Day 6

May 9, 2003
(Friday)

Naples

8:00 am

We dock at Naples (which the Italians quaintly refer to as "Napoli"), home of 600,000 people. By the end of the day, we will have driven through part of it, but not actually seen anything or even talked to any authentic Neapolitans other than our tour guide, Connie.

Panorama of Naples harbor

8:52 am

Our first stop is the isle of Capri, famous for calf-length pants and tourists. Augustus Caesar was one of the first tourists, and he had 12 different villas built for him on the island (we guess he always wanted to be close to a bathroom).

We leap onto a jet foil for the 40-minute trip to Capri island. The air is hazy and very still, so most of the trip consists of looking at a landscape that could just as easily be LA, except for the presence of Vesuvius on the horizon.

The tour buses await at the dock, but we fool them and take the boat on the right

Our boat looms as we leave the dock

Robert begins to wonder about this whole city name thing. Why do we (Americans) call it "Naples" but the Italians call it "Napoli"? It's not like we can't pronounce Napoli.

Then Robert begins to wonder if it works the other way, too. Do the Italians refer to Redmond as "Redomoni"? Is Seattle "Seattillicily"?

Laura wisely reads during this part.

10:00 am

We arrive at Capri. There are two harbors, one on each side. Capri is essentially a mountain, with houses built along the slopes, except where the cliffs go straight up and down. Every possible inch of the island is covered with a house, or a garden (sometimes both, with gardens growing on the roofs of houses).

Approaching the Isle of Capri

As you ride the tram up to the top of Capri, you can look down on the harbor

We catch a cable car up the hill to the top, which is the main area of the island. Capri features an abundance of tourists, and at this time of the year, the tourists are in full bloom. We've been in Grand Central Station in New York during rush hour, and that looks sparsely populated by comparison.

Our mob pushes its way across the island to the gardens (which are quite lovely) and we look down the cliffs at the home of Gracie Fields that someone wanted pointed out. If you're going, "Who the heck is Gracie Fields?" don't feel bad, so did we. Turns out she was a British singer during WWII who was very popular with the Italians for entertaining the troops. She married a Caprinian (Caprisian?) after the war.)

Capri's other money-making activity is growing lemons and making things from it. You can get lemon perfume, lemon skin cream, lemon soap, lemon candy, and lemon enemas. Parts of our anatomy pucker just thinking about it.

 
Our tour guide lady Connie

A garden on Capri

 
A perfume shop (or a lemon essence factory, one or the other...)

This path leads down to houses that people actually live in--we're guessing they don't get a lot of door-to-door salespeople

At the bottom of the path, there's just room for some houses

Robert stands in front of some famous landmark or another on Capri

11:30

We have an argument, and Robert grabs the boat tickets and storms off, saying "Fine! I'll just leave you on Capri!"

Sadly (from Laura's point of view), Robert hears her say "Hot damn!" and comes back.

We make up, and agree that if that's the only argument all trip, we got off easy.

Noon Our mob gets onto another boat, this one labeled "Paul and the Shark." Apparently, the owner feels this will give tourists a nice warm, fuzzy feeling about taking his boat to Sorrento back on the mainland. Capri and Sorrento used to be connected to each other, but this area is geologically active (hence the volcano) and the two have separated.

Laura spots a fruit vendor on the dock, and buys a paper cone full of strawberries. They are probably disease-ridden and we'll spend hours in agony later on, but damn, it'll be worth it! They are very fresh and very tasty and we spend the boat trip with strawberry juice running down our chins.

12:30 pm

We arrive at Sorrento, which is a town just east of Naples. It's pretty much a resort town, with a typical Mediterranean flavor to it. It has a harbor, but the town is built on the top of a cliff overlooking the harbor.

Once we arrive at the top, we go to see an intarsia (inlaid wood) demonstration. According to Connie, inlaid wood is a big industry in Sorrento. The demonstration is given by a woman with a Brooklyn accent, who spends most of the time showing off a gaming table that you can purchase for a mere 4000 Euros (shipping included!).

Nope, it's not a painting--it's inlay!

1:00 pm

Lunch! Time for another fabulous local lunch, this one featuring southern Italian food. The only thing that makes us nervous is that over in a corner there's a TV set tuned to a cooking show. You can tell it's an Italian cooking show because the chef is flanked by two babes who's sole purpose is to exclaim over everything the chef does (Robert wants a kitchen like that!).

Lunch is spinach cannelloni with ricotta cheese. The main course is chicken, with cheese and potatoes and gravy. Dessert is a tart made with wild strawberries (wild, or "feral" strawberries are teeny little buggers, but very sweet).

Our random lunch companions are from Gedden Island, which is right across from Edmonds (30 miles north of Seattle). Yesterday, we had lunch with a couple from Lynnwood (two miles north of Seattle). The day before that it was a Vancouver, BC couple. We begin to wonder what's happening on the West Coast that's causing everybody to flee to the Mediterranean.

2:00 pm

We have about an hour to kill in Sorrento before the next mob move. We spot a horse-drawn carriage, so we hire it. The driver takes us up one side of the town so we can look down across Sorrento (your typical picturesque Italian seaside town).

Then he heads back into the town and we go down roads that we would call "narrow alleys" but which at one point were "main drags." Back in the day (2,000 years ago) people walked a lot, so they built everything close together and didn't need a heck of a lot of space for roads.

Nowadays, the Italians drive cars and scooters down these alleyways at high speed (some of the cars passing our carriage with millimeters to spare). Our driver stops at a Franciscan monastery (which also teaches art classes) and we can see the attraction of monkhood. The monastery is on the edge of a cliff with a spectacular view of the harbor and is surrounded by lush vegetation. We walk through the cloister, which is very relaxing. If the Franciscans had put a recruiting booth by the door, we would have signed up.

When we return to the carriage, the driver points out an inlay shop owned by his friend Daniel and says we should visit him. We do, and Daniel gives us a tour of the shop and gives us a MUCH better explanation of how intarsia is done. His family has been doing this work for three generations in this shop.

Here's the deal: Artists cut the parts of pictures or geometric designs from thin layers or wood, then fit them back together to reproduce the original picture. They shellac them to hold them together and then stick the whole frame into a piece of wood (the "inlay" part). So, for example, if you wanted to make a checkerboard, you would use a bunch of square pieces of wood.

For these guys, a checkerboard is something that small children make. The real inlays look like paintings. Daniel quickly determines we are not in the market for a 4000-euro game table and shows Laura a music box with a view of Sorrento which plays "Return to Sorrento" for a mere 60 Euros, so she buys it.

In typical European fashion, the guy gift wraps the package (EVERYthing you buy gets beautifully wrapped). We hope the customs people understand this and don't panic at a gift-wrapped package full of clockworks....

3:00 pm

We're back on the bus and headed for the main attraction: Pompeii!

We are incredibly lucky weather-wise. When we started out this morning at 9:00 it was already 84 degrees, and we weren't looking forward to tromping through the shadeless ruins for hours. But it has gotten cloudy and much cooler--a pleasant 72 degrees or so. Connie says this is typical weather for most of the summer, but usually in May it's clearer. Connie points out much local agriculture (they've had a few thousand years to figure out what grows well here).

We can see Mount Vesuvius as we head towards it, and Connie points out that it is the same type of volcano as Mt. St. Helens (a cone volcano, given to explosive eruptions, rather than a shield volcano such as Mauna Kea, but don't get Robert started on this; he can go on for hours about a'a and pahoihoi). Vesuvius- last erupted in 1944 (steam and ash mostly).

The local history is mostly one of invasions. Everybody has stormed through Sorrento at one time or another, including the Saxons, Germans, Spanish, Arabs, you name it, they've conquered Sorrento. As a result, there is no Sorrento "type" of person. They're blonde, red-headed, brunette, light, dark, tall, short. It's like a miniature UN.

3:32 pm

We're here at Pompeii. This place is pretty big, an oval about a mile wide at the longest point and just about every inch is taken up with a house, or a store, or a street. All carefully excavated during the last 300 years. (We went on a dinosaur dig years ago, so we can appreciate the huge amount of work involved in carefully excavating an area this large. Toothbrushes and dental picks are typical tools....)

The city was originally built by the Greeks, and then when the Romans showed up, they liked it so much, they moved in. One way to tell the difference between the two building styles is that the Greeks tended to use big stones, while the Romans used smaller stones.

Also, the Romans (bless their standardized little hearts) tended to build everything from uniform fired bricks, while the naturalist Greeks used natural stone.

The city is a mixture of intermingled shops and houses. The shops are about 10 feet square, and each has a small groove along the front for a gate so it could be locked up at night.

One of the biggest buildings is the Law Court which stretches for a good block. Apparently, even back then lawyering was a good business.

But not as good as the religion biz. There was lots of temples (lots of gods), and the big one was for a triumvirate of Gods: Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva (Zeus, Hera, and Aphrodite for those who learned the Greek names). Connie pointed out (with a slight sneer) that the people were superstitious and were always praying to Gods and such .

Not like us modern folks, who have absolutely no icons we pray to, or rites to bless things, or priestly hierarchies.

Stepping stones--a vital part of crossing the street, since the street could be full of water, dirt, and sewage

The main temple has seen better days

Man, everything is in ruins around here!

Connie really hits her stride when she starts talking about the art of Pompeii. As those of you who managed to stay awake in art class may remember, one of the great accomplishments of the Renaissance was the development of perspective, 3D effects, and realistic human sculpture. Michelangelo and Da Vinci in particular are widely acclaimed for "discovering" these modern techniques.

Detail from an arch entryway--notice the 3-D sculptures

Well, guess what, campers--Pompeii is loaded with examples of these techniques, and these guys beat Leo and Mike by about 1400 years. Some of the wall frescos survived and Connie points out the use of chiaroscuro (light and dark to indicate 3D) and of perspective (with vanishing points and everything).

The people of Pompeii were not ignorant barbarians, but clever people.

A Roman sign (probably saying "No loitering or skateboarding near the temple")

There're a couple of the famous volcano people in glass cases, and we got the story on these. There was an earthquake a couple of days before (back in 79 AD), and the people of Pompeii figured that was all that was happening. So they didn't flee, and as a result, when Vesuvius exploded, they were caught by surprise.

There we so much ash and hot gases that people were entombed where they lay (or stood or cowered). A few hundred centuries later (in the 1700s), the flesh had all decomposed. When the diggers opened one of these, they peered inside. This was a bad move, as all the decomposition gases had remained trapped and when they peered inside, they got a lungful of poison gas and keeled over.

After a number of diggers had bought the farm, an archeologist in 1860 came up with the bright idea of making a hole in the "dead people space" and then pouring in plaster to make a mold. This forced the gases out and also created a very realistic cast of the people--down to the belt buckles.

We try not to think about what these poor people went through (clearly they all died in great pain).

4:00 pm

The Pompites (Pompesians?) liked to decorate their floors, too. Or rather, they liked to have waterproof floors, and as long as they were putting something down, it might as well be decorative. And some of these mosaics are intricate and stunning. One of them is the classic "reversing cubes" optical illusion (where the cubes seem to be popping out of the surface in one direction, but then change direction if you shift your perception). Apparently, it's a heck of a lot more classic than we thought it was...

The mosaics are made from marble, stone, sea shells, and even colored glass. One of the ones they removed and placed in museum had over 2,000,000 pixels in it. (Guess we didn't even invent the megapixel picture...)

The Romans also had a fairly intricate water system. They placed water towers at the highest point in the city and then piped the water down to supply the public fountains. They even covered the pipes with tiles, so that the water would remain cool.

Unfortunately, there was no Roman version of the EPA, and all the pipes were made out of lead. Which means that trace amounts of lead contaminated the water supply. Lead poisoning tends to make you stupid, stunted, and dead.

There were 30 bakeries in Pompeii and we saw the remains of one of them. Back then, being a baker was a lot harder than just getting up early. The bakers also had to grind the grain into flour, and this was done with large grinding machines that were all human powered. The baking ovens look a lot like they do today.

Bakery, where Pompeii bakers ground wheat and made bread (or maybe pizza--sure looks like a pizza oven to us!)

Around the corner from the bakery was an early McDonaldus, or Fast Food restaurant. Using amphora pots filled with hot oil, the shop kept food hot and available quickly for the Pompeii resident in a hurry to get to the wool market.

We also visited the brothel (it was an inoperative brothel, honest!). The famous erotic friezes were washed out and barely visible, and didn't really live up to their reputation. If you were thinking of coming to Pompeii to check out the erotic art, you'd be better off blowing five bucks on a Playboy magazine.

It was fun to see the street sign for the brothel though. The directional "arrows" were on paving stones in the street and consisted of a twelve-inch phallus carved into the stone, pointing towards the brothel. Man, those Romans knew how to make catchy directional arrows!

As we staggered out of Pompeii (it's a big place, and all the paving stones are uneven, so we spent two hours leaping from stone to stone), our last question was answered: near the exit, a guy was carefully measuring and recording information about an exposed pillar, documenting its exact size and location. They're still finding more bits of Pompeii.

6:40 pm

Our tour group (always the last tour group to make it back) staggers on board the ship, which promptly pulls in the gangway and drives away (or whatever it is that boats do).

We order dinner from room service, as did everybody else it seems, but we're too tired to complain that it takes an hour to arrive.

Tomorrow we spend the whole day at sea (which isn't anything new for Robert) and on Sunday, we hit Athens.

Near the boot of Italy
Robert & Laura

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