I was only in transit for 24 hours to get to Italy, which is
actually not that long – for me. It was
actually made easier as I flew from Kelowna to Pearson where I met my parents
and then we had the same flight to Italy so layover time was spent drinking and
catching up rather than just me doing nothing for 5 hours.
We landed in Rome and this time my parents had actually
hired a car so we weren’t running around like chickens with our heads cut off
trying to figure out how we were gonna get to Termoli. Things were running a lot smoother this time
as my parents were a little more prepared.
We were all quite tired when we arrived in Termoli, almost
too tired to be excited, but still happy nonetheless.
This time my parents decided to rent an apartment as we are
here for a month and wanted a home base.
We
have the ground floor with a big patio that looks right on to the
beach where we sit out and have red wine with breakfast which consists of
bread, roasted peppers, fresh cut meat and parmasen and lemon cake. Yum yum.
The apartment itself is quaint but rustic or maybe I should
say rusty as many things are falling apart.
Door handles fall off, hot
showers last 8 minutes and then the water is freezing, the handle is falling
off the frying pan, there are no garbage baskets or a basket for the laundry,
the plaster is falling off the walls in the bathroom and it flies everywhere when
blow drying our hair. Other than that
though I love the place, we have a lot of windows so the morning sun shines in
and when we open all the windows there is the constant soothing sound of the
waves from the Adriatic.
We are quite familiar with Termoli as we were here last time
so wandering around town to shop and eat is easy. We have our favourite restaurant which we eat
at almost every night/day. The owner and
the server even remembered us from last time.
Our first night the owner baked our pizza into the shape of a heart! Yum yum.
They make the best pizza in the world there. It literally melts in your mouth.
Our first couple of days were spent relaxing and visiting my
dad’s town. The first day we went
though it was raining and windy and the restaurant/bar was closed so we decided
to leave it till the next day. On our
way back however we decided to visit one of the other towns; Larino. We were so hungry so we decided to stop at a
little place on the side of the road. It
ended up being a coffee bar and not really much else but the owner told my dad
to follow him and he would take us to a nice restaurant. Nice restaurant indeed! They were so nice and wouldn’t even let us
order off the menu. They wanted us to
have their homemade pasta and sauce along with their homemade wine. Honestly, my tastebuds and stomach have been
in heaven since we got to Italy. I’m always
hungry, well actually, not always hungry
but if food is infront of me I can’t be rude so I just eat all the time; and
there is always food!!! When we go out
and order a glass of wine or mixed drink they bring, chips, mini sandwiches and
cakes and with coffee’s you get cookies.
Mmmm coffee. Now those of you
who know me know that I don’t drink coffee,
that I am a huge tea buff; I have tea for everything. Sleepy tea, green tea, black teas for the
morning, ginger tea to settle my stomach, roibos tea to relax, basically one
for every occasion. However I have been drinking coffee here….I love it! I had my first espresso last week and thought
“ya, I could drink this every day,” which
I have been pretty much everyday since then. It is so good here and the perfect size and
no jitters from it at all. In fact, I
just finished a cappuccino. Hey, if I’m
eating Italian I might as well drink what they drink!
The next day we went back to my dad’s town where we enjoyed
the homemade wine, a fantastic lunch and
a visit with our cousin (a few times removed) Maria. She popped her head out the door, looked at
my dad and said “Nicola!” My dad gets a
glow when he is with people from his home town it lifts up my heart to watch
him and listen to him speak his dialect.
Maria brought us in and gave us cookie’s and espresso (my
first one) and made a phone call to another cousin (Maria) who we had never
met. It can be difficult as they don’t
speak any English at all. They will look
me in the eyes and talk and all I can do is smile, then I have to look at my
dad for translation. I do understand a
bit of Italian and I can speak very broken Italian as I have been studying the
language for about a year now (since our last time out here), but they speak
the town’s dialect so I do not understand much when they are speaking.
Me with Maria and Maria
After a nice visit with Maria (and Maria) we went for lunch
and a walk through the town. We went to
my dad’s old house again. I of course
let myself in to the abandoned house only to be surprised by a makeshift closet
and jeans hanging in it. Someone is
living there (or squatting). “How dare
they!” I said. “They can’t just move
into our house daddy!” “Technically it
is not ours anymore honey. It hasn’t
been for a long time.” “I know, but
still.”
It was really different this year going back home (as I call
going back to my dad’s town). It wasn’t
emotional at all. My dad said he felt more like a tourist,
that he enjoyed himself more as he was more relaxed and not overrun with emotion. We wandered the streets taking pictures and
looking in windows of abandoned buildings.
My dad began talking to an old(er) woman sitting outside the small
church only to find out that she was another cousin!!! Crazy!
Well it is a small town and some people have never left so meeting
relatives is pretty much a given.
We went to Naples for a few days. The drive there was an adventure. We have a GPS so it has been a saviour for
us but it doesn’t make the driving here easier. Naples is on the other side of the country
so it is about a 3.5 hour drive and mostly highway driving. I don’t know if you have ever been to Italy
and if you have if you have ever had the pleasure of driving around because it
is intense. The speed limit signs are
very few and don’t really inform you about the decrease or increase in speed
ahead. It goes from 50 km/h to 80km/h
and then all of a sudden you are in a part that is 130 km/h!!! The only reason we knew the change in speed
is because hour GPS (who we have named Dickie – after Charles Dickens due to
his old English accent) has the speed
limit posted on the screen. People were zipping by like it was nothing. Even when it was 80 they were doing way over
the speed. The Autostrada is really
windy going through the mountains and on
top of the craziness and intensity of the driving my vertigo was going
crazy!!! I thought it was the crazy
driving but I was calm when we were in the flat area, once we were going up and
down and winding around my vertigo was not happy. I think I stopped breathing for most of the
way and I was sitting on the edge of my seat inhaling on my electronic
cigarette like it was going out of style.
I was afraid if I averted my eyes for a second that we would fly of the
road even though my dad was driving. I
felt that even though he was the one driving my eyes concentrating on the road
helped us stay on the road. Lol I know
right!
We did see some interesting things a long the way,
mountains, towns built on mountains, prostitutes.
You know how on an on/off ramp on the highway there is an island at the
top so the people getting on/off don’t happen to go in the wrong lane, well, we
drove by one of those and there was this girl in a black leather jacket, black heels and a pair of booty short underwear. “Wow!
I wonder who she is waiting for?” I said “It is a bit of an odd place to
stand.” Then we had to turn off up a
head and do a loop through a really dingy and dirty area where I saw another
girl wearing the same thing on the side of the road except this one had a
plastic patio chair – I guess she could rest if she got tired. Definitely not something we were expecting
to see.
As we got closer to the city of Naples the big towering peak
of Mt. Vesuvius came up on our left. I
was expecting to see smoke coming out of the top. I was amazed at the sight of it, it was
beautiful and ominous at the same time.
There were even houses built up on it.
No matter where we were in town we could always see it, like you are
always in it’s shadow, like it is always watching.
I don’t know what I was expecting Naples to look like, I
guess I expect all of Italy to be beautiful and breathtaking but it was
ugly. There is heaps of garbage on the
side of the highway, all the buildings look old and tired and literally
everything is covered in graffiti and I mean everything, I was surprised the stray dogs there hadn’t
been graffitied. It definitely isn’t a place I would go back to
but we actually weren’t there to see Naples or the city; we were there to see the
ruins of Pompeii.
When I was a little girl I remember this book my mum
had. It was a huge hardcover picture
book – probably from National Geographic or something – on Pompeii. She would tell me about the town that got
covered by a volcano and how people were digging it up and discovered houses
and artifacts. I remember the pictures
of the (plaster) bodies in the positions they died in. My mum had told me one day she would love to
go there and see it. Before we came to
Italy I made sure that we were able to make it one of the places to visit as I
wanted my mum to finally see it.
Just like Naples, I really didn’t know what to expect with
Pompeii. I knew it would be ruins of
houses, artifacts and the plaster bodies.
I thought that we would get to see everything from a distance within an
hour and be off. That was not the
case. You actually get to walk through
the towns streets, markets and some of the buildings. You could touch the walls, walk along the
streets where they walked it was really awesome and fucking massive!!! The town is huge. We were there 3 hours and still hadn’t seen
everything! To see it all you would have
to give 2 or 3 days! Like I said, I
didn’t know what to expect but it definitely wasn’t this.
It was a little confusing – very easy to get turned around –
as the signs really didn’t give much info.
We did have one of those hand held audio tour thingys which was good for
information of buildings but there was no information posted of areas. Like one area we walked through was pubs and
shops but there was nothing to posted in the area to say that, even following
the exit arrow’s was confusing.
We walked and walked along the massive stone streets,
looking into the buildings, peeking through windows, touching the walls
admiring some of the frescos and carvings that were still on the walls. I even ran out of room on my SD card – thank
goodness at the end. Their houses were
massive and so ornate, built with brick and stone which they then covered with
a plaster and painted on it. There isn’t
really much of the colourful plaster on the outside now so all you see are
stone/brick houses. It was really
exciting going inside some of the places that had some of the colourful fresco
painted plaster on the wall that gave you a bit more of an idea of what it once
looked like.
We walked through the big market with the municipal
buildings where we had lunch – they have built a cafeteria, saw the Temple of
Isis which had quite a bit of cult activity surrounding it, gardens, homes,
men's bath houses, shops, theatre and amphitheatre. We saw original artifacts such as pots,
statues and the (plaster) bodies including the one of the dog. It was very strange to see them as they are
in the positions they died in. One was
sitting with his knees up to his chest with his hands almost in a prayer like
position. It just made it that much more
real.
Plaster moulding of the praying man
Plaster moulding of the dog
Walking the streets of Pompeii
It was a long day and we were all pretty tired when we got
back to the hotel I ended up falling asleep at 7 that night lol.
The hotel we stayed at was awesome. Very hostelish with the way the rooms were
painted and layed out. The bathroom was
my favourite part. White, pink and lime
green tiled walls, with a sink big
enough to bathe in and a shower stall that played music and had disco lights
that changed colour. I was in
heaven. It was the best way to start off
my day. Plus the shower came fully
equipped with freebees, razor, sewing kit, travel toothbrush and
toothpaste. I made my parents take
everything so I could stock up haha. We
were supposed to leave the next day but decided we were gonna do an extra day
and go to the ruins of Herculanium. We
had to switch rooms which was more money
and the bathrooms were a downgrade. The
toilets had no seat so we had to squat (which we are getting very used to here)
and the shower wasn’t even a stall it was in the centre of the bathroom; basically just a square area on the floor
with a flip down seat and a handheld shower head, no radio or disco lights, it
was a sad sad morning for me.
I know most people know of Pompeii but I am not sure how
many know of Herculanium. Herculanium is
a town that also got wiped out by Mt. Vesuvius the same day as Pompeii, however
it was hit first. While Pompeii has
been in the process of uncovering for a few hundred years, Herculaniums dig has
just started in this century so it is still pretty new to us. While Pompeii is more well known Herculaneum
really has the beauty.
The preservation of Herculaneum is amazing! It is better preserved than Pompeii; this is
because when the volcano hit water hit as well forming mud that ran its way
through the streets and buildings which kept the preservation of the buildings,
fresco’s, and marble floors, some of
them almost looking brand new.
Herculaneum is heaps
smaller than Pompeii making it an easier tour - 70% of the town is still buried
and will never be excavated as the new Ercoleno (Herculaneum) has been built on
top – and it is way more colourful due to the preservation of the artwork and
marble. Some of the marble floor are
pretty much in prestine condition,
almost like they were never buried.
There are more plaster walls with fresco’s on them so it was easier to
get a sense of what some of the houses looked like way back then. The colourful wall pictures made of marble
were breathtaking I could’ve stared at them forever. I was trying to imagine the artist who made
it and the people who’s garden it was that the picture was in. Everything was so elaborate back then, the
frescos on the wall, the marble floors the gardens in their houses, the
cornices on the walls, the painted ceilings and marble baths in the men’s
baths, marble benches…I could go on.
Honestly if I was a super hero, my super power would be to time travel
so could go back in time and really see
it when it was hustling and bustling with it’s residences…maybe I can build a
phone booth like Bill and Ted and collect people from the past lol, how cool
would that be. But no, seriously,
sometimes I really do wish I could go back in time to experience certain times
in history.
Floor in the men's baths
Beautiful tile picture still in tact
Cornice mouldings
I ended up getting us lost on the way back to our
hotel. We had to take a train. The train their wasn’t the greatest and
definitely not something I would want to ride on by myself. It’s something out of the 70’s old, tired and
covered in graffiti like the rest of Naples; but WOW does it go fast!!! The one on the way back was newer and cleaner
but still just as fast. I looked at the
stop we had to get off at and counted the number of stops. As soon as we got off the train we knew that
we were not where we were supposed to be.
We were at another end of town, dirty, run down and empty streets with
no idea which direction we were pointing or what direction our hotel was. We went into a café and they said we were
about an 8km walk from our hotel and that there were no taxis around. Great! Now what? There is no way we are
walking! Before we had time to think
about what we were going to do the nice people at the café called a taxi for us
who drove us the 8km back to where we needed to go.
We were happy to get back to Termoli, back to our rusty
apartment where we could curl up with a tea and watch a movie. We haven’t really done much the past few
days as my poor dad has gastro L
and has pretty much been bed ridden. The
weather hasn’t been great so a couple days of catching up on laundry and just
relaxing and looking after my dad hasn’t been a bad thing, I really just want
him to get better.
Well, it is a beautiful morning. The sun is shining and the birds are chirping, and it’s a balmy 17 degrees here (just
thought I would let all you in Canada know how warm it is) so I am gonna sign
off for now.
Talk soon.
Stay warm Canada
Ciao
-
My Beautiful Life -
