet – oh how many times Lonely Planet led us astray this trip! But the edition is two years old.), but it wasn’t! We paid Eur1,05 for an hour of parking. Who comes up with a rate like that? We could go in an upper church and a lower church. Signs all over ask for silence, but most of the idiot tourists don’t pay attention, which I found extremely annoying. How many of the visitors even have a clue what they’re looking at, meaning it’s more than just a destination on the itinerary in their tour group list? We went downstairs to Frances’ tomb and both of us just sat there talking to God, not knowing the other one was. Most people just walk through (the tomb can be walked fully around, so most people lemming around to the right side and back out again) and that was that. God told me Frances was so extraordinary because he just tried to be like Jesus and didn’t consider fame or ranking with God. I could learn something about that. Some of Frances’ compatriots are also buried down there. You could buy a candle to dedicate to Frances, but you aren’t allowed to light it down there, just lay it at his tomb. That seemed like a bit of a rip off. As we went to leave, I suddenly felt the awesome presence of God and his love for Frances and I almost cried, it was so intense. Then we saw the little room full of his stuff (I believe the proper Catholic term for that is reliquaries or something like that.) – shoes, robes, etc – and went into the upstairs church, which was quite impressive for the decoration, not only the frescoes, but the pillars between the frescoes and every single detail. I also noticed many different saints had big elaborate statues with altars where you could pray and offer money and they were standing under a window or had a special niche. I saw exactly one statue of Jesus; it could have been cheap plastic, he had a plant and an electric candle and was shoved in the corner. No altar, no offerings. I don’t get that. Why honor people who serve the master more than you honor the master? Then we drove to the bottom of the hill and found a nice campground. Phew! What a full day!

Day 7: Assisi to Monopoli
I drove on this day. We left Assisi around 10:30 and probably the first two hours were on winding mountain roads heading east. We passed a bunch of people one the road selling onions, which I liked. We didn’t buy any, though. Just before we would get on the highway, we stopped for lunch. I think the town was called Civitta Vecchia, but I could be wrong. It was in Le Marche, one of the small provinces on the eastern coast of Italy. Le Marche, Abruzzo and Molise are provinces where we thought we just sort of skip over them for this trip, since mostly they’re good for the national parks and things that were not as important to us for this go ‘round. We parked near the sea and ate sandwiches on the beach. The water was relatively warm and it was a gorgeous day. The rest of the driving was Autostrada (highway) – the A14. It took about four hours to get to Monopoli; I have no idea how many kilometers that took and it cost almost 25 Euros! The Autostradi in Italy are toll roads and you can see they can get to be quite expensive. Twenty-five Euros is twice as much as the same amount of I-90 (from Albany to Buffalo) and in Italy you’re driving faster, so you’re actually going farther (or using more of the road, no matter how you want to look at it) – plus the Euro is worth more. That’s part of the reason we tried to avoid the highways. The other reason is that you don’t see anything from them. We enjoy driving on the smaller, albeit slower, roads, which wind through the countryside and towns. We reached our campground – the Atlantide – and pitched camp, then went into town to find a supermarket. We couldn’t! We wanted to buy meat, breadrolls, tomatoes and mozzarella. We couldn’t find meat or rolls anywhere! So we drove further into town where we noticed a few markets next to each other – as in, produce next to the butcher, but there was nowhere to park. This seemingly small town was jam packed with cars. We finally found somewhere to park and just sat down at a pizzeria directly on the town square. We’d given up on cooking for ourselves for the night. The price was quite good – around Eur16 for two pizzas and two beers. Flo’s pizza was good (four cheese, but with red sauce), but mine was awful. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pizza that bad before. It was white, with ricotta forte (strong) and fresh tomatoes, but it had no spice. It wasn’t salty, no oregano, no pepper – nothing that pizza normally might have, just an overwhelming blandness infused with a stinky cheese ricotta flavor that was not at all the ricotta I’m used to and not at all pleasant. I couldn’t eat it. Neither could Flo and that’s saying a lot! Lucky for me, my prince shared his pizza with me.
Afterwards, we walked around the square and waited a bit for a performance to start. We’d noticed a stage and seating set up and by the time we took a turn around the park, the lighting and sound techs were there. It turned out to be a recital from a dance school – some hip hop, some ballroom, some flamenco, the works. We watched for quite a while. The whole thing started with Mickey and Minnie Mouse “dancing” to two songs. I really can’t understand the Italian fascination with Mickey Mouse. I think he’s annoying as all get out. Then one of the sponsoring shops had the kids do a little fashion show. Some of them were probably as young as four years old. They were supposed to walk out, pose, take the jackets off and walk back. Most of them couldn’t get their jackets off, which was funny enough. Then one little girl did the classic both-arms-up-jacket-over-the-back-of-the-head trick, which was hilarious. The dancers were mostly pretty good too. One group was three girls and one boy about five or six years old dancing the merengue. They were really cute!

Day 8: Monopoli Beaches
Today we did nothing. It was glorious! We got up late, put our swim stuff on and headed to the beach. Directly across the street from the campground is the coast, which on this part is mostly cliff with pockets of sand. A lot of people just sat in chairs atop the cliffs, which were of some kind of dark rock and extremely uneven. We considered that, but if you went down some stairs cut in the rock, there was a tiny bit of sand in an inlet. We parked ourselves there. The water was mostly warm, but too shallow there to swim, so we walked about four meters seaward (or yards, for you metric challenged Americans – oops! I’m one too!). The ground underwater was mostly not sand. It was some kind of rock or coral; I don’t know exactly what it was. It also wasn’t smooth. It quite hurt to walk on, actually. It was also difficult to balance. Then it just dropped off into this beautiful green-colored water. And so did we! It was a bit cold at first, but then really pleasant and we swam around one of the rock formations. The water was really clean despite the beach having been quite gunky. We saw a man cleaning a squid or an octopus in a bucket. The waves rolled pretty high and I liked that. The beach was littered with broken glass and we were very careful not to step on any on our way in and then I went and cut my toe on something coming back. But it wasn’t glass – we hadn’t gotten that far yet. It was one of those dang corals, I guess – jumped out and got me. It was really painful, but I didn’t actually figure out it was cut until the next day. It was on a part of my toe that I couldn’t see without practicing my contortionism. For the next several hours we laid in the sun reading and snacking and going for dips whenever it got too hot. I got tan and Flo got burnt. We talked to a Swiss guy who was also lying there. He was a bit odd – but aren’t all the Swiss? Around 3:30 it got a bit cooler, so we headed back and spent the whole afternoon evening reading and chatting. We cooked noodles and drank wine. Later on, we took a walk along the coast. The water seems saltier than the ocean, but perhaps only because I haven’t been in the ocean in a year. I feel like there’s so many small things I forget to write down, like the mosquitoes here (and there are many) have black and white striped legs. We saw a couple making out in the shadows on the beach.

Day 9: Castel del Monte to Basilica of St. Nicholas to Monopoli
Our day started off interesting. We’d been trying to call Vito (my cousin, who lives part of the year in Italy) the day before and kept getting some recording in Italian, so we decided to try at the office today if they could translate for us, because we didn’t know if we had his voicemail or the wrong number or what. The guy at the office didn’t speak German or English, but he happened to have another camper there who was German and could translate for me. So first, we had the wrong number and then Vito finally answered, so he didn’t have to translate anyway, but we ended up bringing him and his friend to the train station in Monopoli. They were from Cologne and were traveling around Italy on bus and train. They were also a bit odd.
Then we drove two hours to Castel del Monte, which Swabian king (or emperor? What was he, anyway?) Friedrich II built in 1240. It’s supposed to be fascinating and mysterious because it’s an octagon and has no kitchen, no moat and why was it built at all and why an octagon blah blah blah. So we got there and had to pay Eur4 for parking and to take a shuttlebus up the hill – no parking directly at the castel. Then it was another Eur6 (Eur3 each) to get in and what a rip off! It’s falling apart, it’s plain as can be, there is NOTHING left in it, there are about three signs that have English on them explaining anything and it’s quite tiny on the inside. The main attraction is a section of the floor that’s been preserved and that section is not even two feet square. The floor! When even the floor is no longer intact you know there ain’t much to look at. So I thought that was pretty disappointing. By the time we left there, it was 1:30 and I was starving, but we couldn’t find any restaurants. We mostly drove through olive groves. The earth is so red here and seems so dry, but they still grow olive threes. Also many fields had small fires in them, but we haven’t been able to figure out what they’re burning. I was impressed by the amount of stonework we saw. Stone walls for miles – but dry, no mortar – and in almost every field, these bizarre, round, stone huts, also dry. No clue what those were for. The fires smelled good. So do the olive groves.
After the castel, we drove into Bari and as we did, it began to rain – and HARD. And I thought, “Oh shit!” – we’d left stuff out at the campground! It would be all wet! Oh well, couldn’t change it then. There wasn’t too much we wanted to see in Bari anyway. Actually, Bosch has it’s Italian base in Bari, so we just wanted to see what the city and area are like, so we could imagine if we would ever want to live there. I did want to see the Basilica of St. Nicholas, otherwise known as Father Christmas. He’s buried there. He’s the patron saint of children and prostitutes. So we parked just outside it and waited for a break in the rain (five to ten minutes). We managed to get in without getting too wet. There were a lot of tour groups there. Directly inside is a room that seems to hold a lot of special stuff – sparkly, shiny, paintings and crosses and cups and candlesticks holders. I’m not actually sure what it all had to do with, but it was pretty. The church itself was gorgeous. It really looked different (which is saying a lot!). the walls were completely white and only the ceiling was painted and gilt. Also, they’d had to add three arcades to keep the walls from falling in, so it kind of separated the up from the down. I lit a candle. The tomb of Nicholas was downstairs and it was less reverent than that of Frances, but the room itself was neater. Long and low with vaulted ceilings and these lamps in every section hanging. Very groovy vibe. So from there we thought we just drive back to Monopoli, stop at the grocery store and go back for the day. All the grocery stores (we’d spied them out the day before, but it was too late to go to them then) were closed! Italians apparently close ALL the stores on Mondays. By this time I was famished. We finally found a café that had other food (oh yeah, every other restaurant was closed too) and ordered already made calzones (yummy!) and these fried rice ball things – also already made (yummy, but a bit dry). Then we each drank a cappuccino. Total: Eur10,80. at the table next to us were three older gentlemen shooting the breeze. Love it! Then we walked around the centro storico (historical center) and on the water – well, not literally on the water, but along the water. I fell in love with Monopoli (as chaotic as the not centro storico is…). We saw people buying fish directly off the fishing boat. We saw the rowing club practicing. We saw boys kicking a soccer ball against the walls of a church. The buildings were beautiful; there were men and boys fishing with poles; lots of boats; a tiny wine shop open – gorgeous weather…! Ah, love. We bought some bananas and nectarines at one of the produce shops we’d seen Saturday night and in a box outside, they had live snails for sale. Eew! They were creeping all over the place! I’ve maybe never seen something so disgusting in my life. When we drove back to camp, God had a great surprise for us – it hadn’t rained a drop all day in Monopoli and all our stuff was dry! Thank you Jesus! So we spent the evening packing up a bit and playing Scrabble. I won – and I didn’t cheat.

Day 10: Castellana Grotti to Alberobello to Lecce to Otranto
During the night we experienced one of the most thrilling, immediate thunderstorms of our lives. It really sounded like the claps of thunder were directly outside the tent and the lightning was so bright it seemed like daylight. I wondered what it would feel like to be struck by lightning. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t raining. Right around 5 am, Flo woke up and wanted to pack everything up before it started raining and just sleep the rest of the time in the car. As those of you who know me will guess, I wasn’t really up for that plan. So for the next two hours, I wondered what it would feel like to be struck by lightning and whether or not the tent would leak – oh yeah, it started to rain and in buckets.
Our plan for the day, after we packed everything up during a break in the rain, was to see a couple of other sights and then drive on the coastal road along the edge of the heel. First we stopped at the Castellana cavern. A little bit dumb was that we had to wait 45 minutes for the next short tour to start and it was expensive and then it wasn’t even in English. The choices were one hour, Eur10 at 11:30 in Italian or 1:00 in English, meaning ending at 12:30 or 2:00 OR two hours, Eur15 at 11:00 in English, meaning ending at 1:00. I was annoyed that it would take so long and cost so much, but eventually we went in. I actually thought it wasn’t so impressive. I could have skipped it and been fine. A cavern is a cavern is a cavern. You couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t take pictures, couldn’t understand the guide and she didn’t seem too motivated about her job anyway. She seemed more concerned that she look fashionable in her hood than that she be friendly.
From there we drove directly to Alberobello, which is the heart of Trulli country. A Trullo is a certain type of construction that somehow reminded me of a hobbit house. They’re squat, stubby, round houses with white walls and stone roofs. The story goes that they built them that way so they could take them back down within a day. The lord of the area didn’t actually allow them to have a city there, so they thought, well, if he comes to look, we’ll just take it down again and avoid punishment. It was a cute town, but I felt like I was in a theme park or something. EVERYTHING was about Trulli. We stopped in a photographer’s gallery/shop and every single image was of Trulli. How boring! So it was sort of neat to see, but I felt awkward there. They even had a Trullo church. We bought a bottle of cactus fig liqueur for ourselves, and one for Benni and Annka as a thank you gift for taking care of our fish while we were gone. Then we drove south to Lecce. We were quite expecting to like it there as it had been really strongly recommended to us. We found parking easily, which was nice, but there ended the niceties. We first wandered about a bit trying to find the tourist office. We walked past the Roman amphitheater and one of the columns that originally stood at the end of the big roman road from north to south. We saw a lot of shops selling papier maché figurines, but they were all so lifelike; it was pretty disappointing. Then we saw the church there, which was… unique. The Zimbala brothers designed it and it was simple in that it was monochromatic, but there was so much schnick schnack! And some of it looked like mythological monsters, not even Christian symbols. It was interesting. We walked around the castle, but couldn’t figure out how to get in. Lecce made an impression on me of being dirty. Then we left, basically. We drove and drove and drove and couldn’t find a campground that was open – many of them are only seasonal. We did run into a farmer herding some white, long-haired goats. That was fun. It seems like I must be forgetting a whole lot of stuff, but we didn’t notice a lot of new things today. I guess because we’re still in the heel, the topography hasn’t changed really. The earth is still this vibrant, burnt siena color and we noticed people burning something in the olive groves again, but otherwise… so we finally decided to try a bed and breakfast listed in Lonely Planet – Balconcino d’Oriente. I called and the woman had a room with two single beds for Eur55 per night. I had the address, but the navi didn’t have any streets for Otranto, where we were. We stopped and asked a couple of teens/young 20s. The girl thought the street wasn’t even in Otranto. Finally we asked at the tourist office and she drew on the map for us, but we had to go around this huge circuit every time we got lost – one way streets! (Senso Unico) So we finally found it and I ran in and she told me to go the opposite direction to find a parking lot where it would be free parking. After two go-rounds, we found it, but it was dark and a loooong way from the B&B, so we weren’t sure if it was the one she meant. We went back. I asked with the map if it was right. She said yes. I told Flo in the car. I went back in with the suitcase. She told me, “No! So sorry – there’s a market there tomorrow.” I told Flo. I went back in. She gave me a flyer from the B&B and said if we find a spot ON THAT STREET, then we put the flyer on the dash and don’t pay. We finally found one! So she showed us the room. First off, you go down three steps from the street to the reception. At the bottom of the steps is glass in the floor showing the early stone building basement or whatever. Then we went back outside and up the stairs at the side to our room. The door was on the left, then we turned right and left again was a door. That was our “courtyard” and then we had one room and bathroom. The shower window looked out onto the neighbor’s balcony. The bathroom was sweet. I liked it. Something we’ve noticed is the nice places have bidets and the not so nice places (restaurants, campgrounds) have no seats on the toilets. We got a recommendation for a restaurant (La Pignata) and went into town. We walked around and shopped a little first. We bought a ceramic bowl for ourselves – colorful! I really like Otranto. It has a big castle (as in The Castle of Otranto, from Horace Walpole) and a barbour… or wait, does it? It must. Flo says a tiny little one. So we walked along the water and looked at the whitewashed houses with beautiful container gardens and old people. The food was OK. I had orecchiette with broccoli rabe sauce, which was tasty, but EXTREMELY salty. I could barely finish it.

Day 11: Roca Vecchia to Gallipoli
We started by driving north 20 minutes (I know, total wrong direction) to see something we’d noticed in a guidebook, which was called Grotta della Poesia. It loked like a pirate cove and Flo was hell bent on seeing it, so we drove. There were NO signs and Roca Vecchia is a one-horse town, if not less. We drove straight through and couldn’t find it, so we asked at a french fry stand and they told us to go all the way back to the other side of town. We couldn’t find it, but we just decided to stop at an area where a few of the natives were sitting. We saw some guys snorkeling. So we both went in and snorkeled about. We went around a rock and under a small, small tunnel and I hit my head. I was already cold. We saw a bunch of fish, but none of them were really colorful. One of them resembled our siamensis, but as they come out of southeast Asia, I’m sure they’re not the same. It was interesting, but I got bored quickly – not enough colors. I got out and Flo stayed in. after a while, he came back really excited and said he’d found the grotto we were looking for originally. You could also reach it through a tunnel, so we went to look and it was really great! The water was so green! I decided to go back in after all, so I could see it from in the water. That didn’t last long, as I got cold again. I got out to change clothes and make some lunch. I hadn’t even started lunch when Flo got out too. We made some tomato-mozzarella salad and drank an espresso at the beach bar. There was a kitten who kept climbing in our car. We couldn’t keep her out!
Then we hit the road (it was already probably 1:30 or so) and drove along the coast to see as much of the heel as we could. It was absolutely beautiful. We saw so many small towns and dramatic cliffs and sandy beaches and twisty roads and interesting buildings. Once we had to stop and pee on the side of the road. There’s probably a lot I’m forgetting. Hopefully the photos remind me later. We reached Gallipoli around 5:00 and Vito and Anna (my cousin and his girlfriend) were there almost right away, so we met them. Shortly, we walked around town, then stopped at the store, went home and cooked, then went out for ice cream. They’ve been staying at a friend’s beachhouse two towns north of Gallipoli (Santa Maria al Bagno). Vito and Anna are very friendly and very good hosts. I’d actually never met Vito before. He’s my grampa’s cousin, which makes him my first cousin, twice removed. They are very generous hosts and fed us a feast before letting us sleep in the master bedroom.

Day 12: Santa Maria al Bagno
We’d invited to take Vito and Anna with us to Salerno instead of making them ride the bus, but that meant we had to wait an extra day and leave Friday instead of Thursday, so we spent the day hanging out, repacking the car, eating, chatting. We also went into town quickly to mail mom’s birthday card and go to the baker. On the way, we asked two guys at the side of the road where the post is and one of them spoke German and had even been to Esslingen! (If you know the system, you can see from our license plate that we’re from the district of Esslingen.) he looked like the rival thief in one of the Ocean’s movies – the one who has to steal the Faberge egg. Then, at the bakery, it only took me, the clerk and two customers to get what I wanted. But everywhere we’ve been we’ve come through. Then Flo and I took a walk in the evening. It was interesting to see that road going directly along the beach looked pretty run down – empty parking lots and shuttered ristorantes – but when we walked a block inland… some of those houses and yards were simply gorgeous! And that’s saying a lot in a country where most people don’t care what the outside looks like as long as the inside is nice.

Day 13: Gallipoli to Matera to Pontecagnano Faiano
We left about 10:30 in the morning with the car packed to the gills. We’d offered to drive Vito and Anna up with us and Anna said they only had two small suitcases. And they did – plus one backpack, two large bags and a giant purse. They were pretty squished in the back! But the weren’t complaining. I guess the bus wouldn’t have been any more comfortable. We made it to Matera within a couple of hours. Matera is in Basilicata, which is a province in Italy known only for its poverty. They also shot “Passion of the Christ”, from Mel Gibson, there, but I don’t remember it very clearly. It was fascinating, to say the least. They actually built homes in caves and then walled in the open side. Those are the primitive sassi. Many buildings are quite normal homes built into a hill. It’s sort of hard to describe (this is becoming a theme). Some of the buildings simply end in cliff face, much like Lichtenstein near Engstingen. None of the buildings are painted, so it makes a very homogenous impression. I thought it was beautiful and could imagine living there, except it’s so far away from everything. And while we were there, my grampa called to check on us! That was so sweet of him.
We saw the landscape change again from flat in Puglia to mountains. I guess they’re the lower Apennines. Then we reached Campagnia and our relatives. For those who don’t know, my great-grandmother came from Italy and we still have a whackload of cousins there whom I’d never met. Flo and I thought it would be fun to meet them, which is why we hooked up with Vito – he could translate for us and make introductions. The tree is something like this:

Anna + Cosimo (dec) had Gaetano, Antonietta and Massimo.
Gaetano married Tina and has Cosimo and Annamaria.
Antonietta married Benedetto and has Benedetto and Alfredo.
Massimo married Ida and has Massimo and a baby on the way.

Domenico is Anna’s brother and married Assunta. They have three kids, one of which is Francesco.

Rosetta is Anna’s sister and married Alberto. Their son is Candido, whose wife is Marianna and the baby is Alberto

So Anna, Domenico and Rosetta are siblings and my grampa’s cousins, which makes everyone on that list somehow a cousin of mine. It can get very confusing. Literally none of them speak a word of English. It’s too much writing who came when and what got said, so I’ll try to write at least my impressions.
Anna: She’s not silent, but she doesn’t say much either. She doesn’t address us directly, I guess because she thinks we won’t understand. She cooks amazingly well. She wants to feed us more and more all the time, but she seems to have learned that I can only eat so much. She’s a giant block of a woman, though not taller than average and she’s not particularly feminine looking, though I’ve only seen her in skirts. Her husband died about 15 years ago and Vito says she’s let herself go since then. She seems to still be mourning him. I think she has a warm heart. She was excited that we came and asked why nobody had come before she gave us her own bed and a bottle of homemade limoncello.

Gaetano: This is my Italian Jeremy – not because of something specific, just because of the way my heart reacts to him. He’s wonderful, always looking after everyone else and being sweet and handsome. When their father died, he should have gotten a certain apartment, but because his little sister whined, he gave it to her and took the one she should have gotten. (Oh yeah, it might be important to mention that Anna and Cosimo built a huge house with several apartments and now Anna lives in one and each of her three children live in one, plus have an extra one to rent out, or the restaurant that’s in the building, or land to farm, etc.) Gaetano (and his brother) are classic Italian looking with olive skin and black hair and broad shoulders. He stayed up with us the first night until his eyes got bleary. He showed us his racing bike (he used to road race and would have been world class, had he continued) and some pictures on the internet of stuff he thought we should see and he Google Earthed our house, so he could see where we live.

Tina: Gaetano’s wife is super friendly. She’s tall and thin and gentle. I think she’s beautiful, but looks like a real hotty when she does her makeup and everything. She’s a real family person and worries that her son will move away (he’s 16 and plays soccer). She takes care of an older woman in town and she was really good at speaking slowly enough that we could understand her a little bit – I mean, as much as we understand Italian at all. Their other child is a little girl, Annamaria. She’s five.

Antonietta: She’s a funny one – middle child between two boys. She dyes her hair a reddish color and does her nails with those fancy swirly designs. She’s evidently made a huge stink about her inheritance, feeling slighted, which is how she got the apartment that should have belonged to Gaetano. Her apartment is very stylishly decorated. I think she likes to look rich. She invited us for pizza one night and was very funny, but I get the feeling a little bit like it’s not totally genuine, like maybe she wanted to look good by having us over? She wanted to take us to the beach the next day and simply didn’t show up. That seemed odd. And she never apologized for blowing us off, or anything. Her husband, Benedetto, is also a little bizarre. He’s a hunter and I hope that didn’t influence my impression of him, but he seems sort of dangerous. He’s really, really funny, but I sort of felt like if you knew him well and got on the wrong side of his mood, you might be in for it. But then, that’s totally just an impression. Maybe he’s just a lamb, who knows? It was sometimes hard to tell the way people really are and the way I imagine them based on the associations they brought up and the things others said about them. Their two kids are Benedetto (17 and another soccer player) and Alfredo, who’s 14 or 15 and seems very friendly, but perhaps a bit nerdy.

Massimo: We didn’t see a lot of Massimo or his wife, Ida. Massimo still farms the land that Anna and her husband probably farmed back in the day, so maybe he was working a lot. He looks just like Gaetano and is also very warm and friendly. I have the impression those two guys are very capable and know how to take care of things. Ida is a sunny, open, little bit of a thing. Their son, Massimo, is about 10 and they have a punkin’ on the way.

Day 14: Vesuvio and Pompei
We got up early so we could get a good start on what promised to be a full day. Showering was interesting, as Anna has only a tub and a showerhead, but no shower curtain. Plus, the water shoots out the head in the normal direction as well as out backwards where the hose attaches to the head, so the trick is holding it properly so you don’t water the whole bathroom. I mostly managed. We were ready to leave at 9:00 when Vito came home from the store with all kinds of food for us for breakfast and to make sandwiches to take with us. We actually weren’t planning on that, but OK, it was nice of them to think of it. They were all convinced we wouldn’t have enough time to see everything we wanted to see in one day and couldn’t believe we hadn’t left earlier.
We drove to Vesuvius and walked the last 800-1,000 meters up the mountain. It was a beautiful drive. The area around the volcano is a national park, so it was mostly trees and nice views of the coastline. We also saw some bizarre sculptures along the drive in the park – like a giant head or a giant torso. Flo paid Eur6,50 and I Eur4,50 and then we paid a couple bucks for parking. Walking up was quite exhausting; I don’t think because it was so steep or long, but maybe the air was thinner? I actually have no idea how high up one is on Mount Vesuvius, but thin air will be my excuse. We heard a TON of Americans. At the top are a couple of gift shops selling postcards and fairies carved out of lava. I actually expected to see molten lava in the cone – it is an active volcano, right? But I was disappointed. It’s just dust and ashes. It was cool that you could see how the force of the last eruption blew the walls straight inside the cone. They don’t really go gradually down to the center, but really are vertical until the bottom and then there’s a little dip in the floor. There was some steam coming out of one area of the wall and some rocks slid down, which we overheard a guide saying was a real treat to see that, but frankly I found the whole thing quite boring and disappointing. We probably spent more time just walking up than we did at the summit. Then we went back down again and I paid 50 cents to use a Portapotty. Flo says the man looked pretty astounded that I actually wanted to look in the potty before I paid, but I mean, come on, I’m not paying for something only to find out too late that it’s unusable!
Then we drove to Pompeii. Gaetano was really worried about the car, since we would be near Naples. At Vesuvius it didn’t look dangerous at all. In Pompeii, we decided to go in a parking lot that said “safe” on the sign (for Eur3 per hour it should be), but on the ticket it said in fine print that they’re not responsible for theft or damage of the car or accessories, so I’m not sure what’s up with that. We ate our sandwiches and walked across the street to get in to the ruins. We got to the entrance and discovered our great luck – it was free! That day and the next they weren’t charging admission because of European Culture Days. We didn’t even know it before we got there! So we saved ourselves Eur22. Armed with a free map and Lonely Planet, we headed in. we’d been told it was huge and to expect to take a long time. Well it is huge. I mean, it’s a city. Or was. I think I read once about Pompeii, that when it was discovered, they could see bodies and furniture and utensils or tools. I’m sure some of it got carried off with the lava, but some of it stayed there, as far as I know. You wouldn’t know it by what you see when you visit today. Only the most intact of buildings have ceilings, the frescoes have been almost completely destroyed or plundered, there is NOTHING remaining in any of the buildings… again, relatively boring and disappointing. I feel like a heretic for even thinking that, but I was expecting so much more! When they say ruins, they really mean ruins. We often couldn’t even tell if the two to three foot high crumbles of wall that we were looking at belonged to different rooms of one house or if they were all tiny houses next to each other. Where had there been doors and where was it just so dilapidated it looked like a door? What I did like were the streets. They even have names, to help with navigation. Anyway, the streets appear sort of sunken, because it’s higher to the “sidewalk” than on a modern day curb and then at some of the bigger intersections, they have gigantic stones that form a sort of crosswalk. I’d say about six people could sit for a rest on each crosswalk stone. So they have four or so of these stones across the street and then you just step on those to get from block to block, instead of stepping a foot down into the street and walking across. I liked that. We tried to just look at some of the highlights, because everything else was basically bare and ugly. Highlights included:
- a park next to the arena/amphitheater. It was the only green thing in sight for what seemed like miles. Back in the day it would’ve overlooked the sea.
- a rich guy’s house. We attached ourselves to a tour group in English for this house. It had a nice sort of atrium place right in the middle of the first floor with a hole in the roof. Rainwater collected there. They had a replica of a safe that stood there and could point out where the kitchen, bathroom and slaves quarters had been. Also, the walls and floors were mostly intact (although I’m highly suspicious of how much is original and how much done to look like original).
- – a different rich guy’s garden. It was just a garden and no one knows what plants he really had, but there were nice mosaics in the ground and a statue of a faun (supposed to bring good luck)

Then we went home. We were back by 4:30, which shocked everyone there, because we were so fast. So they fed us (pasta and roast beef cooked in the pan) and we went to meet Alberto and Rosetta.
Rosetta: This is Anna’s sister and they couldn’t be more different. While Anna rarely speaks and then doesn’t address us directly, Rosetta wanted to talk to us non-stop, but it was more like a yell. And Vito said she behaved herself during the visit. Perhaps she’s hard of hearing. She’s shorter and thinner than Anna, and dresses herself a tick more fashionably (which is still a far cry from a Sophia Loren kind of Italian grandma), but has the same straight eyebrows Anna has – not, however, the same almond-shaped eyes of Anna. She was also good about speaking to both of us (often times people only talk to me and not Flo) and slowly enough that we could figure out what she wanted to say. She showed us her whole house and apologized that it’s so small. She wanted to feed us, but settled for candy and coffee.

Alberto: As Rosetta’s husband, he’s only married in to the whole clan, but I could totally take him for an extra grandpa! He has a big, long nose and glasses and wore a grampa sweater, although it was really too warm for one. He and Rosetta were farmers their whole lives and still keep a pig (raise and kill one every year) and rabbits (for eating) and have a garden with all kinds of vegetables. They make ham and bacon and such things from the pig – we saw a leg hanging up that would hang there for another four years. It was completely moldy and nasty looking, but when it’s done curing, they wash it in wine and it’s supposed to be yummy. They also make wine (of course) and we didn’t drink any, but it’s supposed to be good – the best in the family. We saw a huge barrel of grapes fermenting. They would do that for a day longer and then be pressed – he showed us his winepress as well. We think Vito told us Alberto would get 200 liters of wine out of the vat we saw. We left with two bottles of wine – Barbera, which someone assured us is a very good and normally expensive wine – and a homemade salami.
Then we went back to have pizza at Antonietta and Benedetto’s. They went and brought it to their place. So the six of us ate and it was fun, but of course Vito had to translate everything. I sort of had the feeling after like they knew all about us, but not we about them. We laughed a lot, which I always think is a good sign. We drank a lot of wine, partly because Benedetto just keeps filling glasses and doesn’t take no for an answer. He showed me his hunting rifle and we made a lot of jokes. Antonietta invited us to go to the beach the next day from 10-12 and offered to do my nails for me.

Day 15: Beach at Pontecagnano and the town
10:00 came and went without Antonietta. Vito finally found her in her apartment. She’d decided she had too much to do and wouldn’t go to the beach, but never mentioned that to us. So at 10:30 or 10:45 the four of us finally decided to go without her (instead of Flo and I using the day to drive along the Amalfi coast, as had been originally planned). We drove off and Vito told us where to go. We parked in a side street that had a bunch of garbage in it, but there was another care there, so we figured it would be alright. It actually wasn’t beach weather, so Flo was the only one who really went in. Anna did some power walking up and down the beach, but mostly we stood with our feet in the water and talked. We saw some guys training their horses running up and down the beach, but not jockeys. They had the little carts behind. Vito said there’s a racetrack nearby. There were also a whole bunch of fishermen there. We’d told the other Anna we’d be back between 12 and 12:30, so just as we were about to go, some people came running and shouting that an Audi had been broken into. Of course. So here’s what apparently happened: some gypsies (two men and a fat woman) smashed air back window with a loud pop and had just moved the cover back to look around when the shady-looking people who live in the shell of a house next door heard them and came running to see what was up, because they know that sort of thing happens all the time. They scared the gypsies off and nothing was stolen, but the window was broken. So we drove home and waited for Gaetano. Somehow we all assumed he would know what to do. And Anna fed us – rabbit, this time, that she’d killed in the morning. I’d never eaten rabbit before. I liked the taste, but I found it to be stringy. I don’t know if that’s just how she cooked it.
Flo and I relaxed for a bit and then cleaned the car out – brought all of our stuff inside, washed the cloth things that had gotten glass on them (like my pillow case) and got all the glass out of the car. Antonietta was working outside and didn’t even apologize – neither for the car nor for blowing us off. I have to say that made a really bad impression. Gaetano finally came and said he had a friend he would call who worked somehow for Audi. That guy came and took the number of the car to check if his garage would have the right window and said we should bring it in the morning. Then we went walking.
We walked to the home of Anna’s brother, Domenico and his wife Assunta. They have three kids, but we only met the one who lives at home, Francesco. He’s mid 20s and mentally handicapped. They seem to be a bit lower on the economic scale. He owns and runs a fruit and veg store in another town. Their apartment was clean, not very big and furnished in a quite outmoded (although somehow typically Italian) style. None of them were at all fashionable. I had the impression Asunda particularly had lived her life for her kids and never really looked after herself, but she didn’t seem embarrassed either, which I appreciated. She was extremely friendly and spoke slowly and clearly, so we could understand her. She’s very short and has a serious overbite. Domenico is quiet, but after he listens, he says something and we had the feeling you should listen to what he says. Francesco was born normal and only became handicapped as a small child after some sort of virus or illness.
After we left them (where we, of course, were served espresso) we simply walked around town a little bit. We saw a couple of big villas and the downtown part. We stopped at the bakery. Flo got a rumbaba (rum cake), a specialty of the region (and boy was it rummy!) and I got a tiny tart – basically a pie crust with vanilla pudding filling and kiwi on top. It was very tasty. We walked around town for quite a while. It was a nice night. Then we went back and three of us (not Anna) ate some vesper, basically. Vito made salad (tomatoes, olive oil, oregano and probably salt and pepper) and we had salami (not a kind I really liked) and a meat somewhere between ham and bacon and also had buffalo mozzarella and two other cheeses (Asiago and Parmesan). I didn’t have any bread and actually, I liked it much better than normal German vesper. I’m in total heaven eating so often and so late at night!

Day 16: Salerno
We got up quite early today so we could bring our car to the garage. The plan was to drop it off there (halfway between Pontecagnano and Salerno), take the bus into Salerno and spend the day there until the garage called saying the car was done. When we drove there, Vito pointed out where he used to live as a kid. The buildings look pretty run down now. They had stables across the road, which look like private garages now a river that he used to fish in every day. That river barely has any water in it now.
When we dropped the car off, the friend of Gaetano already had the window ordered from another garage and he thought the car would be done around 4:30. we walked a few minutes to the next bus station and got on the first bus that came – Eur1,10 got you 90 minutes on the bus network. It turned out that bus didn’t go where Vito thought it did, but then we realized we have all day and no plan, so we could ride around and get off anywhere. Where we did get off was the mains hopping strip in Salerno, (Corso Vittorio Emanuelle II), but that mostly because around the corner was a store specializing in rumbaba, which Anna is crazy about. I tried one with a lemon filling (but no extra rum splashed over it) and it was quite tasty. I’m just not very fond of the consistency – they’re all mushy from being soaked in run.
On the shopping strip, we looked in all the windows. It seems no matter how small or poor-seeming the town/city in Italy, it only has high-end designer shops. Flo and I went in a bookstore looking for a thank you card and didn’t find that, but did buy a pocket dictionary English-Italian. I really wanted to try communicating with my family without Vito. From there, the street leads directly into the historical center of the city. I bought a postcard for Nanny and Grampa. We wandered about and looked in shop windows and headed toward the water. First we went into a little park. It was little, but I guess it would be one of my favorite places in the city if I lived there. It had beautiful grass and palm trees and different kinds of flowers. It was very well kept and the best word that comes to mind to describe it is “lush”. We’d gotten hungry, so around 11:45 or 12 we started looking for a restaurant. Vito didn’t seem to like that. He thought we should eat later in the day, at 1 or 2, but we didn’t really care – we were hungry! Between the four of us, it was hell trying to choose a restaurant, so Flo and I finally just did. We sat outside and it was a beautiful day. I had past fagioli and the portion was actually quite alright. Because Italians eat pasta as a first course and meat or fish as a second course, sometimes the pasta dishes can be quite small, but like I said, this one was pretty big. Still, because I love pasta fagioli so much, I could’ve eaten a whole nother plate!
Afterward we walked to the water and Vito wanted to show us the barbour, but they’re doing a massive construction job and the old way to get there was blocked off. We had to walk all the way around and when we got there, we realized it still wasn’t the right thing. We’d landed in the Coast Guard harbour! They gave us some funny looks, but left us alone. So we walked all the way back. Flo and I decided it would be good siesta time. The waterfront in Salerno has a long stretch with grass and trees and every so often a fountain or statue and bench along the whole length. It’s quite nice, actually. The construction they’re doing looks like sort of adding on to or improving that bit. So we sat down with the newspaper Flo had bought (the Süddeutsche Zeitung) to find out who our next chancellor would be (Angela Merkel). The election had taken place a full week before. Anna couldn’t take the sound of the construction, so she and Vito went farther down. It was possibly our most peaceful hour since we’d met them, since we were actually alone. It was lovely! As we got up to go, we saw an old man with a thick moustache pull up on one of those old military motorcycles. It looked like a rat bike, but without all the crap attached. He had a matching skull cap helmet and a little white Maltese dog on the gas tank. I spent the walk to where Vito and Anna sat trying to imitate the putta-putta noise of his engine. We rejoined them and immediately sat down in the next cafe for a cup of coffee, by which I mean, of course, espresso. Then we went back across the street to check if the bus stop there had the right bus for us. It did and came almost right away, so we got on and rode back to the Audi garage. 410 Euros later, the car was like new, but actually the glue still had to set, so we could drive home and that was it for the day. So we did. On the way home, we stopped in Pontecagnano to buy flowers as a thank you for Anna. Flo just pulled to the side at the first florist we saw and I jumped out with the wallet and the dictionary. i went in and ordered a bouquet of pink lilies from a man who looked more like a butcher than a florist. As he was binding it together, Vito came in and seemed a bit taken aback. Evidently Anna sent him after me to make sure I could get what I wanted, but then he didn’t seem to know what to say when I already had everything under control. So he talked to the guy in Italian, telling him not to charge me too much. It was only Eur8 for three or four lily stems. I guess it would be at least Eur12 in Germany, but the flowers we bought Anna were bigger and fresher. It annoyed me for three reasons that Vito did that. 1: I would gladly pay what the man asked. It’s his business. 2: it was for Anna. If she would have accepted our money (which was no good in Campagnia), we would have given her much more. 3: Vito knew the shop and that guy’s dad, so he should have been able to trust him. I thought the shop was neat. In Germany and America (and I’m sure many shops in Italy), the florists try to make everything perfect. This was basically a bare room (sort of like a storage room or work room) with cut flowers in their buckets on the right and plants in pots on the left and that was it. Completely unadorned. When we went inside and gave Anna the flowers and said thank you, she smiled so big! I hope I never forget that smile. She said she would put them on her husband’s grave, which seemed to make her really happy. It felt good to make her smile like that. Then in the evening, we went out to dinner with Vito, Anna, Tina and Gaetano. Six people had to ride in two cars, so Flo and I rode with Tina. We brought our little dictionary and did our best to talk to her on the way. We found out she’s a caretaker for an old woman in town. Gaetano is a plasterer and painter. he actually did a lot of work on one of the big, nice villas Vito had pointed out to us. He’d shown us some of what he did in his own apartment and I loved it about him that he always tried to tell us about himself – his work, his bicycle racing. He’s so great. They’d ordered antipasti for everyone to share, which was good, because it gave me time to decide on a meal. Those antipasti were so good! I think there were at least ten different plates. One platter had different bacons and hams (or prosciutto, if I want to be correct) and salami, as well as mozzarella. There was bruschetta, one with tomato and one with some green spread. There were vegetables – two or three different kinds. There were these fried rice balls and French fries. There was probably more, but I can’t remember it all. And it all tasted so good! And I was so full after it! So instead of ordering individual meals, they just ordered different kinds of pizza and everyone could take what he wanted. I tried one with potatoes and mushrooms on it and one with bacon and some green stuff. They were both very good. I felt after the meal like I knew them a little bit, which I was hoping for, like we’d made some effort and at least laid the first brick to build a relationship. We made sure we said that we have a guest room and they can come visit us.

Day 17: Amalfi Coast to Tuscany
We got going around 10 (10:30?) this morning after taking a couple of pictures and packing the car. We wanted to drive along the Amalfi coast and see some of what is known to be Earth’s most lovely views. Gaetano was worried that our car would be too wide for the road, but we just took off – throw caution to the wind! The road is ALL S-curves back and forth along the edge of the cliffs, every now and then passing through a town. It was so beautiful. I just kept taking pictures, knowing they would all look the same later, but not wanting to let a single impression go. The whole area had something rugged about it. We were wondering how people got medical help quickly if they needed. There was nowhere to land a helicopter and a boat would only be fast coast to coast. Every now and then on the coast side was a really small parking spot for a car or a gate with stairs going down to a house. I also saw a big, flat basket on a wire going between a house and the parking spot at the street. I thought that was quite clever. Much of the countryside was terraced vineyards and gardens – olive trees, of course. One thing I loved was when a house was on the cliff near the road and stairs led up to the front door. They led straight from the street to the door, but parallel to the road, not perpendicular. I can’t really think of that much to say as far as description, just that it was absolutely stunning. I don’t think words would ever do it justice anyway. One time we were about to go through a very short tunnel that ended in a sharp curve and what comes around the corner but a bus! And it wasn’t stopping either. We tried to back up, but of course there were cars behind us and so it took a long time, but the bus driver didn’t stop! It was really quite hairy and I honestly was afraid we’d get a giant scratch and dent along the whole car, but nothing happened after all. Tina had highly recommended Positano and actually I’d read that it was really touristy and would’ve skipped it, but because she so glowed about it, I thought maybe we stop there. Well, actually, we’d already stopped for maybe 15-20 minutes in Maiori, a very small town. We bought a croissant filled with apricots (very yummy) and a sugared dough thing (also very yummy) for breakfast and walked up and down the boardwalk. So, back to Positano. We parked quite above the town, because you could drive into town, but we weren’t sure what the parking situation was and it would’ve taken forever to go around again (one way streets). Then we just walked down into town. It was nice and not really that far. They’ve painted white lines on the side of the street (like a crosswalk) that serves as a sidewalk. Every now and then it crosses the street and continues on, the whole way down. The street is very narrow and I guess having a proper sidewalk would make it simply too thin. We walked past a school, complete with school bush, which I thought was neat. Germany doesn’t have school buses. We saw a lot of shops and you could tell it’s a tourist town, because most of them didn’t close for the siesta. Oh yeah, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that yet. Everything in Italy closes around 1:00 and doesn’t open again until 4:00 or 5:00. Unfortunately for us, we got really hungry a couple times right around 3:00 and couldn’t find a single restaurant open. That took a little getting used to. Anyway, in Positano the shops were mostly quite high end, nicely designed, nicely priced (if you’re rich), full of nice things. One store we went in had all things lemon – cookies, candles, soaps, limoncello – and even a woman dressed like a giant lemon. Well, not literally, but her dress was a print of lemons, she had a lemon yellow apron and crocs on and a lemon yellow hat decorated with lemons. To be honest, it was silly. The store was very boutique-y and her kitsch didn’t really seem to fit and it was hard to take her seriously. We saw a church there (of course) and there is a sand beach, but I guess the biggest draw of Positano is the quaintness of the town itself and the shopping. All the hotels looked quite nice and we were wondering how expensive they are, particularly because there is no place with a bad view. Everything is built so steeply that everywhere seems to have a view of the sea. In fact, I even saw some places where houses were built over each other and each had a balcony, so the balconies were sort of layered and each one was huge and beautiful without disturbing the one above or below. The whole Amalfi coast sells a lot of ceramics. We saw while we were driving what we can only assume was a graveyard, but honestly, everything seems to be rock there, so I don’t know how they bury anyone. But there were a lot of stone archways and so we assume that’s what it was. We heard an astounding number of Americans in Postiano. I didn’t even know Americans knew the Amalfi coast exists! The places where we heard them the most were there, Vesuvius/Pompei and Florence/Siena. Everywhere else we heard mostly Germans, if not Italians.
Then we drove up to Tuscany, to Castiglione della Pescaia. It took much longer than we’d anticipated, probably because with our stop in Positano, the Amalfi coast took twice as long as expected. Castiglione della Pescaia is on the coast and we purposely chose a campground on the beach – Baia Azzurra. The girl at registration was really cute and really helpful and fluent. She was a little pudgy with messy brown hair and giant, fashionable glasses. She was fluent in Italian, English and German and really friendly. We decided to eat at the campground restaurant, but we were so late we only had pizza. Mine was really good. I had sausage! A great thing about Italy is they have Italian sausage and it all tastes good – not like in Germany, where all sausages taste like hot dogs. We set up the tent in the dark and went to sleep.

Day 18: Tuscany to Milan
We packed everything in the morning and went to the beach for a couple hours. It was a gorgeous day with a warm, blue sky. There were a lot of families with little kids on the beach. There was no lifeguard, but a sign that said swimming is dangerous because of “missing life services”. I thought that was a funny way of putting it. Op – where’d they go? There was a cliff on one side and the earth was really red. You could walk a long way into the ocean without really getting in. it was quite shallow. The water wasn’t actually too cold. With that swim it was the fourth sea we’d been in: Adriatic in Monopoli, Ionian in Gallipoli, Tyrrhenian in Pontecagnano and Ligurian in Tuscany. We knew we had to drive quite a way to Milan, so we left around 1:00 or 1:30 and stopped at a roadside restaurant where there were no menus and no one who spoke English. The waitress rattled off a list of options that even if I understood Italian, it would have been too fast. We ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce and paid an inordinate amount of money for that, a bottle of water and two espressos – Eur24! Crazy! Of course she didn’t list prices when she listed the menu. So we went on and drove to Milan, where we could only find one (expensive) campground, but figured it would still be cheaper than a hotel. It was, uh, interesting. It had all the stuff for a top campground – bar, toilet paper, wifi – and at the front were all these richy rich campers with BMW SUVs and Landrovers and then way at the back, where there were no bathrooms and no electricity, they had spaces for tents. That’s where we were – in the sale rack. Oddly enough, they had all these wealthy people and at the same time a couple of sheep, a handful of goats, a troupe of bunnies and a whole bunch of fowl. We thought that was really bizarre, but kind of cute. There was only one other tent in the section and it was very quiet until laaaaate at night when some jackass drunk guys came back and turned their radio on and started shouting and laughing and singing. I was so mad! It had already taken me a long time to fall asleep and then that. I hate to say it, but it made me feel pretty good when we got up early in the morning and made all kinds of noise packing things up – and right next to the picnic table where on of the drunkards was sleeping!

Day 19: Milan to Filderstadt
So we went into Milan and found some expensive parking – Eur5 per hour! We went first to the National Museum of Science and Technology, since we were parked quite near it. We wanted to go there because they have a whole section on da Vinci, where they’ve built models of many of the machines and contraptions he designed. That was pretty cool! None of the models was huge, but they were quite detailed and they showed representations of his drawings and explained how they work and partly for what specific purpose or person they were designed (to redirect the Arno for Count So and So in year XXXX). They also showed supplicates of much of his anatomical drawing, topography, music and instruments he studied… we decided da Vinci was an übergeek – there seems to be nothing he wasn’t interested and knowledgeable in, as well as good at. We didn’t see absolutely all of the museum, but we saw rooms devoted to jewelry, TV, radio, globes, clockmaking, musical instruments. For some of the topics (like jewelry), they had a little workshop set up with the tools, what one would look like. What I thought was really good was the design of the museum (housed in an ex-monastery). Each topic had its own design for presentation, basically, with its own colors and level of schnick schnack and layout. For instance, in the part about TV, the spaces were divided by white “boxes” hung between the walls, but they were really only a suggestion of a box. I guess that doesn’t even really make sense, but it gave me the idea that museum guests were the people in a box, which I simply found clever.
From there we headed to the center of the city, where the Duomo is. Now, after three weeks in Italy, you’ve seen a lot of churches of all different styles and surely one is bound to strike your fancy. I liked many of the ones we saw, but I really liked this one. It’s Gothic architecture and only one color and has about a gazillion statues. As a woman, you have to have your knees and shoulders covered to go in and they have army guys with guns checking bags at the door. That seemed a bit overkill. I mean, if AC Milan were playing, I could understand it at the stadium, but at the church? We saw little kids having their art class outside in the square – sitting on the ground drawing the church. I loved the floor. It was a big, bold design in several different colors of marble. And the best part about the Milan Duomo is you can go on the roof! For a piddly Eur5 (Eur8 for the elevator) you can climb 169 stairs to the first level or 250 stairs all the way to the top. There you can overlook the city from between the spires and the saints. It was definitely worth the money. There were all kinds of people up there, taking pictures of themselves and each other as souvenirs, getting angry at the other tourists when they were in the shot. I found it amazing again and again how people could visit a church and for them it was just a nice building or an amazing feat of human achievement, but they didn’t think at all about honoring the one for whom the whole thing was built. Just like in Assisi, they had signs asking for silence and barely anyone obeyed. Sad. Flo and I were commenting how no one builds something like that anymore. There is no ornamentation nowadays, no small details that make a railing into a work of art, nothing extra – everything modern is so sleek and simple and in some ways I guess it has its beauty, but it’s hard to recognize any emotion, passion or love in such design.
After the Duomo we ate some lunch. Flo had Burger King and I had the Italian version of Sbarro’s – my last piece of Italian sausage pizza!
We stopped at the tourist info office, because we’d read that they had a map showing where all the designer outlet stores are, but they didn’t have such maps anymore. The woman wrote on a map where two of them were. They were in complete opposite directions from each other and from the car, so we chose the one that was closer to the car and to which we would have a nice walk through the park. So we walked along a pedestrian shopping street and then into the park, at the entrance of which is an old castle. It was quite nice. I’d read that Milan has many different styles of architecture and I found it to be true, but while the writer found that to be pleasant, I found it to be somewhat unsettling. So anyway, the castle thingy was nice. I think there were museums or something inside, but we didn’t go in. We walked straight through to the park. You can tell a lot about a city by its parks. (Vienna, for instance, seemed almost like more park than city – and beautifully kept.) The park in Milan was very nice. It was clean and there were a lot of people in it walking or picnicking or napping. I always think that’s a good sign if the locals want to be there. I had said to Flo that if we lived in Milan, he could always find me at the top of the Duomo and he quickly remarked after reaching the park, that if I weren’t on the Duomo, I would be in the park. He’s right. There was some water in the park; unfortunately most of it was standing and a bit dirty, but I think it’s probably not always like that. In the middle of the park we came across a little car that sold espresso and I don’t know what else. Two old men sat next to it playing cards and not far away, three more old men sat on a bench shooting the breeze. We’d been impressed the whole time with the old men who sit around kibitzing. We thought they were really funny and could totally understand my grampa, how he knows everyone around him and chit chats and knows all the town gossip. There doesn’t seem to be much else for them to do, so they sit and talk. Not a bad life. Flo got a coffee in a little plastic cup and we sat for a few minutes.
Then we kept walking and finally found the Emporio Isola and went in. The salespeople were very Pretty Woman. They didn’t seem to want to greet us or help us. Oddly enough, most of the clothes we saw were more fit for a woman over 40 than for someone my age. Plus, Italian sizes are different and I don’t know what size I am and some of the things really were affordable, but many were really not. Then I looked at the jeans and they were all really ugly! They had bling or stupid designs or washed out patches. I would have felt like one of those bottle blonde, plastic surgery, overrich cougars they constantly show on German TV, trying to recapture a youth I never had. So we didn’t buy anything. I can’t believe I didn’t buy a single thing to wear in the city or country of fashion. Oh well. I suppose I’ll have to go back.
And that was the trip. Then we drove home. We stopped about a million times for gas and drove past the Matterhorn. We ended the trip with 100,500 km on the car – which means we drove 4,500 km in three weeks.
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned how many stray cats and dogs Italy has. They were everywhere and just hung out. No one seemed to mind them, either. They didn’t seem malnourished.
I also can’t remember if I explained why there are so many empty, unfinished houses in the countryside. It’s because culturally, Italians do that. They want to build a gigantic home, where their families will live with them and they don’t count the cost before building, so then they run out of money and just leave the construction where it is. And still real estate prices are rally high – at least as high as in Germany. And we found out that having a living room with windows facing in two directions is so desirable and rare enough that they actually list it in the description for sale. I found that interesting.
We also found out that the fires in the olive groves are started by the farmers. They rake up all the debris and burn it so that when the ripe olives fall to the ground, they’re easy to collect.
All in all, I think I could imagine myself living in Italy (a question we ask ourselves of every country we visit). It would be a bigger culture adjustment than it was moving to Germany, even though parts of Italian culture are so similar to what I grew up with. The chaos, the siesta, the garbage (have I mentioned how Italians throw their garbage everywhere?), all these things are a bit different from what I’m used to. But I think I could get used to it (past fagioli!) and maybe even learn to love it (daily napping – eating at midnight – pasta fagioli!). What a wonderful trip.

And so, the 20th of September – signifies the completion of the unification of Italy!