Venice - Arrival, San Marco Square

In the morning in Florence we visited the Basilica de Santa Maria Novella where were admired some nice frescoes before hopping our fast and expensive EuroStar train to Venice. When we arrived Mom and Dad were were just arriving at the train station to meet us, having gotten in 45 minutes earlier from Portland, Oregon and checked into our hotel.

We dropped off our bags at the hotel room, then struck out in search of a restaurant that wasn't crazy expensive. We ended up at a little bar along some random little canal where we had pasta and salad.

From Venice

After lunch we walked down to San Marco Square where we found and admired the fancy astrological clock which shows the positions of the sun and moon relative to the earth and zodiac, along with the phase of the moon and the world's first digital clock. According to legend, the inventor was murdered so that no other city could make for themselves such a cool clock. Something for us scientists and engineers to keep in mind, I guess...

From Venice

Next we did the Rick Steves audio walking tour around San Marco Square, seeing the different "sides" of the square that were from different eras, and how the one built by Napoleon in the back tries to bring everything together, which it does well at a glance, but if you look closely you can see the imperfections.

From Venice

There was also the big bell tower, the Doge's Palace (a fancy place that very much flaunts its lack of needing to be a fortress), many of the winged lions of St. Mark, and the Bridge of Sighs (surrounded by ad-covered scaffolding).

From Venice

It was a good day, and it was really good to see my folks!

From Venice

Florence - Uffizi, and Pisa - Leaning Tower

Dreading the extra-long queues, and unable to reserve tickets (sold out), we got up early, breakfasted, and queued up at the Uffizi twenty minutes before opening. There are only around thirty people in front of us. Given the page space devoted to the museum in our guidebook, we expected something the size of the Vatican, but it's quite a lot smaller (but still really nice). Notable paintings include The Birth of Venus, Primavera, Venus of Urbino. The famous Venus statue was indisposed when we were there. So it goes. We had a Rick Steves audio tour here too, which highlighted the important works and changing styles and methodologies employed in painting as the Renaissance got going. The Galleria exhibit was the work of Caravaggio.

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

The museum took less time than we expected (only a couple hours, perhaps Lonely Planet's 4 hour estimate was assuming a long wait in line and the need to elbow past crowds?), so wandered around Florence poking into whichever churches we could find that were open to tourists (not many, as it was Sunday). They have a lot of really lovely churches in Florence.

Next we decided to head over to Pisa for the afternoon. Pisa is a cheap (5.70 Euro) and fast (1 hour) train ride from Florence, and the tower is around a mile from the train station, so we walked. On the way, we picked up some gelato (chocolate and hazelnut, yum). The tower is quite a bit shorter than Mary had remembered or Josh had imagined. And it leaned more than either of us had expected, even though Mary had seen it before! There's a very nice green space around the tower (which is part of the Duomo complex). Here, we relaxed and enjoyed the sun and shade and views before we headed home. The leaning tower looks just like the photos, except it's not until you see it in person that you discover that you never really believed that it leans that much.

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

Florence - Duomo & Loggia dei Lanzi

Today we were planning on heading straight up to Venice. Mary's parents will be meeting us there, so we thought we'd need some time to see the city before they arrive, but it turns out they want to spend some time there also (even though they've been a couple times before), so we decided to skip the Appian way and catacombs and head straight for Florence, which is on the way to Venice anyway. We caught a morning train to Florence and checked into the hostel near the train station. It's the weekend, so we were happy to have anything with availability that was cheap. Since most of the awesome museums have hour-plus long queues, we decided to reserve some tickets for the next day and walk around town first, visiting the Duomo. Luckily, walking around Florence is really easy. They have banned cars (except for residents' vehicles) in the historic down town, making it a wonderful pedestrian zone. First, we visit the Duomo, which has a lovely white, red, and green facade (the colors of Italy), which is actually new to celebrate the unification of Italy. The impressive part is the dome, which we decided to not climb, as the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica is similar and was somewhat disappointing to climb.

From Florence

The inside of the Duomo was disappointing. There just isn't much in there, like they blew their whole budget on the dome or something. Speaking of which, apparently the better part of the cathedral was built during the century before the technology to build such a big dome was rediscovered in the Renaissance. Talk about faith!

Next, we walked around down town with the Rick Steves audio walking tour. We went into a church that was a granary before it was a church, with a grain warehouse upstairs and an open air grain market downstairs. We could see the holes in the columns that were the bottom of the old chutes for delivering grain. We then made our way down to Piazza della Signoria where we saw the Palazzo Vecchio with it's replica of David out front on display where the original David used to be, the other monuments, and the Loggia dei Lanzi which is a pavilion with some awesome statuary. It was originally a place for public speaking, but was converted to a place for statues by the Medici. As Rick Steves put it, the Medici preferred free art over free speech. We also walked down to the Ponte Vecchio, the famous covered bridge full of jewelry shops.

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

Rome - Ostia Antica

We slept in, and made our way lazily over to Ostia Antica in the afternoon after some suboptimal public transit. Ostia Antica was at the mouth of the Tiber river in ancient times; since then, the river has changed course, the shoreline has moved farther seaward, and the major port for Rome has moved. It was abandoned for these reasons, and because of Malaria. The site itself was a lot bigger than Herculaneum (the excavated part) or Paestum, and a little smaller than Pompeii. Unfortunately, the best stuff (columns, marble, statues) have been largely carted off to other locations as far away as Istanbul. After all, this city didn't get buried by a volcano!

From Rome

From Rome

From Rome

The site itself was nice, though if felt a great deal like a poorly preserved version of what we've already seen. I don't know that we can recommend a trip out here unless you don't have time to go to Pompeii, or are looking for a quiet place away from the crowds of Rome. It's never busy, and with good reason. There is an awesome theater next door to a business district. There are also a few baths to explore. The whole site is brick. Before this trip, we didn't realize that the Romans used a lot of brick and concrete. I guess we assumed that they used stone exclusively. Heck, they even plaster brick columns to make them look like marble.

From Rome

Paestum - Greek Ruins in Italy!

Undeterred by our miss the previous day, we headed down to Paestum after checking out of our hostel. Paestum is a modestly sized Greek ruin from the 7th century AD. It has three temples standing, one with columns around six feet across at the base. There are also a few mosaics, atria, and a lot of waist-high walls. It is supposed to be one of the best preserved Greek sites anywhere, better than any we are likely to see in Greece, yet gets few visitors...perhaps because there is so much less left of it than the nearby Roman cities. It was very nice, and we lingered until 6pm. The evening at these archaeological sites are much nicer. It's cooler, less bright, and there are fewer people. They're quite serene. There wasn't much left of the other buildings around the temples, but we were able to spot many similarities in architecture to Pompeii.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

Paestum is evidently on a train line, which our guidebook failed to mention, and there are plenty of late trains directly back to Naples. Our hostel hostess would have told us this yesterday, had we told her we were thinking of going there. While waiting for the train, we talked with a man leading a small group of his students on tour: they'd come down for the day from Rome and visited both Pompeii and Paestum in one day. That sounds a bit grueling, but doable. I think they did it in the wrong order though, should do Paestum (which doesn't get that busy) in the morning and Pompeii in the evening after the other tourists have departed. We caught the 6pm train back to Naples and changed for the next train for Rome. We had just missed a train, so we waited an hour for the next train, which was then "retardo" by around an hour. So we got into Rome right at midnight, which is when the metro line and regular bus service stop. Did I mention that we booked a "camping" hotel in the middle of nowhere? They do seem to run night buses that approximate the metro routes, so we took that to around the metro stop where we would have caught a bus to our accommodations, and then grabbed a taxi for 26 Euros, which still equates to cheaper than staying in the center.

From Naples

Amalfi Coast - Sorrento to Salerno

The Amalfi coast South of Naples is supposed to be gorgeous, and Rick Steves suggests taking the bus down the coast and then getting on a train back. We considered getting off the bus and taking a hike, but we decide against, as we hoped to reach Paestum in the afternoon. The coast is indeed gorgeous. The road (and therefore the bus) hugs the coast and is full of hairpin turns and one-lane bridges over chasms. It reminded Mary of highway 1 up the California coast. If the islands in the Gulf of Naples (e.x. Capri) are this beautiful, I certainly see their appeal. We transferred buses in Positano for Amalfi, and Amalfi for Salerno, following the Gulf of Salerno (Tyrrhenian Sea) the whole way. Unfortunately, when we got to Salerno, we were running an hour late. We got worried about transport home, and we'd managed to leave our passports back at the hostel, so we wouldn't even be able to check into a hotel. Lonely Planet said there were 12 buses per day, but didn't say when the last one was. We had also put off lunch, and were hungry and cranky, so we headed home instead, and picked up some fresh ravioli to eat for dinner. Yum.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

Pompeii

Today we went to Pompeii with Rick Steves (audio guide). We tried to get out early, but Mary wasn't feeling so great (pretty tired) and she went back to bed for a bit while she waited for her two cups of coffee to kick in.

As expected, Pompeii was pretty crowded by the time we got there at 11am. And Josh's copy of the Rick Steves audio guide hadn't downloaded right and wasn't working, so we spent the first 90 minutes or so tethered together listening on one iPod while fighting the crowd for a good view of the most important sights. And the House of the Vetti (best preserved of the houses) was closed for renovations. In fact, the whole street it was on was closed off so we couldn't even peak into the atrium to see the penis balanced with the coins to generate fruit. The brothel, for all everyone talks about it, was a bit anticlimactic too.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

So overall, it was a bit of a disappointing morning, which we followed with a picnic lunch in the shade next to the big amphitheater. After lunch, we explored the amphitheater, more buildings in town, and then moved on to the Villa of the Mysteries on the outskirts of town. It had absolutely fantastic frescoes.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

By the time we wandered back into Pompeii proper, it was pushing four o'clock and there was hardly a tour group to be seen. We wandered back through a bunch of the buildings on the morning's tours and now had them to ourselves.

From Naples

From Naples

With all the people gone, it took on a whole different feel, and we stayed for another 3 hours. Some exploring, and some just sitting and taking it all in. What an incredible difference a few hours make. This is why you should spend a few days in Naples or Sorrento rather than day tripping from Rome like everyone else does: so you can enjoy the quiet after the groups leave around 4pm until closing time at 7:30pm. I wish we'd realized this before; we could have squeezed something else (something less popular) into the morning. I'm used to places where everything shuts down at 4:30 or 5pm, so your only chance to beat the crowds is early in the morning.

Ercolano - Mt. Vesuvius and Herculaneum

Got out reasonably early today and went to the top of the crater of Vesuvius. This isn't much of a climb, as the bus takes you most of the way up. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in a cloud when we first got there, though the mist swirling around the crater was kind of cool looking. After a while though, most of the cloud blew over and we were rewarded with views of the sea and the city of Ercolano. Visibility was unfortunately still kind of low due to pollution and water vapor in the air. We still couldn't see the horizon.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

After we got back off the volcano, we went out to lunch at a nice little pizzeria, where we got to see the wood-fired pizza oven in action.

From Naples

When we arrived at Herculaneum, we found ourselves buying tickets at the same time as a school group from the USA. Somehow whoever did the planning for that failed to realize the student and child prices for things in Italy only apply to EU citizens. Which seems logical enough to me when you are talking about the tickets for university students in the 18-24 age bracket, but like a seriously lame policy for the younger kids (these were 15). You have to pay the whole 11 Euro entry fee for an (non-EU citizen) infant for crying out loud. That's insane.

From Naples

Anyhow, we arrived in the early afternoon and it was bright, hot, and surprisingly busy. And we had the after lunch sleepies. We decided to give the audio tour a try as there were basically no signs, but it turned out to be quite a disappointing audio tour. You know how much slower it is to listen to something read allowed compared to reading it for yourself? Now imagine the reader is reading for an international audience and therefore speaking extra slowly. And with long pauses between stuff in case you can't find the pause button for yourself. The content was otherwise fine, but Mary just didn't have the patience for it. Josh listened to most of it.

After a while the tour groups departed, the after lunch sleepies wore off, the air started to cool off, and everything got better. Poking into the old buildings was really fantastic. It was great to see the frescoes in situ, and there were some great mosaic floors, and a couple really fantastic wall mosaics. As it got to be evening, the whole area took on a wonderful romantic feeling.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

Something new we learned about Roman buildings (well, at least in Herculaneum), was the cleaver way they collected water for their underground cisterns. In the entry area there would be a little square pool, which was connected to the underground cistern. The pool and cistern were filled by a square opening in the roof directly above that let in rainwater and light. The roof sloped inward from the sides of the house, so they were collecting water from the whole roof area. Cool! I totally want one of those in my house... though of course it doesn't make sense in the climate of the Pacific Northwest.

From Naples

Naples - Archaeological Museum, More Resting

Got another late start today, so we decided to go to the Naples Archaeological Museum, which houses many of the best finds from Pompeii. Unfortunately, the secret room (which houses the erotic frescoes), and the mosaic room were both closed. However, there was still quite an impressive array of sculptures, frescoes, and a solar calendar laid out in the marble floor of one of the rooms upstairs. We especially liked the solar calendar, which we got to see in action as we arrived shortly before solar noon (around 1pm right now due to the "legal hour", which must be what they call daylight savings time over here).

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples