Boots in the Oven

I give up on numbering honeymoon posts. So, here's the one about leaving Positano.

While I think we would have been happy staying at the Villino delle Orchidee (good pictures of the little villa at that site, by the way) for years, we stupidly only rented it for a week.  On June 12th, it was finally time to leave Positano.

That morning, we packed up.

I am so proud of my modular packing!  Don't even get me started.  I can seriously wax rhapsodic for way longer than you'd care to listen about the merits of different packing systems.   Of course, now that I've discovered solid shampoos and conditioners from Lush, my packing is going to be even better!  Because I can escape the tyranny of the bottle! 

Flush with pride after a successful packing, it was time to clear out the kitchen.  For the most part, this meant finishing off the last little dregs of various liqueurs.

It's a tough job, but we couldn't have left that behind, you know?  Plus, it did make the trip from peaceful little Positano to crazy-ass Naples and then to slightly less crazy Rome less stressful than it otherwise could have been.

We strapped on our backpacks, took a couple farewell pictures of the apartment, grabbed the trash, and headed out the door.

I was almost, but not quite, sorry to see the last of the crazy stairs.  Of course, at the time I was unaware of Santorini's fairly stair-centric nature... but let me remain blissfully unaware for another day, 'kay?

We had our best view of Mt. Vesuvius yet, on our way to Naples to catch our train to Rome.

Though our first couple of days in Rome had been fairly cool, it seemed like summer had finally arrived - with a vengeance.  The train from Naples to Rome was ridiculously hawt.

Shiny girlie!

On the Rome end, our hotel was just a couple of blocks from the train station.  This was good, because we were catching a train pretty early in the morning to get to the airport - but also not so good, in that the area is apparently the toilet of greater Rome.  Oh, did it smell like pee... wheuuuu! 

We passed this sign on the way to our hotel.

I just took a picture of it because I grew up near the University of Chicago, so his was a name I actually heard a lot when I was a kidlet.  After I got back home, I found out that my grandparents were actually good friends with his widow!  (it's a small, small, world...)  For my feeble attempt at a translation, click on the picture.

Thankfully, the pee smell stopped at the gate of our hotel.  Praise Somebody!  (probably the hotel's proprietors?)

The hotel (hotel pavia) was nice, with a great location for our needs.  I'd stay there again.

Plus, it had a sweet view out the back, of what we're pretty sure are the baths of Diocletian.

We settled in, then debated over where to go eat dinner.  With only one night left in Italy before leaving for Greece, we really wanted to have a great meal.

Alas, we were to be disappointed.  The place we went, Arancia Blu, made us very, very sad.  The service came with an extra side of snoot, which we didn't order - I think it may have had something to do with the fact that we tried to order house wine, in a place that had a very extensive wine list on which they really prided themselves.  Or perhaps it was because everyone in there seemed to know all of the waiters and the sommelier, and we didn't.  Or maybe it was that the food tasted like hardboiled ass.  ('scuse my language.)

Whatever the reason, the meal was really disappointing.  Arancia Blu is supposed to be some of Rome's most innovative, and tastiest vegetarian cuisine, and it nowhere near lived up to that billing.

Of course, that was not the last time on our honeymoon that we were to be really disheartened by a meal.

We left Italy for Greece the next morning, and we were definitely sad to be leaving Italy behind.  Leaving just made us more determined to make it back, sooner rather than later - and we're working on it.

girlie

Italian Election Posters

While we were in Italy on our honeymoon, it happened to be election time for the EU.  This led to some interesting conversations with cabbies about the merits of Berlusconi.  It also meant that we got to see some terrific posters with giant pictures of, for the most part, hopeful-looking middle aged men. 

I couldn't help but be struck by how different most of the Italian politicians (at least in the area where we were staying) looked from our run-of-the-mill 'Merkan guyz.  We really saw some killer unibrows!  (Here is where I admit that I know pretty much nothing about Italian politics.  I better get to remedying that!)

I think the backdrop on this poster is pretty kewl.

girlie

Luna de Miel 7 - Capri

Normally, I hate the idea of a tour group.  We saw them everywhere in Europe, groups of people clumped together (yet somehow taking up whole streets), all wearing the same color shirt, following a chirpy person holding a giant umbrella, or large walking stick, or klieg light.

But, we really wanted to go to Capri!  We were running out of time in Positano, and Capri was RIGHT THERE, and we couldn't just leave the Amalfi Coast without heading over that way. 

There are several little stands down by the water in Positano, staffed by people wanting to jam you into a boat with 50 of your closest friends and then throw you off onto a crowded dock.

We talked with all of the tour operators going from Positano to Capri, and eventually settled on a small boat, with tours kept under 15 people.  (I think the tour was operated by Gennaro e Salvatore - there's actually a picture of a very similar boat to the one we were on if you follow that link.)  We made reservations for later in the week.

And it was GREAT.  Seriously one of the best days we had on our honeymoon.  We relaxed on the deck of a smallish boat, or possibly ship (yeah, not really nautical over here) and headed out to Capri with 6 other people - two British couples and a mother/daughter duo from Queensland.

Our tour guide was named Frank.  He told us that part of the secret of Italian cooking is to put a laurel leaf in everything, and it wasn't until we got to Santorini that we found out that laurel = bay leaf.  Dur.

He was a wonderful tour guide.  First we went through Capri town, tromping through gardens and oohing and aahing at beautiful buildings.

It seemed like there were actually more flowers (especially bougainvillea) in Capri than there were in Positano.

We didn't have too much time to spend in Capri town - but that was fine, as it was ridiculously crowded with giant tour groups.  I would definitely like to go back there and stay for a couple of nights, since it seemed like the island was sagging under the weight of all the day-trippers - it would be really nice to see the island at night.

We did go on a lovely hike, though.  Capri changes from town to rugged landscape with astonishing rapidity.

These fingers are really interesting - on the furthest one out (far left in this photo) lives a species of lizard found nowhere else.  Plus, you can take a boat through them, which we got to do!

We had a little time on our own, which Husbear and I used to hunt down and purchase Capri's famed basil liqueur, in a shop that had signs in Italian, English, German, and Japanese.  Good liqueur, though.

Since the tour was to Capri, we had to go to the blue grotto, right?  And we did.

And we took a really crappy picture of it.  If you were looking at this picture and thinking, "Hey, now I don't need to go to Capri, because I've already seen the blue grotto in all its majesty," well, you're wrong, though thank you!  True, you do pay an extra ten bucks to get in a little rowboat, and you have to lay down in the boat to go through the small hole that serves as the entrance to the grotto, but oh my god, was it completely amazing.  I went into a cave in Israel that was similar, but they had a constructed walkway with a railing and everything.  Somehow, in this grotto, even though you were surrounded by other rowboats full of people, it felt completely peaceful, and like it had always been like this.  And one of the girls we were with got to jump in (!) where she turned ghostly blue.

It was great.

After the blue grotto, we climbed back in the boat and headed over to the less famous, less touristed green grotto.  (I don't think there's a red grotto, or chartreuse, but if there was I would totally go.)

There's a cave-beach in there that you can swim to.  We all stripped down to our bathing suits and jumped in the water.  I was probably thirty feet or so (?) from the boat, when I felt something brush against my hand - I looked down and saw a little floaty pillowy tentacly thing, and then my hand started burning.  Lots.

I looked over to where the other people were swimming while also simultaneously treading water and trying to grow eyes on every side of my head, and noticed they were all heading past me to the boat rather quickly, all of a sudden.  Cries of "jellyfish!  Oh crapcrap ouch whatthehell!" may have been heard, and there could have been some frantic splashing.

I don't think I've ever swum a creepier thirty feet, desperately not thinking about where the jellyfish were, if they were moving fast, how many of them there were, and whether they were between me and the boat.  Luckily, I didn't get stung again - but once on my hand was enough.  Husbear got a good sting all the way across both of his shins.

The boat was prepared for a problem like this, meaning that at least we didn't have to pee on ourselves to stop the stinging pain (though now I hear that may not even work!).  They had a bottle of ammonia - yay!  We sprayed ourselves liberally and settled in for the ride back to Positano, where I couldn't get my hand wet for a few days without that weird stinging sensation returning.  Husbear toughed through, that psycho.

Jellyfish notwithstanding, I totally want to go back to Capri.  I feel like I was only there barely long enough to get a little taste of why people flock to the beautiful island.

girlie

Revolution (or honeymoon) #6: Ravello

We-eel, it's another Saturday afternoon and I'm hanging out at home...

I uploaded a bunch of honeymoon pictures to Flickr earlier this week, thinking that I might have some time to go ahead and put a post up, but I spaced a bit and never got around to it. 

After our relaxing beach day, we decided it was time for another day trip, this time to Ravello, a beautiful town set high up above Amalfi.  It's where Gore Vidal used to live.

Getting there meant a bus to Amalfi, then transferring to a bus to Ravello.  Getting on the Ravello-bound bus out of Amalfi was a little more difficult than we had anticipated; it seemed a lot of people wanted to accompany us up the mountain.  Interestingly, even though buses left Amalfi for Ravello pretty often, the line never seemed to get shorter.  Somehow, though, the actual town didn't seem that crowded, once we got there.

After giving our elbows a good workout, we were treated to a lovely view of the Amalfi Coast from a series of narrower and narrower mountain roads.  Husbear got a little carsick.

Our first stop after getting off the bus was Ravello's Duomo.  We read that it was restored in the 1980s to more closely match the pre-gothic historical appearance, though the church apparently dates originally to 1086.(!)

The bare outside of the church really appealed to me, as did the lack of overbearing decoration on the inside.  So many of the churches we've been to are just dripping with ornamentation - this one wasn't.

There were a couple of old pulpits inside the church, one of which I really liked.

This pulpit is from 1272, which makes the shape it's in completely shocking.  The lions were even anatomically correct (here's a link to our picture... not *too* offensive?), which I found odd.  It had a great mosaic of the story of Jonah and the whale on the side.  My apologies for the blurriness of the picture...

Our guidebook described what he's doing as "waving to his homies", which we found pretty apt.  Also, note the whale-what-looks-like-a-dragon.  Somehow, I don't think this artisan had ever seen a whale...

After looking through the Duomo's museum, which had some really interesting statues and sarcophagi, we headed over to Villa Cimbrone (their website actually has an interactive tour that you can take of the grounds - very nice!).  There are a couple of old estates in Ravello, Cimbrone and Rufolo, that both have large public gardens and beautiful on-site hotels. 

The walk to the villa was short, but through some lovely parts of town.  We walked past a lot of vegetable gardens and small family vineyards.

Though we couldn't really do any exploring in the villa itself (closed to non-guests), we did spend several hours rambling around the gardens.  The building did have some nice nooks and crannies that we were allowed to poke around.

This is the cloister in the center of the villa.

We took off for a quick ramble around the gardens.  The most stunning area was right at the edge of the cliff, which was lined with busts.

We played around a little - for some reason, being at the Villa Cimbrone made us all giddy.  Maybe it has something to do with it being the secret hideaway for the "elopement of Greta Garbo and Leopold Stowkowsky"?  love is in the air... da da da da da da da....

Continuing through the gardens, we came across a temple to Bacchus.  (you have to appreciate a good temple to Bacchus!)  It looked like people had been rubbing a certain area of the statue, perhaps for good luck?  This pose is my fault.

The gardens were just jam-packed with so many beautiful little gazebos and buildings!

Unfortunately, it soon was time to begin heading back to Positano.  We reluctantly left the Villa and began the walk back into town.  There, I saw a terrific poster advertisement:

Esplosiva, ladies!  We all need one of these!

We sadly boarded the bus back down the cliff to Amalfi.  We traveled through several small towns on our way back down, and in one of the towns, we saw this in the square:

I'm not sure if there was something in particular that they were commemorating or celebrating, but I could never have the patience to spend a lot of time making something like that, that will blow away in a stiff breeze... so, I applaud them.

Ravello was absolutely amazingly awesomely divinely beautiful.  I would love to go back and spend some more time there.  It is, however, a very small town; I don't think it would have been a good home base for our honeymoon trip.  As far as we could tell, getting anywhere would first mean a longish bus ride down to Amalfi, unlike in Positano, where you could directly reach many places.  Ravello would be a great trip for people who want to go one place and then stay there, relaxing.

Plus, they have what seems to be a great orchestral music festival there every year - I can't think of a better place to hear classical music!

OK - time to go use up some Lush stuff, maybe put up a review or two...

-girlie

I'm a little be-hind, short and stout

Yes, I know I'm getting kinda far behind on travel-blogging; we have 1,100 pictures of Florence, between the Husbear and his mom, that we have to go through.  I have people breathing down my neck at work, asking when I'm going to be bringing in pictures of the trip; it's not like it used to be, where you had to get your pictures developed in order to see them.  Now, I have all of the pictures sitting on the computer, and it will be a giant pain to edit them down and print them out.  We haven't even done that with the wedding pictures yet!

Interestingly (well, to me), the next honeymoon day I was going to write about was one where we actually forgot (gasp) to bring the camera.  Actually, technically, we did bring the camera that day, but left the battery safely charging in the bathroom of the little house.  Ah, well... I guess I'll have to rely on memories.  What are those?

I don't know if I was still jet-lagged on the Wednesday after we arrived in Positano; I just know that, once again, I woke up totally exhausted.  I think all the stress of the wedding planning finally caught up with me after we actually got married, which I hear is rather common.  All I know is that Husbear had to pretty much drag me out of bed every day.  Don't feel any sympathy for me; I know it sounds really whiny and wasteful to bitch about how sleepy I was in Italy (WAAAH!).  In my (admittedly weak) defense, it's not like the trips to Amalfi and Herculaneum were completely restful, right?

We decided to take it a little easier that day.  I slept late, while Husbear read out on the porch, and when I got out of bed we sauntered down to the beach to find a little red boat that we heard would take us to an awesome restaurant/loungy beach called Da Adolfo.  (Here's where I insert sadness that we didn't have the camera, since this restaurant (along with the entire Amalfi coast, really) is actually mentioned in one of those self-affirmation books called "1,000 places to see before you die".)

We waited a little while on the jetty, and met another just-married couple honeymooning in Italy.  They had made the interesting (well, crazy, in my mind) decision to DRIVE down to Positano from Florence.  This means they drove through Rome and Naples, not to mention the drive from Naples to Positano along the Amalfi coast highway, which is one of the more insane roads I've ever seen.  The husband said his knuckles were still white, and that he'd never listen to his travel agent again.  I couldn't believe the agent told them the best way to get from Florence to Positano would be by driving, when the trains for the most part run so easily and conveniently. 

A small boat came and picked the four of us up, and we made our way slowly down the beach a half-mile or so.  This was when we realized that the camera battery was back at the house.

Da Adolfo, as I remember it, looked like a large ramshakle house nestled down on a tiny beach with large cliffs immediately behind.  There was a large freestanding covered porch, with tables, and then a bunch of lounge chairs, some with umbrellas, down by the water.  We grabbed a table and perused the menu, which was written on a chalkboard by the house.  Lots of seafood, as I recall.  (Who'da thunk?)

We ordered a liter of white house wine, yum, and water; Husbear got a long pasta (tagliatelle?  fettucine?) with pesto, and I ordered mussels.

I've had an on again, off again relationship with mussels; I'm always certain I love them, and I'm invariably disappointed when I order them in restaurants.  They're usually mushy, or chewy, or really, really fishy.   

Not this time.  These were literally the best mussels I've ever had!  They were in a tomato/onion broth, which was perfectly flavorful, and which I sopped up with bread.  I even learned how to eat them using the shells, which was a lot of fun.  I almost cried when I finished the bowl.

After this wonderfully satisfying lunch, we waddled down the few steps to the beach.  Since it was late in the day, the proprietors didn't charge us for the use of a beach chair and umbrella, which was nice.  We ordered some more wine to enjoy on the beach, and went back and forth into the water when we started to overheat.  They had a lovely tall rock that the Husbear climbed up and jumped off, oh, ten or fifteen times.  We stayed for a few hours, relaxing and swimming.  It was exactly what we needed.

I don't know if Da Adolfo becomes insufferable later in the year, when the heat and the tourists really pick up; but in early June, it was absolutely wonderful.  I highly recommend it.

This entry has gone on long enough.  I was going to put up pictures of our meal that night, but frankly, our food photography has come a long way since then, and the pictures don't really do justice to the awesome meal we had at Il Ritrovo.  So, here are links to the pictures (Antipasti platter, husbear's smoked tomato pasta, my grilled prawns, and a picture of their house wine).  There is one picture that I have to include here, however; this magazine cover made my head spin when I saw it, before I tried to puzzle out the article inside.

The article was about Sorrento's yearly traditional Easter parade.  My apologies for my giant goofy grin-face.

laters!  -girlie.