Reggio di Calabria 3

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Saturday, 15th November, 2008

Plan for today, lunch out in Agropoli. This is Pat's birthday meal.

We had a lazy morning and finally left about 1230. We headed for the Post Office ATM first, as our cash reserves had been seriously depleted going to Capri. No problems getting money.

We then drove to the seafront and parked just outside the restaurant, Il Gambero. The restaurant was the one mentioned by Raffaele, as he was now supplying the fish there.

The place was empty and I think we disturbed them having their lunch. We both had the prawn cocktail to start, followed by mixed fish grill and veal cooked in lemon, with a plate of chips. Pat had a chocolate dessert, and we both had coffee.

During lunch another couple of people came in, so we weren't entirely on our own.

It was a splendid lunch, one of those that will stand out because of the circumstances.

Whilst in the restaurant, the wind came up and the rain started, it was throwing it down as we left, so we watched the sea for a while.

We had spotted another cafe which boasted internet access, so we managed to park straight outside, and ordered some coffee's, then asked about internet access - “Si” came the reply to my astonishment. So we had to fill in a form and sign up, not sure what we signed, it being in Italian! We were pointed next door and there were about six computers in cubicles, which we hadn't noticed before.

We checked the emails, and sent a small blog update.

The rain was still coming down so we left the town and returned to the apartment.

We again relaxed for the evening and had an early night to give us a good start tomorrow.

Sunday, 16th November, 2008

Plan for today, visit Mount Vesuvius.

The drive was a good hour, so we planned to be up and out for an early start.

We were on our way, by about nine thirty. We stopped to drop the rubbish off on the way, topped up the car with petrol, and bought some milk from the supermarket as we knew it would be shut later.

The motorway drive was again uneventful, we have travelled this road a few times, and the motorways are a lot easier to drive than the normal roads.

We followed the brown signs off the motorway and because Vesuvius itself is very much a land mark, it's difficult to miss a 1200 metre high volcano, we found our way through and up to the volcano easily. We arrived about 1130.

The guidebooks say there is a car park and then a further walk for 860 metres. Also. advise to take warm clothing and good shoes.

The car park was there, as said and for a change the organisation around the site was pretty good. We paid for parking on arrival and even got a ticket, we were then pointed to were we should park. All very efficient.

We then added some clothing and changed into our walking boots. Found the ticket office, and then found the entrance.

I've told you before about the ticket office being separate. We are becoming very familiar and getting good at this. We reckon of course that it's all job creation schemes. If you had the ticket office at the entrance you only need one person, put them separate and you need two people.

Anyway, the path up to the crater is quite long and and covers the last 200 metres of actual height, but it is set out very well and the slight angle of climb explains how you walk 860 metres, to get up 200 metres.

Pat has asthma and we took the journey quite steadily, including phoning my parents, as it was Sunday.

The views from up there are quite amazing, we were very lucky in our choice of days to visit as it was as clear as a bell up there and you could see for miles and miles.

Naples is what you get to see most of, and the vast urban sprawl across the plains around the volcano. With a great view of the Gulf of Naples, Capri and Ischia and the other small islands off the coast.

You can see Naples airport, and the aircraft taking off looked like little toys in the distance.

When you reach the top, you then get to look down into the crater. I had imagined the inside to be a sort of shallow indentation at the top, but in fact the crater goes down really deep inside with sheer drops down, for quite a distance. I guess the inside was blown out in one of the last eruptions.

The last activity was in 1944, and I am not sure what happened, but we know well enough of the events of AD79.

You look down and see the general directions of Pompei and Herculaneum, they don't seem very far from here, not when looking from this height. They are of course swallowed up by the modern day towns and all the habitation, that now surrounds the area.

If something ever does happen with Vesuvius again, you wonder what the size of human catastrophe might be?

We trudged our way down, a lot easier than going up and made our way to the car park.

A quick change of shoes and a toilet pit stop and we were on our way. We had seen most of the things we wanted to by now in this area, so headed for home. It must have been just after one o'clock, so we had had a good hour up the mountain.

We did decide to come off the motorway at Pontecagno, and take the coast road back, as we had time to spare. So we pootled along and got in everybody's way. Even a Police Car overtook me at one stage, and I was doing the speed limit at the time.

We took a couple of side roads to look at the sea and generally had a good look at the local area.

We arrived back at the apartment around three thirty and were hungry, so I cooked our lunch of pasta, with a bolognaise sauce, quick and easy.

A very successful day and a lucky one for us with the weather. The car was showing 19°C for some of the day and it was cloud free at the top of the Volcano, allowing us some great views.

By the way, let me tell you about rubbish, in two ways. One, they don't collect rubbish from your house here. You have to take it all to the bins, which are in designated areas all around the place. This was mentioned in the paperwork at the apartment and we take our rubbish out daily, when we leave.

The Italians hang the rubbish on the wing mirror sometimes, I guess, if it happens to smell on the way to the rubbish bins, so the car doesn't smell. The cats and dogs, love these places and they really are unpleasant.

Two, the Italians are litter bugs, the countryside and towns are filled with litter. Even going along the motorway, you can see bits and pieces of rubbish being thrown out of car windows as you drive along.

Monday, 17th November, 2008

Pat's birthday.

An unusual birthday. Part way through our adventure, a long way from friends and family, but the sun was shining when we surfaced and we sat out for a while basking in the sun.

Pat received calls, texts and emails, from various family members, wishing her many happy returns.

Pat has decided that we are Lizards, by the way, as we sit and become alive in the sun, just as they do. There is a small row of roof tiles, that runs along the side of the apartments, in the morning a favourite place for the Lizards who sit in the sun and just as we do, so we get to watch them.

Plan for today, catch up with some washing, and some bits and pieces in town.

We had decided that the washing machine at the apartments, took too long. Pat had spotted a self-service laundry in town, and that was our first destination. We managed to park not far from the place. As we entered a very nice little old Italian chap, who was doing the service washes, helped us with figuring out the machines and payment. You do meet the nicest people in Launderette's, I have come to find. The washing started so we killed some time by ambling round the block, and doing our usual study of Human Anthropology. In other words being nosy and watching people.

We got back, dried the washing and sorted it all out. The Launderette was really up to date and looked fairly new. Certainly one of the more modern things around the town.

The supermarket came next, it was siesta time by now, so it was nice and quiet. Picked up our final bits and pieces for meals, for the next two days.

Then we headed off for the internet cafe that we visited on Saturday. Our plan was to try and book some accommodation around Reggio di Calabria. This is on the tip of the big toe of Italy and is the place where we will get a ferry across to Messina, Sicily.

We had discussed our next stage, Reggio di Calabria is about 450 kilometers, so a fairly long drive. We decided that as long as we had accommodation booked, then, we could do it in the day and not break the journey. There wasn't much of anything that we particularly wanted to see, in that part of Italy. Having spent the last two weeks in one place, we have been able to get to know a little more about the daily minutiae of everyday Italian existence and were quite happy to move on to the next something, which for us, is Sicily.

So we did some surfing and booked a Hotel, through Lastminute.com, the Arcobaleno, in a town called Palmi, just short of Reggio di Calabria, for Wednesday night.

The distance across the strait of Messina is about 3.5 kilometers and we understand the ferries operate like a bus service, about every twenty minutes. One guidebook quotes €18 for the car, so even if has gone up, doesn't look to be very expensive.

Then we had finished our various tasks and headed for home.

One observation I made today, when we were at the launderette and waiting for things to finish, I watched the traffic going by, on a fairly busy town centre road, and very few of the car drivers had their seat belts on. It was probably about one in five, who were wearing one. Four out of five, weren't. Pat says that the good old Italian personal choice was in action again, and it doesn't matter what the law says.

Pat stewed some beef for our dinner, with pasta. One or our purchases had been a decent bottle of prosecco, to help celebrate the day, which Pat drank some of with dinner.

Tuesday, 18th November, 2008.

Plan for today, visit Paestum Museum, pack the car and clean the apartment.
The day started with the sun shining and a cloudless blue sky. The wind was a little cool, coming from the north, but if you found a place out of the wind, it was lovely.

We set off about ten o'clock and headed straight for old Paestum. When we visited the site the other day, the Museum had been shut.

We parked in the restaurant car park, and there was nobody around to take the €2 charge, so we were lucky again.

The museum was open today, and we paid for our tickets one side of the entrance , and had them checked the other side of the entrance.

The Museum is a reasonable size and spacious, the information is sometimes in English and sometimes not. A little sporadic, but more than enough to give us lots of information about the site and it's history. We were there about an hour and a half.

On the way back we popped into the supermarket for some lunch and then back to the apartment.

We used up a lot of the bits and pieces in the fridge, cheese, ham olives and leftover crisps. Anything left will be thrown away tomorrow.

The weather was still holding up, so we ate our lunch out on the balcony, with no breeze here, I sat in just shorts soaking up the sun. The temperature on our little clock went up to 35°C.

We sent a text to Raffaele to remind him that we were leaving in the morning and he popped down to arrange for the apartment check tomorrow morning at ten o'clock.

We spent a fair while just chilling, then Pat used the clippers on my hair an gave me a trim. It is easier to do it when we are a settled, rather than in a Hotel.

The satnav has our Hotel in Palmi, which is always encouraging.

Then we started gathering things together and packing our crates and bags. It wasn't to difficult, because we had lived out of our bags anyway.

So we trundled everything down to the car and loaded most of the stuff. There are some things that will have to wait for the morning.

Another beautiful sunset over the bay.

Pat cooked a sausage casserole for our tea, with Pasta.

Wednesday, 19th November, 2008.

Plan for today, leave the apartment in Agropoli after two weeks and head for Reggio di Calabria.

The journey is about 450 kilometers and should take roughly four and a half hours, not including stops. The road is “autostrada” or motorway, but that only really means it's probably dual carriageway.

We were up in good time, got ready for the day, packed and tidied everything.

We were fully ready to go about 0950 and Raffaele had said that he would be there about ten o'clock. He was if anything early and after checking the apartment and a short chat, we headed off.

I had set the satnav up just for information, and once we were on the A3 Autostrada, it said our next turn was in 226 miles.

We stopped twice. The first time for cappuccino's and brioches. The second time for cappuccino's and sandwiches, and petrol. You can choose for the man to put petrol in, which is slightly more expensive, but the self service machines don't like our bank cards, so we go for the man.

We had shared the driving today, as this was going to be a longest single journey. The day was full of milestones, it is eight weeks since we started our adventure, the car did over 4000 miles today since we started and we reached the bottom of mainland Italy.

The A3 was very light with traffic and the journey was no problem at all. The road had roadworks for miles and miles and miles. They seem to be widening it and putting in new tunnels and viaducts. So a considerable amount of work.

When were very up, at one stage, the temperature on the car went down to 8°C. But it eventually went back up to 18°C when we hit the coast.

The A3 goes initially east across Italy and we saw the east coast briefly, then heads south to the bottom.

One bit of road towards the end, for me was quite frightening, as I don't like heights, it was almost as if it was going off into heaven. The road headed straight up, the mountain was on the right and there was a sheer drop off several hundred metres to the left. The road turned to the right up ahead, but you couldn't see that at first, it just seemed to be going straight up in the sky. Very weird.

The countryside was lots of valleys and mountains, some large towns hugging hillsides. The agriculture was regimented, with lines of vines or olives and made the place look quite smart.

Anyway, we followed the satnav as we drew closer and it took us off the motorway slightly earlier than we expected and once again through ever smaller roads, until a little track, which was blocked by a cement truck. At this stage we really wondered what we had booked, and of course where the hell the satnav was taking us. I jokingly said to Pat that any minute now we will drive out onto a main road and find a big splashy Hotel. I didn't have much faith in what I was saying!

We sidestepped the cement truck, by going behind some houses and some young lads were following us on the track. So I stopped the car, and asked them if they knew were the Hotel was, it seemed to be just around the corner.

Lo and behold, we came to an end joined a main road, and in front of us was a big a proper hotel. I breathed a mental sigh of relief. We arrived at four o'clock.

All nice and shiny with marble everywhere, we dumped the car out front and went to reception. they were even expecting us and a guy of Australian background was on reception

The room has a sea view of the bay and a bath. Also a restaurant and a bar, so both of us are happy, and Pat will be shortly having a G&T.

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