Sightseeing Steep Slopes Outside Salerno onto Sorento (aka Coast of Almafi)

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We went to the Lido this morning for breakfast. We’d arranged to go on a private tour with Ruth and her travelling companions. They chose to disembark a bit after the early rush for those leaving on tour, and scheduled our driver/guide to meet us around 9AM. I had only a couple of fresh rolls, a couple of those demitasse cups of Swiss muesli and some potatoes and two sausage patties. Sharon had only white toast and some potatoes with apple juice. I opted for an individual carton of chocolate milk, with writing in German and seemed to be claiming 3.5% milk fat. We had a bit of time to kill, and with our hectic schedule today, we had almost an hour to kill before we had to meet in the Main Deck atrium to disembark and find our tour guide; so, I headed up to the Explorer’s Lounge to bring back today’s Sudoku to do in the cabin.

The Easy Puzzle was just that, and several numbers ran for me. I finished ahead of Sharon. She was going for three in a row on the Hard puzzle and we had just half an hour to complete that. I got one number to run; and, then got bogged down… again. What did Yogi Berra say, “It was déjà vu all over again.” Then for the third day Sharon took the extra puzzle sheet and copied her correct answers onto it, which could make it easier to spot numbers that do run. It seemed to be taking me unbearably long to find anything, and even my sheet was fully annotated by now, and the drop-dead deadline was quickly approaching. Then I found that lone single number across the middle, and, the rest as they say was history. Order has been restored to the universe; although, I’m not sure Sharon would agree. She seemed pretty content with the way things were the day before.

This is the first time I’ve been on a private tour while on a day excursion off Holland America. We’d taken our own tours before either at the end or beginning of a tour, but never before in port. This tour was a fixed price tour for 2 to 6 people, and there was room for a scooter that Ruth and her friend shared. We started out, and our guide Arturo announced that we would be driving along the Almalfi Coast on what the locals call the “Mama Mia Road”. He said that we would understand once we arrived in Sorento. Solerno is a working port and we drove first by rows and rows of truck transports all full of automobiles, most of them Fiats. I did see one with Jeeps on it, and another with Ferraris! All along the west facing slopes of southern Italy steep cliffs make an imposing barrier, sometimes right down to the water. Into this rocky face our road has been chiseled, seeming little more than a single lane road at times. Be assured, the tour busses drive these roads, and our van is no small think either. Many people are commuting on their small motorcycles. And the roads are not straight, hugging the cliffs. Most amazing is that there are often buildings, either homes or businesses on either side of the road. Towards inland, these often appear to be carved out of the rock, or sometimes, only a narrow stairway carved from the rocks leads to something much higher. On the sea side, there may be a fence and gate, but you see only daylight out to the sea. The path may lead to a roof top of something below, or even to a patio or a place to park a small car or motor scooter (on the rooftop of the dwelling below). We drove through a series of small towns and the road would snake through these as well, whenever the geography presented a small foothold for humanity. As we travelled north we could look back at times and see the whole Salerno Bay, where back in World War II the allies had landed on mainland Italy after landing in Sicily. Occasionally along this road we’d come to a stop at a traffic light, and we’d remain stopped for some time. The first time we saw the driver in front of us getting out of the car, talking on his cell phone gesturing with his hands. It’s amusing to watch an Italian talk, because often much of the conversation is with the hands, but to carry this over to the cell phone, I’m wondering how that gets conveyed in this digital age. The discussion was quite spirted and distracting that from the back of the van it would have been easy to miss him opening his rear trunk and then changing the trousers that he was wearing, never missing a syllable or articulated hand gesture. The light began flashing yellow and he hurried back to the driver’s seat, and we were off again once the oncoming traffic had cleared the blind curve we were approaching. While stopped at the light the motorcycles and Vespas had jumped to the front of the line, so they were the first to continue. We noticed several places how white stripes would be painted on the pavement, with the three or four parallel lines running across the street. This was to alert drivers that there was crosswalk ahead around a blind corner with the parallel white lines running in the direction of traffic (typical for a crosswalk). And there it would be, sometimes where stairs came down from above, or sometimes just where people thought there might be enough room to park their cars along the cliff face while living out of view on the sea-side of the road. We saw one bus that needed to back up and adjust its line of approach to get around one particularly sharp hairpin turn and our driver noted “It must be a new driver.” We stopped at a pullout to take some pictures. Above us were terraced lemon trees stretch up the steep mountain side. The view of the community below and along the coast ahead was impressive. I pointed out the sign indicating that we were leaving Minoni, a white sign with the town name in black and a red diagonal line passing through it from the top-left to the bottom-right corner. I’d mentioned to Sharon that I’d seen this for Venizia when we’d left Venice, so she knew what this one meant.

We drove onto Rufalo, a town at the top of the cliffs. From below, we’d headed up the cliff walls, instead of along them, and soon found ourselves in Rufalo, a town that features an annual music festival. We parked at a vista by a ristorante that said that it was closed for today. We had about half an hour of free time. We walked through the tunnel where there was taxi parking only, and into the main square of Rufalo. There was a church there that we wanted to see, and I took the opportunity to take quite a few pictures. Ruth need some assistance with the first few stone steps; but then, there was a stone side and railing that she could get her third point of balance from, the others being her feet and Thumper her trusty cane. There were 18 steps up and 18 steps down, and she noted that her cardiologist would be proud of her. The church ceiling was very tall, with stone walls and pillars, and the building just eked with history. In Istanbul the columns had been supported by a couple of carved heads of Medusa. Here there were a series of columns supported by carved figures of very regal looking lions. We made our way back to the drop-off point and had to wait a few minutes for the car to return. And we were on our way again. We stopped briefly in Amalafi, bustling with activity at mid-day, and saw no need to get out and be immersed in this chaos. We were able to take a few pictures from the van, and we headed on towards Naples.

We were leaving the area of the Bay of Salerno, and ahead of us, over this cliff face lay the Bay of Napoli (Naples). We headed again to the top of the rock wall and from a point on the ridge we could simultaneously see both bays on either side. In the distance stood the three rocks of Capri, what our driver dismissed as a “tourist trap”. Visitors go over for just a day and awaiting them while on Capri (what the locals call “the blue island”). He says that he much prefers “the green island”. We descended to the much flatter town of Sorrento, coming at one point on the Number 10 tour group from Holland America. Here we had just under two hours of free time, which we planned to use having a leisurely lunch. I asked Arturo where the best place was to get pizza. He suggested the Batista Grille and Pizzeria. He pointed for me to head down a narrow alley and I would find it immediately on the left. We were in a small square in Sorrento. There was a long tall brass obelisk a centerpiece in the middle of the circle forming the intersection from which several streets connected like spokes of a wheel. Right next to where we were dropped off was a restaurant that appeared to have a menu with a variety of food meeting most of our group’s diverse culinary requirements (including a hamburger for Sharon). I decided to take Arturo’s advice and he agreed, if you want pizza from Napoli, this is the place to go.

It wasn’t real obvious where to go into the pizzeria, the first door didn’t look like a real entrance, and someone in the street indicated to walk down a side alley to a door there, but when I got there and peeked in it appeared to be the kitchen, and I could see the stone pizza oven full of flames and wonderful smells heading my way. I went back around and went in the original door, and a waiter headed me into an adjacent room to a table. The menu was extensive and I had to seek out the pizzas at the back. Each pizza was described in several languages including English. I eventually chose the Basilica Pizza which included boiled ham, mushrooms, basil, mozzarella, pine nuts and no red sauce. I also ordered a side dinner salad and a Coca-Cola. The pizza cost 13 Euros, a bit more than those at the restaurant that Sharon and company were dining. The pizza was wonderful, perfectly crisp crust and served with a mound of fresh basil leaves on top. The pizza is served on a ceramic pizza pan with a lip. The pizza is served without being cut. I probably ate it as an uncouth American would, cutting it into pizza pie wedge slices and picking them up and eating them. I later notice someone cut mouth sized pieces from their pizza, and eat them with a knife and fork. In the end they were left with a rim of crust, having eaten the entire center portion of the pizza. Not me, I ate the whole thing! And when I was done I had to try the Chocolate Mousse which was a work of art. It had a thin slice of chocolate stuck into it, and another thin wedge of nuts held together in a caramel.

Sharon wasn’t thrilled that I’d had a great chocolate mousse without her. She and Ruth had some chocolate ice cream (Okay, Sharon added a scoop of coffee ice cream with her).

Our driver arrived and we piled in. The drive back was over the inland Autostrada or Italian equivalent of a turnpike. We arrived in ample time for Sharon and Ruth to go to 5 PM mass, and for me to get to Team Trivia. I sat where we had the day before and was by myself. Dave headed a couple players over to join me. And another man joined us a little bit later. We all knew the only planet in our solar system that isn’t named for a Greek or Roman god. And we all knew how many keys there are in a piano (Sharon would have known this one too, even though she missed by one the number of black keys). This answer required an exact answer, and Sharon was within the allowed margin when that question had come up. After watching many episodes of “American Pickers” I knew what a Vespa is (a motor scooter). My knew partners were also quick with several answers like, when did the Titanic sink or what part of the body does a nephrologist treat or what do gemologists call one-fifth of a gram? These are 1912, kidney and caret. I figured out what European country has the most visitors each year. My figure was that Euro-Disney should push France over the top; and, I was right. The 7-point bonus question was to name the 7-types of liquor that make up a Wang-Wang. I’d often wondered this, but never heard them listed. I came up with Vodka, Gin, Scotch, Rum, Tequila, Bourbon and Rye, which earned us 6 of the 7 points. The Gin should have been Brandy!

We had dinner with a grandmother and her high school granddaughter. I had the pea soup, Green Salad and the chile releno. Sharon went with the everyday chicken with a baked potato. We both had the chocolate torte cake (mine with a scoop of macadamia nut ice cream that again tasted an awful lot like vanilla. I had the cordial of banana liquor, white crème de cacao and amaretto.

I chose to come back to the room and was going to join Sharon to see the Word Game. Sharon came back to the cabin and laid down and went to sleep. By the time I’d finished the blog for the day before, it was well past the time for the Word Game, so we called it a night.

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