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Ahh Italy…you are so beautiful, but so bewildering!
We said goodbye to Croatia in an unceremonial way on the overnight ferry from Dubrovnik to Puglia, Italy. It was a tub that had seen better days and looked more like a one star hotel with religious reliquaries in glass cases at reception – not really the kind of thing which encourages confidence in your voyage.
Sitting with a watery wine, watching the Dalmatian sunset and waiting for the 10pm departure, we saw several people walk past us on the upper deck with their DOGS! Dogs on the ferry?? Why aren’t they in cages down below? Dogs need to pee and pooh – where are they going to do it on board a ferry? This question was answered immediately when a ghastly little pug-thing spread its stunted hind legs and pissed directly on the deck in front of a row of passengers with bags and suitcases. Its master looked on admiringly then just carried on his evening stroll – no apology, no attempt to clean up the mess as it trickled towards other passenger’s feet.
Our daughter had warned us that although she’d splashed
Overnight ferry
From Croatia to Italyout on a sleeper cabin for the same trip last year, rampant all-night sex in the next door cabin meant she got no sleep. Thankfully we weren’t travelling in party season, but our ‘top of the range’ cabin’s appearance – a cross between a prison cell and third world hospital with two tiny single beds, semi-broken caravan-style ensuite with used soap still in the shower, did not promote a good night’s rest.
Accommodation is a fascinating part of travel. One tries not to be fussy, or complain that things aren’t how they are at home like some other nationalities which I will not name (but insert your favourite here..) After all – if you want things the same as home, why travel?
But there always seems to be something not quite right about even the most gorgeous-at-first-sight place. I’d been pining to stay in a trullo in Puglia for some time and had booked three nights in one on the outskirts of Alberobello – trulli central. Puglia is making its name internationally as a gourmet food and wine destination and after we’d booked into our perfect pixie cottage with conical roof, stone walls, rustic
Matera
A nearly ruined city in southern Italy now being restored furniture, kittens playing in our garden terrace and a donkey braying in the distance, we made haste to a local wine shop, only to return and find our trullo had a kettle, tea bags, disposable plastic cups and a bottle opener…but no wine glasses. Sigh.
At all seven Italian B+B’s or Agritourismos – all promoting the local wine… often their own! - we have had to ask for wine glasses and sometimes only then been offered water tumblers. Really, Italy, we are surprised at you!
The trullo was absolutely gorgeous of course, delightfully renovated, retaining the charm of a pre-18th C stone cottage but with modern conveniences. You can’t really blame them for Rhys’ complaint that there was no hot water coming out of the bathroom sink, which caused confusion at reception as the shower worked perfectly.
Having basic language can avoid embarrassment – anyone who knows Rhys knows he is a consummate complainer, but sometimes too quick off the mark.
When I worked out that he’d been waiting for hot water from the tap NOT marked ‘C’ - forgetting that C in Italian is for hot (caldo)
Trulli gorgeous
Our lovely trullo in Alberobello, Puglia – it was me that had to go back to reception to explain everything was fine. Fortunately they didn’t have enough English to understand my comment, “My husband is just a dick-head”.
A couple of days later we were boarding another boat, this time just for 20 minutes over the Straits of Messina to Sicily, when Rhys outdid himself in embarrassment of alacrity . Having sat in the vehicle queue for some time waiting for the next ferry, we were eager to join the stream of people leaving their cars in the fume-filled bowels of the boat to rush up the narrow stairs to the decks. Rhys followed the people ahead, who happened to all be female, so when they abruptly turned through an open door to the right, he did too – straight into the ladies conveniences! I was right behind so able to see the scene unfold and I think the nun washing her hands looked the most shocked.
BTW – if for any reason you have an idea that Messina might be a nice place for a holiday, please re-think. We sped straight through suburbs that made the third world seem
Even the churches are trullian attractive option, soared up the autostrada and headed for Cefalu, near Palermo, which I can only describe as like The Mount but with 4000 years of history.
Our accommodation was outside the old town because we had a car and parking is impossible in the narrow cobbled medieval lanes. Unfortunately it turned out we were on a main Cefalu road, where trucks and motorbikes roared up and down without care for life or limb, making our little terrace with a glimpse of the sea a less than suitable spot for a quiet drink. So we enjoyed noisy drinks each evening with unnerving entertainment such as a young mum shopping with her two young kids balanced on a scooter, all wearing jandals. They wore helmets, but in Cefalu these appear only to be a fashion statement – they are never done up…if they are worn at all..
I could write a whole blog about Italian driving, but I might leave that for Rhys and dinner conversations.
From Cefalu we drove through the heart of Sicily, mountainous, dry, seemingly barren and devoid of animals - although they must be somewhere to provide
the lamb, veal and milk for cheese which the island is famous for. We could have taken a variety of country roads, no doubt eye-wateringly picturesque, joining ridiculously pretty villages perched on hilltops and dripping onto valleys, but we had already experienced getting stuck in the middle of a medieval town with no way out but a 93 point turn and a dash the wrong way down a one way street, and driving on the wrong side up precipitous narrow roads was doing my head in.
Also I calculated it would take more than twice the time to go half the distance, so the motorways, which we normally avoid when travelling, looked far more attractive.
We were on our way to Taormina, playground of the rich and famous since it was part of Magna Graeca way back in BC and now famous for its beaches, arts festivals, Greek theatre and Corso Umberto – an elegant pedestrianised, shop lined parade to be seen parading on.
Passeggiata they call it and we love it, but how could it happen in NZ? How do you get most of Hamilton strolling down Victoria St most
trulli it's a wine shopnights, or along the Strand in Tauranga, or down Albert St in Whitianga, with all the family in tow, on their way to or from dinner, or just parading.
They do it everywhere in Italy, greeting friends and family, socialising the children, catching up with the gossip. It’s the thing I’d love to bring from Italy to NZ. As well as courtyard gardens and chocolate cake for breakfast.
Our B+B in Taormina was on a hilltop above the main town, again so we could have parking…although parking assumes you have a car and no one in their right mind drives a car round ancient hilltop cities in Italy. So…as we were driving through Taormina I was having a heart attack thinking we were going to plummet off a cliff at any moment. We did get lost a couple of times – the corners are so tight the maps app couldn’t cope and assumed we’d started going back the other way! Eventually we arrive at our accommodation and had to park on a road where locals hurtle up and down at suicide speed, although it is only one lane and 45 degrees. But the view.
trulli amazing
(we never got sick of trulli puns) Our tiny balcony looks directly out to Mt Etna, smoking languorously and to the straits of Messina and mainland Italy in the distance. Sicilians call the mainland, “The Continent’ and clearly see themselves as separate.
I cannot imagine a better view in the world. The bed however is ghastly, you could pee in the toilet at the same time as taking a shower and we are so high up the wind howls through the wooden shutters all night sounding like a feline orgy. Our host Gabrielle has only a few words of English and makes an undrinkable cappuccino but is trying so hard to please you can’t disappoint him by saying no.
We ask him to book us a tour of Mt Etna but that failed, so he told us a place to drive to where we could walk on the mountain. The drive is easy compared to navigating vertical roads in town and we find ourselves 2000 metres up Etna, where the ski slopes start, but in the early summer heat there is only spring flowers, pine trees and huge swathes of black, sharp, contorted lava from the 2002 eruption.
Stark, shocking, impenetrable…the solidified lava fields are still in cliff high formation, tumbling down the slopes in suspended animation so you can easily imagine the hell of the eruption when it incinerated tracts of forest and completely destroyed the ski resort.
It’s now so silent up the mountain the contrast of the untouched green forest, blue sky and black basalt is surreal. I bought an obsidian ring at the desultory souvenir shacks so I could bring a bit of Etna back with me.
Back on ‘the continent’, we stop on the Cilento Coast, clearly only known to Italian holidaymakers from the crowded beaches at the weekend and complete lack of tourists otherwise. For two of our three days there we are the only guests at our agritourismo, which was at the same time nice and relaxing but slightly uncomfortable as there were three times as many staff looking after the two of us – and boy did they want to look after us. Nothing was any trouble… except that Roberto the owner, manager, maitre d’, etc had nearly zero English and we communicated through Google Translate.
Trying to ‘chat’ with Sabrina,
Pizzo in Calabria
The decayed elegance of southern Italy who wasn’t staff but clearly hung around to help Roberto, I made a vague reference to this being our 40
th wedding anniversary holiday. Unfortunately I must have made myself understood because at dinner that night (we dined there each night as a full meal was only 20 euro each and neither of us was brave enough to risk the tortuous drive into the next village at night) after an enormous meal of stuffed peppers, charcouterie, chick pea pasta, steak + chips, pork and a huge plate of delicious beans (we politely declined any desert) Roberto shyly said in obviously practised English, “We have surprise for you…” and they brought out a HUGE cake iced in chocolate with Happy Anniversary in cream! Also limoncello and a liquorice liquor which was amazing.
We made the staff come out to help us eat it but could hardly walk up the stairs from the restaurant back to our room.
I love Italian food… but there is so much of it!... all the time!... cake for breakfast, piles of bread with everything, nothing escapes a coating of mozzarella in southern Italy. And if you only want one course… what
Tartufo
Ice cream dessert created in Pizzo- this one was pistachio, almond and coffee :):) is wrong with you?!
They also eat ice cream at any time of the day or night, but Italian ice cream is so delicious this is quite understandable. My most ‘Italian’ food disgustingness was in Palermo after seeing people eat what looked like an ice-cream burger – two (or more!) scoops of ice cream in a sweet hamburger bun garnished with cream and chocolate or fruit sauce. It was my lunch.
We arrived in Pizzo accidentally on Republic Day to see the main square filled with restaurants only serving ice cream deserts – tartufo which was invented in the seaside town – and the diabetes-inducing ice cream hamburgers. We arrived at lunchtime and hundreds of people were eating them, by dinner time they were still scarfing them down like it was the best thing since ice-cream in a bun.
There is always some festival or other happening in Europe.
Peacefully enjoying the panoramic view and dinner on our terrace in Montepertuso, high above Positano on the Amalfi coast, we were surprised by loud explosions near a hole in the rock even higher above us (where apparently the Madonna
had kicked the hole to save villagers from the devil).
It was the festival of San Antonio which seemed to comprise of the Montepertuso brass band playing in various places around the village (with pauses for lubrication of the players), church bells ringing at random times and the sporadic but spectacular launching of cannon fireworks from the base of the hole in the rock causing loud reverberations round the cliffs and much glee from us spectators in the box seats – two kiwis, two Norwegians (Eva and Jorn) and two Canadians (Chris and Shannon).
None of us had a clue what was going on but we thanked San Antonio for the entertainment while we dined on the terrace of our hilltop hotel.
Positano is like a supermodel – drop dead gorgeous to look at but a pain to live with and nothing of any substance happening on the inside. Houses, villas, churches and luxury hotels cascade down the steep ravines in a picture perfect arrangement of Mediterranean pastels and stark bougainvillea, scrunching into a bundle of lanes crammed with cafés, resort wear and souvenir shops before it becomes a gravel beach
Cefalu
megalithic Greek fortifications tightly packed with sun loungers and umbrellas.
At the advice of our host we left the car parked on the road beneath the 100 steps up to the b+b and took the shaky local bus on the hair-raising ride to and from Positano…about 5km but sometimes taking up to an hour depending on how many times the bus had to wait for other vehicles to back up to let it pass – or to back up itself if the oncoming truck/bus honked its horn louder. Madness.
The best way to see Positano is from one of the regular ferries plying the coast between Salerno and Sorrento. Rhys drove the Amalfi coast road and let’s just say I’m glad we started from the Salerno end as that meant we weren’t on the outside edge of the precipitous cliffs, with me on what should be the driver’s side looking down at nothing but the deep blue Tyrrhenian Sea.
He did manage to drive round southern Italy for over two weeks without a scratch on the rental car which is a miracle when you look at the condition of all the other vehicles and
Cefalu Catedrale
12th C, a mix of Norman and Arabian architecture typical of Sicily the fact that driving in Italy is less a mode of transport and more a full body contact sport.
One of our reasons for staying in Positano was to walk the Path of the Gods, a 7-12km hike (depending which guide you read) mostly on rocky cliff-edge tracks from one hill-top village to the next. No matter how early you start in a southern Italian summer, this is a hot, sweaty, dusty walk, but ridiculously, giddily scenic. It's also very busy/popular for a narrow mountain track and although we thought we'd be clever and avoid the crowds by going against the usual direction of the walk, there are constant tour groups to encounter along the way. Also not recommended to go down the long steep cliff track that everyone says you should only tackle going upwards.
After the walk down to Positano from our village the day before which involved 1500 stone steps, my knees were not very happy with me..
Sorrento gets a bad rap for being too touristy, but we found it more approachable, friendly and less of an assault on the senses. It has history, interesting buildings and
Parco della Rocca, Cefalu
With a ruined castle on top - definitely worth the climb! a gorgeous working fishing harbour with a variety of great fish restaurants, where we happened to have been clever enough to book accommodation. We had that rare experience of realising it was even better than expected, with our room being part of the city ramparts and looking down on a constant stream of fellow tourists walking through the historic Greek gates to gaze admiringly at Mariana Grande, with its beach, fishing boats and Sofia Loren film set quaintness.
There’s no point going to Sorrento and watching boats zipping around all day without going to the legendary island of Capri. We eschewed the popular tour around the island complete with ‘possible’ entry to the blue grotto, if the tide is right, you’ve paid for an extra ticket and are willing to lie on your back in a dingy to go into a sea cave made luminous by having a hole under the water level where the sun shines through.
Instead we chose land based activities to avoid Rhys having an attack of malattia del mare. We walked from the ferry at Mariana Grande to the centre of Capri then when that got too busy to
Palermo
The baroque opulence... move we caught a bus to Anacapri, the far more civilized and sedate other settlement on the island. Here a chair lift takes you to Monte Solaro, at 589 metres the highest point on the island. You really feel on top of the world with views back to the Amalfi coast and Vesuvius. When Anacapri also started to be invaded by tour groups we got a taxi-island style that whisked us back down the ridiculously scenic road to our waiting ferry. I’d succeeded in buying nothing (some of the shops looked so expensive I was too scared to look in the window), Rhys had bought two cups of coffee for $20.
Italy is crazy, the Amalfi is crazier, but Capri epitomises Italian craziness – impossible driving, inadequate infrastructure, too many tourists and an excess of excessiveness. An island devoted to beauty and unashamed, guiltless luxury.
Next stop – the island of ice and fire.
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Excited....
Fell in love with the place. this post has really make my mind to visit italy. thanks for sharing...