near Sorrento, Italy

Our all day and overnight flight from Austin to Atlanta to New York to Rome had us arriving at 9 am. We were worried about making our international flight because the Delta counter agents in Austin and Atlanta were unable to give us boarding passes, and after we boarded the Atlanta flight, the pilot made an announcement that the New York airport was experiencing weather difficulties. The pilot went on to say that we had a forty minute delay, originally a three-hour one. Our flight had some lag time built it, and a two-hour layover in New York, but without boarding passes we were worried about the status of our connection. It turned out that the weather cleared in New York, and our late arrival in New York was also met with a later departure for Rome.

Glen took advantage of the international flight to enjoy the Glenmorangie single malt scotch, which may have come close to being his undoing. Something, eaten or breathed, gave him an allergic reaction. At least he thought it was an allergic reaction. It had all the symptoms of a cold, yet lasted for only a 24-hour period. Maybe food poisoning? All he knew is that the scotch, which he usually enjoys on a flight, did not make this one any smoother.

We arrived in Rome at Leonardo Airport (from John F. Kennedy to Leonardo da Vinci--the differences in the ages of the two countries are striking, no?) and got our little Fiat Punta with no trouble. Driving, which Jill had worried a bit about, was actually pretty easy even when we got lost a bit. Once you adopt the odd mix of defensive and offensive driving that Italians do, it is not bad. That, and the fluid way of passing they have, particularly down the middle of the road (over the striped line) into on-coming traffic. This is helped by wide lanes and very small cars. But, it all seems to work and you just scoot over when they go to pass and the on-coming car scoots over and no on gets concerned.

Parking, on the other hand, is a mysterious science. Both tasks require a trusting familiarity with different signage, but whereas one can feel comfortable following the example of the Italian driver, the Italian parker is such a scofflaw that we never could determine when a sign meant what it says. We also purposefully avoided the congestion of the major cities--Rome and Naples--but were forced to traverse thoroughly some of the smaller, yet still highly congested, principalities. Basically, the trick is to be an aggressive, defensive driver. It seems contradictory, yet it seems to work. If you aren't aggressive enough, you are a hazard to yourself and the other drivers, but the most important thing is to be alert to others' actions.

We knew that we didn't want to stay in Naples, for the more reasonable priced hotels/pensiones were in the less desirable parts of town. We selected Sorrento because it had some interesting aspects in itself. The trouble turned out to be the off-season. Sorrento is so arranged around the sun-worshipping Brits and Francs that it closes in the winter months. The three hotels that we had selected from the guidebooks were all closed. Those that were open were the four-star establishments with their four-star pricing. We headed back towards Naples, stopping here and there to check prices until we lucked onto the Hotel Elisabetta--clean, pleasant, a little basic, but open! We were not sure if the Hotel Isabetta was "fully" operable, but they were able to furnish us with a clean, heated room with a private bath for 60,000 lira--an extremely reasonable price for the accomodations, but it was, after all, the off-season. As we checked in, there was a party going on in their dining room--we think it was for a couple celebrating their anniversary. They brought us a complimentary caffe--what Americans would call espresso--probably because we looked as frazzled as we felt at this time (as Jill said about herself, "whose idea was it not to have the first night's lodging already reserved?"). Dinner (which we ate at the Hotel) was very nice, with steamed mussels for antipasto (ordered by accident/random), followed by a pasta dish (oil and garlic sauce for Glen), then a secondo piatti of a variety of fish (served cold). The wine was a selection of the house--this was indeed the truest sense of house wine that we have ever had in a restaurant. When Glen asked for the house selection, the waiter/manager pointed at himself and asked, "Mio?" to which Glen replied in the affirmative. It came in a green bottle with no label, full of a wonderful red wine that had the taste of just being crushed. Jill thought it had a very interesting flavor, no subtlety, a totally open wine. After that, we were ready to call it an early night. We had, after all, been flying all night, driving all day, and had had little sleep.

On Monday, we woke at 7 am and experienced the joy of the European bathroom. The toilet is sans seat--we were too embarrassed and naive to ask if this was an oversight, and there is the ubiquitous bidet, of which Americans are clueless about. Then there was the shower head that is hand-held and no shower curtain. Jill went ahead and did the shower thing while Glen settled for a bath.

The majority of the day was spent touring Pompeii. We visited a Supermercado to get bread, cheese, antipasto (pickled veggies) and wine, which was for lunch later. If you really want to discover a country, check out its grocery store. Glen finds them fascinating. In Costa Rica, the large grocery store is mostly unheard of, people picking up their needs at something the size of an American 7-Eleven. In Italy, the supermarket seems to be catching on, with most everything there on offer. The bread and cheese counter was full of the most appetizing items, but Glen was drawn to the selection of pickled vegetables--antipasti. Of course, the wine selection was completely daunting ("where to start, where to start"), and the "colas" always have some unusual varieties beyond the ubiquitous Coca-Cola. Jill found a canned bourbon and Coke, and the fizzy orange drink that we had read about in Lisa St. Aubin de Teran's book.

Pompeii was amazing. We parked outside what turned out to be the east entrance to Pompeii--most guidebooks are arranged from the west entrances. Actually, the proximity of the Pompeii ruins to the autostrada surprised us, as well as the sheer size of the site itself. Although Jill had learned about the disaster at Pompeii--buried under ash by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius over 2000 years ago--and had seen some of the pictures of the site, nothing had prepared us for walking around the ruins themselves. We parked, bought a tour book (we were glad we did, it was very useful), and walked in. We started by entering the Ampitheater, and quickly realized just how much in the off-season we were in. There was no one at the entrance to the site but us, only workmen at the amphitheater, and only 4 to 6 groups of tourists (French school children, two Asian groups, maybe Japanese, and an American group in sweats). The second surprise was how large it was. The town had held 20,000 inhabitants and was very prosperous. It had a Forum area, an amphitheater (both of which held about 20,000 people), theaters, small shops, fancy houses, etc. All these survive today in various states of ruin, many quite intact and complete (and beautifully restored). The houses contain walls which were painted, some with elaborate murals (see the picture on page 1). These paintings survived, some very well, and they are absolutely amazing. To think of how these houses looked, with columns, facades, paintings, courtyard gardens, it must have been beautiful when it was destroyed,

Pompeii was striking because of both its size and its completeness in terms of both types of buildings and their remains. What surprised Glen, more than the buildings themselves, were the streets, including the ruts made by chariot and cart wheels, and the stepping stones (early zebra crossings) because the streets didn't drain. And then there was the House of Ventii (which one of the guidebooks subtitled the 'House of the Dirty Pictures')--the first thing to greet you upon entering is the god of fertility who has a pulley-type deviced attached to uphold its member. The ancients were as graphic as us moderns, in their own media.

The theaters were also interesting--not much has changed in theater design (and colisseum design), except in size and materials. Well, maybe more, but there seemed more resemblances than differences. The arena had held sporting events, including gladiators, animals, intercity contests. So great were the contests between cities, there were occasionally fights in the stands between fans of rival opponents. The site and shape and events in the theater and arena make you realize that things have not changed much since 2000 years ago and that a lot of our architecture and cultural events can be traced back to Roman times.

Jill saw several birds there (a Robin and a Black Redstart). They were, not surprisingly, the kind that nest in rock crevices and sides of buildings. It was very neat to see a real Robin (as opposed to an American Robin). He was very bold, very puffed up in the cold, but unfortunately the picture Jill took of him did not turn out (for the next trip, a better camera is going to be a necessity).

It was also very interesting to see the casts of the bodies of Pompeii residents when they died. (Pompeii was destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.) Since the town was covered in 15-20 feet of ash, everything was preserved, including the spaces of the bodies. From the positions of their bodies, they all look horror stricken or are trying to cover their faces. One is sitting down on a chair or a bench, hands held to their head, as if wailing. Perhaps an old person unable to run, or a young person too frightened to move. The reason Jill had wanted to come to Pompeii was that she learned about it in 3rd or 4th grade. One of the pictures was of a dog killed by the ash, with a raisin cookie in its mouth. We didn't get the see the dog (it is probably in the Naples museum with much of the former art of Pompeii) but we were glad it attracted us here. Pompeii is a place without words to describe it, and an insightful look into Italian/Roman times around 0-100 A.D.

One of the other things we saw in Pompeii was a house that was owned by one of the senators who assassinated Caesar. Other references to people and places recalled Caesar, Caligula, etc. These people seem like fiction to us, not history. To be in a place where people related to these figures actually lived was eerie.

After Pompeii, we ate our lunch. Then we drove up to the Villa of the Mysteries, to which our tickets to Pompei also gave us entrance. This villa outside Pompei was also preserved by the disaster, and provides an example of the Roman country squire's residence, complete with recreations of farm equipment and a strange group of paintings in which a bride is initiated into the rites of Dionysus.

From Pompeii, we went up to the origin of its downfall, the volcano Vesuvio. We drove the car up most of the way, and finished the ascent with a 500 meter climb to the crater's edge. It only smokes a little now (used to steam continuously until less than 50 years ago) and doesn't seem to be building much of a new cone. Glen was hoping to gain a bird's eye view of Pompeii, but unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the mountain and visibility was somewhat limited. The climb itself was quite tough, given the bracing wind and the steep slope. The view of Naples and the sight of steam within the crater reminded us that Pompeii could easily be buried again, along with an example of more modern civilization. But it is impressive and active, nonetheless--and Jill could not quite understand why people would live in its shadow with such a graphic reminder as Pompeii being excavated so close by.

That night, we drove into Sorrento and ate at Zi Ntonio, which we probably would have avoided given a better choice, but we found it getting late and we were getting crabby at each other. At Zi Ntonio, the menu came in both Italian and English. That should have served as our first warning. The second was the raised eyebrow as we followed the primo partito with a pizza margherita order. The antipasta was a Capri salad--a tasty dish of some kind of cold cooked fish with fresh tomato and basil in oil. Jill got pasta with salmon, which turned out to be in a white cream sauce that was akin to the American version of alfredo. Glen's primo course was a risotto di piscatore--mussels, clams, and a crawfish-like thing with risotto and tomatoes. Both dishes were quite sizable, and it was impossible for us to do justice to the pizza after that. We had been led to believe by the guidebooks that the courses would have been a little smaller, but felt that this restaurant catered more to the expectations of Americans.

To drink with dinner, we had the wine of the region: Lacrina Christi del Vesuvio. A white wine with an interesting dry taste. Not bad at all. We should also mention the acqua minerale, an almost required part of the dinner table, even more so than the wine. You can have the water with or without fizz--we found that we preferred without fizz, which makes it resemble tap water more.

Driving in Italy at night--returning to the hotel--is almost easier than during the day. At least, it's easier to determine an active car versus one that is simply parked where it shouldn't be by headlight activity.