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Published: September 7th 2017
Geo: 40.678, 14.7659
After packing last night and getting up at midnight and then 5 am, I couldn't go back to sleep but stayed in bed until the alarm went off at 7. Surprisingly it's now 8:30 and I'm not exhausted but am ready bed fairly soon, we'll see how that goes!
Our landlady was kind enough to call the taxi for us yesterday and arranged for it to pick us up close to the apt. the service there calls you up a few minutes before the pickup time to confirm and gives you a code of sorts, ours was brescia24, I guess so they don't pick up the wrong person, then you are supposed to press 1 to confirm. Well we hadn't had the call and it was 9:05 or so, so I called our landlady and she called them and called us back with the code, etc... we went out and there he was. She mentioned that they were just about to call us when she called them. So those of you from the big city you probably knew that but I'm a country bumpkin and don't use the taxi so I didn't know they worked that way.
Made it to
the train station in good time, found our train and seats and had an uneventful trip to Salerno, We took the taxi to our "youth" hostel ;-) and was so glad we did. I had walking directions but there is NO WAY we would have found it our first time here.... was very happy to pay a driver to navigate the way here. Later we walked past the station from here, no problem, but it's too far to want to take our luggage and finding this place in the maze that is Salerno without being here first, no thanks!
This is a no frills but clean, very friendly, and helpful place to stay. They have staff at the front desk 24/7 which is coming in very handy already! They allowed me to check in early as my room was ready, we had to wait another 30 minutes or so for Karen's to be ready for her to move in. Put our bags in my room while we waited and went down to the courtyard and enjoyed a cup of tea and bagged lunch that I had made from the last of the stuff in the fridge from Rome. They have
a nice area that they keep stocked with hot water, tea, cookies, and croissants. They serve breakfast between 7:30-9:30 and have juice, yogurt, and cereals then also.
Will have to ask but I think this may have been a convent at one time. We went and found the famous Duomo here, I believe the name is the Cattedrale di San Matteo it is a little over 1,000 years old!! beautiful inside, will show you photos soon, almost have that situation solved but need to spend some time deleting some pics.... almost missed the crypt, saw an open door and stairs so had to follow, wow, when we went down the entire area was embellished with marble, beautiful, supposedly the bones of Matthew are there, and they have bronze statues over an altar and several smaller chapels along the sides, they had some freshly cut lily's and they perfumed the entire room, wonderful. Upstairs they have huge mosaics in the front of the nave and the two side chapels up front (apses? don't remember the term) Again, beautiful as art, I don't always appreciate how much Mary is adored and lifted up, she was in the middle main part and Christ was
in the side area...
After this, we made our way down to the water, gorgeous sunny day here, just what you think of when you think of the sunny Mediterranean area. We enjoyed walking along the promenade and then down to the sand to see if the sea had thrown any goodies up for us. It was fun to see families enjoying the beach and water. The water was a bit colder than I was expecting, I have a photo to prove that my feet have now been in the Mediterranean, I can add to that the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific, not sure about the Atlantic, unless we can technically call the Gulf part of the Atlantic, showing my ignorance now, sorry!
Found the place we are to go if we want to take a trip to Capri, we are to be there at 7:30 am if so. We aren't sure what the plan is yet, I think we are going to go down the Amalfi coast by ferry to the town of Amalfi and perhaps hike. A huge item on my "bucket list" was to visit Paestum, it looks like it may be closed temporarily, we will call in
the morning to make sure, hopefully, it is open... if not, hopefully, there will be a next time.
On our way back to the hostel we looked for a garden to tour, it was closed but it sure was interesting finding it, so many great iconic little streets, just what you think of when you imagine little towns in Italy, took lots of photos with my phone, should be able to post those tonight. (slow internet connection....not able to download)
Adding to the photo woes my 8 Gb memory card is now full! I bravely went into the settings on my camera and figured out how to make these things smaller, it was set on the highest resolution!!! Wish I had tried to do that a week ago but was too intimidated, as I'm not the "camera person" in my relationship! ;-) I have downloaded to Dropbox and filled it up and I didn't even get all my photos on there... so I have a bit of homework to do with all of that so I can downsize things and upload them onto this TravelPod. We found a place to buy another memory card, they don't just sell these things at
the local WalMart here, as there is no WalMart, we probably walked a couple of miles? to get to the store that does sell them. On the way back we dropped by a place that sells fantastic looking pastries and bought some for later. We then ate at a place called Il Duca, right down the street from where we are staying, seemed very authentic, they don't speak a lot of English, the staff, perhaps family, were yelling at each other and a very loud game show was playing on the TV that we could hear upstairs, dinner and entertainment! I had the pasta with bacon and tomatoes, and "beef with cheddar and salade", the beef was chicken, the cheddar was parmesan, and the salad were a few slender green sprigs mixed into the white sauce. It was very good but not as expected, I hadn't really wanted it but was trying to be adventurous with my eating! I'll let Karen tell you about her dinner.
We then came back to the hostel, grabbed a couple of cups of tea to take to our rooms, I'm now in my pj's and when I'm done will text Karen so she can come
blog about her take on the day. I'm enjoying Salerno, much different from Rome and I love Rome, but this is a nice change of pace and it is extremely picturesque here.
Will try to work on the photo situation!
Fit Bit: 16,613 steps which are 7.15 miles
A Domani!
Wendy
Salerno is a much different place than Rome. There is not nearly the hustle and bustle, and you can cross the streets without fearing for your life! The streets are even narrower (how can that even be??!) and there is laundry flapping outside an awful lot of windows. At one house it was sock day--a whole line of socks. At another house is was black day--everything was black. My favorite, though, was lace day. I took a photo of a second story window in the courtyard of an ancient building, with beautiful lace things hanging on the line in front of a crumbling wall. I loved the contrast of the elegant, refined lace and the roughness of the wall. If you can zoom in on the picture, assuming I can download it, maybe you'll see what I mean.
Dinner tonight was definitely an experience. If we were wanting authentic, I'm pretty sure we got it.
I ordered grilled prawns. I wanted to order lobster and mussel soup, but they wouldn't let me(?!) So I chose the prawns as a less adventurous "Plan B". Ummmm....wow! When he put that plate down in front of me I'm not sure whose eyes were bugged out the most, Wendy's, mine, or the 6 beady eyes of the prawns! Roasted prawns meant roasted whole prawns--legs, shells, innards, eyeballs and all! In Italy, dining out is a more formal affair--everything is eaten with knife and fork. I had absolutely no idea how to go about undressing those things to actually be able to eat them, especially with the gruff proprietor hovering nearby. But my grumbling stomach said "who cares?" so I started hacking off heads and legs and innards and shells. Wendy kept saying I should ask the guy how Italians do it, and I said NO WAY! I did not want to hear they eat the whole thing, and have him stand there and want to watch me eat it all. I've dissected way too many of those things in science class to ever be willing to eat what I know lives inside the wrong end of those shells! A
gals gotta draw the line somewhere!
Well, a couple minutes ago I had written a whole lot more, then this silly machine ate it. It's gone. Grrrr. Sometimes technology is not my friend. So on that cheerful note, I'm going to toddle off to bed and dream of beady prawn eyeballs staring up from my plate! LOL!
Ciao!
Karen
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Kath
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Sorrento looks great, Wendy and Karen, so glad you hit some sunshine there, too. Moira thought it seemed too crowded, but that was June, and I know compared to Rome there is no comparison as far as people. After I read about Dropbox and the
low storage you start with, I was afraid you were headed for trouble...glad you got your resolution reduced a bit for the future. I think for me I got enough space (1 GB) by downloading the Mailbox app and signing in. This link mentions getting 3 GB by downloading Carousel, the two of those might be ok if you like the idea. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-maximize-your-free-storage-space-on-every-cloud-1690775421Or go with a new cloud, copy.com, 15 GB to start with, and maybe 5 more if you use this referral link. I may go with this one instead, has Android and iOs apps besides for PC. Hope this works, you will get all those photos home with you one way or another! http://www.backupreview.com/copy-review/ Thanks for the kind words and prayers. Mom did pass away late Thursday night; I was thankful to be there reading the Word to her, and was sure she was in no discomfort. It's hard right now, but the Lord is good to bring comfort and get us through the next week, and the one after that, etc.Love, Kath