Amalfi Coast - Day 4 - Pompeii

I first visited Pompeii 45 years ago. Then the ancient ghost city was almost deserted in the late afternoon when we arrived; there were no pedestrian sidewalks, no gift kiosks, no gelato stands. We wandered at will, looking into the ruins of houses and marveling at the plaster casts of bodies caught at the moment of death, mouths open in silent screams, limbs twisted, even a mother covering the body of her child.

• Today we visited the same Pompeii, but so different. First, there were at least 10,000 other folks there at the same time. The very narrow streets were packed with live humans. We had to wait in line just to gaze into the windows of what was once a house, or a shop, or a brothel. The plaster casts are all in acrylic cases behind a fence. Many of the homes are closed to tourists; many of the remaining columns are encased in metal supports, so weak that the danger of their falling has made the protection necessary. 

This wasn't actually disappointing, but I'm glad I saw it when I did, back in the early '70s. That memory still is transcendent to me.

Our trip, including time on the bus, took about six hours, so we were back in our hotel by midafternoon. After a brief toes-up, we ventured out to just wander. Looking for a few small things to bring home with us, we poked our heads into a small paper shop and a donkey store.

Paper, as I have mentioned, is very important in Amalfi Town. There is really only one actual paper manufacturing operation nowadays, but paper-making was once a thriving cottage industry here. Amalfians are quite proud of their beautiful papers, which they bind into journals, make into delicate cards, and use to fashion wonderful hats. The little shop we explored was our favorite kind in Europe - tiny, a little dark, and mostly deserted. The very nice lady who took our money and wrapped our purchase threw in a little scratch pad decorated with lemons. Have I mentioned that the Amalfi Coast is the lemon capital of the world? This, no matter what Minute Maid might have to say about it.

Donkeys are also a big deal. Real live donkeys are still used to haul building materials and other goods from suppliers to the villages. There are winding trails that no motorized vehicle of any size could maneuver, and the donkeys are still the most efficient tools available.  We have seen a number of them standing patiently by the roadside being loaded or unloaded. Consequently, the donkey is pretty much the Amalfi spirit animal, and they appear on everything from cups and plates to marvelous avant garde works of art costing many hundreds of Euros.  We now are the proud owners of two donkey coasters and a little sheet telling the story of the donkey in both Italian and English.  (The proprietor of the donkey store is prepared for most of the tourists who swarm these narrow streets.)

After our leisurely shopping, we chose a little sidewalk taverna where we had a coffee (me) and a beer (the hubs.)  The entrance to the little bar was framed in small lemon trees. We sat outside and just took in the passing crowd.  When we were rested, we walked back to our hotel, joining OLLI friends for a lovely dinner, then to bed. Tomorrow, Ravello!

A Walking Tour of the Amalfi Coast - Day 3 - Monday

After some very restorative sleep, we headed downstairs to the beautiful dining room here at the Hotel Residence for breakfast. So much delicious food! We love breakfast in Europe because there are always wonderful, unusual fruits and fabulous coffee.

Meeting across the street from the hotel on the promenade that overlooks the beach and the sea promptly at 9:00 a.m., we began our day as we usually do on these OLLI trips with a brief lecture from our wonderful instructor, Bill Walter. As a humanities teacher, a studio artist, and a maker of fine paper, Bill's knowledge and skills are perfect for this part of the world.  Amalfi was once home to many paper mills and some beautiful paper and paper artisanal products are still made here. There's even a paper museum!

We started, as Bill often does, with a discussion of color: the history of the use of color made from natural materials and the significance of some colors in ancient civilizations and in many religious practices. We have all been given some color samples (as well as drawings of various types of crosses and different architectural details), and we will look for examples of all of these as we tour around the Amalfi Coast.

We walked all the way to the end of the jetty that stretches some yards out into the Mediterranean. Here private boats are waiting for the day's customers. These are small boats (we even saw a cigarette boat) whose owners offer passengers a tour of the waters along the coast, providing a perspective of the towns from a truly different angle.  Along the edges of the jetty are gigantic stone objects that are manufactured to create a breakwater protecting the structure from the fury of the sea. They look like giant jacks straight from a monster child's game - all that is missing is a huge bouncy ball.  We learned that these are made in this shape quite purposefully; they don't roll with the tide at all.

Bill led the group on a walk through a portion of the town that gave us a bit of a different view, through some small piazzas and, of course, up and down inclines and stairways. These narrow passageways are actually the streets and alleys of the neighborhoods in Amalfi. There are no yards or lawns or gardens (although many may have internal atriums or garden areas, and there are many rooftop gardens at the highest levels.)  All I can think of is one would never buy many items at any store simply because they would have to be hauled up and down so many stairs!

We had ample time for lunch, which we enjoyed with friends, and after a brief rest period we set out to visit the little town of Atrani, just south and around a huge rock outcropping from Amalfi.  The plan was to take a city bus; after a lot of waiting and missing a couple of buses (they fill quickly), the hubs and I decided to walk.  The trip entailed hundreds of steps up and around and through the streets and alleys to the very top of the outcropping, then just as many steps down the other side to the little town. What a challenge! We figured, with the help of our trusty Fitbits, that this gave us at least 5,000 extra steps today. THEN - after a look around Atrani and a beer for the hubs and a Prosecco for me (because some sort of reward seemed appropriate), we walked back.  This time we took the lower route, which is much less strenuous but a lot more frightening - part of the walk entailed our hugging the railing along the main road while cars and buses roared by inches away.  Pedestrians get very little respect here.

And then, after another little rest, dinner.  What a treat! We tried one of Rick Steves' recommended restaurants, Taverna degli Apostoli (Tavern of the Apostles). It nestles just under the watchful eye of the cathedral, and probably was part of the cloister at one time. It certainly functioned as an art gallery in the first half of the 20th century, and has been operated by the same family as a restaurant since 1952. A small dining room (upstairs, of course) with art-covered walls and quiet jazz music, was a perfect setting for a remarkable meal with good friends.

Now, to bed. We have an early start tomorrow, when we will visit Pompeii.

OLLI Study Abroad, A Walking Tour of the Amalfi Coast - Days 1 and 2 - Travel and arrival

Traveling from Tallahassee to the small village of Amalfi in southern Italy isn't easy. Anyone who lives in the southeastern United States knows that it is almost impossible to fly out of that part of the country without changing planes in Atlanta.  To Atlanta's credit, throughout the years the folks in charge of the airport have made constant improvements mostly focused on the efficient movement of people. As a result, Atlanta has one of the best, most people-friendly operations in the world. Unfortunately, the leg from north Florida to north Georgia was not only the easiest, but also the shortest.

We flew from Atlanta to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. We've flown into and through Charles de Gaulle on two previous occasions, and the unpleasant memories from those experiences were pretty good predictors - it's still huge, crowded, and seemingly designed by an architect with a weird sense of humor. After 3000 steps as measured by my Fitbit to get from one gate to another - and keeping in mind that by the time we boarded for our flight to Naples we had been awake just about exactly 27 hours - we were definitely not in our best moods.

[A side note here:  the flight from ATL to CDG is around eight hours.  That included, this time, one large meal, one smaller meal, and two walks up and down the aisles to the restroom and beyond. The remainder of the time, we watched movies. AND - I watched what I believe to be the best movie of the year and maybe of the decade, "Bohemian Rhapsody."  The hubs had to restrain me a time or two - I think maybe my rendition of "We are the Champions" could be heard over the engine noise.]

Our little band of pilgrims was met in Naples by a young woman who loaded us onto a large bus for the trip to Amalfi.  Think of every trip you've ever made on a narrow mountain road with multiple hairpin turns; add to that the fact that the road is ONE lane; add to that the fact that Italian drivers park just about anywhere that's convenient, including at the side of this one-lane road that has a sheer rock face on one side and a tiny guardrail on the other and no shoulders; and then multiply the length of the trip by a factor of about five.  Add several tunnels that actually felt like safe havens in that they didn't feature a 500-foot plunge into the Mediterranean immediately outside our side of the bus, and add the cheery sound of the bus driver blowing his horn as he plunged around blind curves, and you will understand how the five-Euro tip we gave him seemed like a payment well-earned.  Suffice it to say that most of us came off that bus with some alacrity when we finally reached our destination.

And what a destination it is.  A beautiful small village with its city center just a few feet from the emerald Mediterranean waters, Amalfi stole our hearts. We are in a small hotel where we occupy 12 or so of the 29 rooms, each room with either a view of the sea or the city's main piazza. After we got settled in our rooms, we walked up one of the main streets (and in this part of the world, there is only up and down for streets), looking into shop windows and checking out restaurants.

We sat in the piazza and ate pizza, with a little glass of house red for me and a Peroni draft for the hubs, then walked back to the gelato shop just outside the hotel for a scoop of creamy lemon in a waffle cone.

And so to bed. Tomorrow - a walking history lecture from our instructor, then sketching and a visit to Atrani.  The weather is wonderful, and once we close our eyes for a few hours, we will be off again!

Here in early May of 2019, Mike and I are preparing for another Study Abroad trip with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Florida State University (OLLI at FSU).  This trip is called "A Walking Tour of the Amalfi Coast," although the "walking" part is probably a little misleading.  Of course we will walk, but that doesn't really mean that we will "hike."  We will stroll.  We will rest frequently.  We will poke around Pompeii and take frequent water breaks. And we will ride a lot - by bus, train, and ferry.

We will travel with a group of dear OLLI friends. We're all definitely in our third thirties, and some of us are halfway or two-thirds along in that span. We all have various physical complaints: sore knees, wonky hips, aching feet. We need naps from time to time.

BUT - we are avid knowledge seekers.  We drink in the scenery, frequently forgetting to take photos. We ask questions, driving local guides a little crazy.  We bring along an instructor on these Study Abroad trips, and Bill, our teacher for this one, is a doozy. He's even teaching a sketching class in May so that even the least of us (that would be me) will know how to maybe sketch an arch, a pediment, a wave, a rock.  I am determined. And Bill accompanied us to Florence, so he knows what he's in for.

We bring to this trip much group experience.  Some of these OLLI friends have been pretty much everywhere and their bucket lists are full of strange goals (visit a home in the Northern Territories and have dinner) and obscure destinations (follow the path of the film-makers in Bruges).  That fact makes this group an absolute blast to hang out with. And pretty much everyone is willing to sip an adult beverage as the day grows short, and to talk endlessly.  Talk.  That we are really good at.

First, of course, we must get ready.  We've already checked our medications and made sure we have an ample supply.  Good dog-loving friends will take care of our Trudy.  We have purchased new, very comfortable walking shoes (and have broken them in).  Now that we're a month out, we will let our bank know that we will be away.  We are watching the 10-day forecast for the Amalfi Coast and will get the last guess for the weather before we pack anything.  And we have tickets - for a play, for a tour, and maybe soon for a boat trip around the Isle of Capri.

My plan is to keep this blog going both during our prep time and, of course, while we are there. Frankly, it's the only way I can remember which days match which photographs. And there's just something about sitting comfortably at the end of the day

with a glass of wine and a billion-dollar view that really gets those juices flowing. 

So I have this new Chromebook ....

Sitting here on the porch at a rented house on St. George Island, Florida, I can see the Gulf of Mexico and feel the breeze, but I'm in the shade in a comfortable chair and typing on my new Chromebook. This is the best of all possible worlds for me - no sand. Once all I wanted was to sit under an umbrella a few feet away from the water all day long and just read. The hubs and I would bring water and the portable satellite radio, books and snacks, and there we would sit.  At lunchtime I would trudge back up to wherever we were staying and make lunch, pack it and bring it back under the umbrella. Sometimes we would nap.  We would take periodic walks. The hubs would lie out in the sun (yep). And everything - everything - would be sandy. Our feet (and consequently our flipflops, chairs, towels, water bottles and the portable satellite radio), our bodies under our suits, even our hair.

Now we sit comfortably on the porch. The hubs doesn't do sun anymore. We have plastic tumblers with actual ice. There's a bathroom just inside the porch door. But we still have our books, the breeze, and the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.

DAY 1 - Travel from Tallahassee to Vancouver, B.C., the beginning of "a remarkable journey through the stunning landscapes, charming towns, and beautiful lakes of the Canadian Rockies." (Travel brochure)

Annnnd here I am - on the road again, struggling with this very, very old Netbook, but determined to memorialize this trip which will give me a big checkoff on the bucket list - to put my old south Alabama feet (well-covered in warm socks and shoes) on an actual glacier. While we still have glaciers.

Mike and I joined 20 OLLI friends very early this morning at the airport, beginning an eight-day trip that will take us to Vancouver, then north into the Canadian Rockies. Since our old bones take a lot of waking up in the morning, we rolled out at 2:30 a.m. (OMG) and bonded with our Uber driver promptly at 4:20 a.m.  (Side note here:  Gertrude "Trudy" O'Farrell is spending the next eight days with Miss Jean, the Puppy Lady, which is roughly equivalent to a week at the Ritz-Carlton.for dogs.)

After two very smooth, on-time flights, Tallahassee to Dallas to Vancouver, we landed and made our way to our home for a little bit, the Westin Bayshore Vancouver.  Since we had had the following to eat since 2:30 a.m.:  four small pieces of melon; two packets of airline biscotti, approximately 1X2Xmicroscopic; an Egg McMuffin - and since it was now 4:00 p.m. Tallahassee time, we grabbed a little lunch.

It's a beautiful day in Vancouver.  They have what looks like lots of cherry trees here, all in almost-full bloom. There are jonquils in the medians. And it's cold.  Locals are basking in the sunshine, loving it - it's 40 degrees. In April.  What were we thinking? (Thinking it's April, which is a beautiful month with great weather, but maybe not in Canada.)  Anyway, we brought  lots of warm clothes, although in admittedly odd combinations, so we are ready.

But first, we're taking a nap.

(Photo - Tallahassee skyline.)

Fast approaching the end of my seventh decade, I muse about the last ten years of retirement. This morning it occurred to me: freed of a work life, a mothering life, a cycle of work-cook-sleep-shop-clean-organize, I’m not in a hurry anymore. Where once I ran errands at breakneck speed, impatient in traffic, choosing the drive-through every time instead of parking and walking in, now I drive the speed limit. I talk to people. I park at some distance from the front door of Publix just to make myself walk, and I return my shopping cart to the store every time. (Well, almost every time. If it’s raining I leave it in the cart corral.)

SO – here’s something I think I want to do. I want to memorialize what I’m going to call “Chats with Strangers.” I confess, I’ve never felt much interest in the stories of folks I don’t know – or maybe I just haven’t had the time to listen. But for the last ten years I have had many brief, one-time encounters with the folks who live around here, and I think I’ve realized that these little conversations have unlocked some pretty rigid preconceptions and made me a better, kinder person.

This one will be my story of “Standing in Line at the Bank.”

This morning I decided to take some rolls of coins to the bank and convert them to bills. I do this every so often, as soon as I accumulate around $40 in rolled coins. More than $40 worth begins to get pretty heavy, and I’ve had at least one occasion where I dropped a roll of quarters and the paper wrapper split open and quarters went everywhere. I lost some of them – that upset me far more than it should have. So now I’m more careful. But I digress.

Behind me in the short line was a very large man, both tall and broad. He had a belly, for sure. He was dressed in cargo shorts and heavy work boots with socks, the tops of which poked out of the boots. He was very tanned, almost to the point of looking like he was covered in dirt. His hair was long and wavy and tousled, and I figured maybe he had combed it when he got up this morning, and maybe not.  He smelled like sweat and smoke.

I have to mention in a little sidebar that I am awful about snap judgments based on appearances. You would think I would have learned at my advanced age to suspend that, but, sadly, no. So my instant thought was, “A bum. Wonder what he’s doing in the bank.”

He said, “I save $20 in quarters every day. I roll them up just like that,” pointing at the rolls in the little basket I carried the coins in to make sure I didn’t have one of those roll-dropping disasters in the parking lot.  “I do that and in December I take my kids on a nice vacation.” 

Trying to do the quick math in my head and coming up with $140 a week for 52 weeks but not getting any farther than that, I replied, “That’s really cool. Coins can add up.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I used to use them to buy Lotto tickets and – well, I don’t know what I used my change for, actually. It just kind of disappeared. So I decided to save them instead.”

At this point, I’m not sure whether to believe him because that’s a lot of quarters to have every single day, but I don’t care. We are having this conversation, and I’m hooked.

“I just try to bring them in every so often,” I said. “My husband and I just dump our change on the dresser and we have a little change counter thing that separates them into quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, and after a while, there’s some real money there.”

He nodded. “In December last year I took them to New York,” he said. “And we went over into New Jersey, stayed at nice hotels, had a really nice trip. And it didn’t cost me much extra money because I’d been saving those quarters all year.”

He gazed out the window of the bank. “Now if I could just quit smoking,” he said. “That would be some real money.”

Aha, I thought. A smoker. Figures. (Remember my bad habit of jumping to conclusions.) “Yeah,“ I said. “That would be almost like a raise in pay.” (Thinking to myself, wonder if he has a regular job.)

At that point, both tellers beckoned and we each walked up to a window. “It’s gonna rain today,” he said to the teller.

“Well, Paul, if you say so, I believe it,” she responded.

Hm, thought I. She knows him. Regular customer?

“How do you want this?” she asked.

“Whatever,” he said. And as she counted out the bills, I’m figuring he’s just cashed a check.

“You know,” she said, “if you want to know about the weather, ask a yard man.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I kind of want it to rain and I kind of don’t. I’m so backed up.”

Okay, I think, he has a lawn service. Hm.

Paul (now I know his name) told the tellers to have a nice day, and left.

I cashed in my rolls of coins, got some more penny wrappers from the teller, and turned to leave. “We had a half inch of rain at our house last night,” I said.

Paul’s teller sighed. “Jealous,” she said. “We had hardly any.”

My teller said, “We didn’t have any at all.”

“My yard is much happier today,” I said. They both smiled. “Y’all have a nice weekend, now.”

“And you do the same,” they said, almost in chorus.

As I backed my car out to leave the parking lot, I stopped to let the driver ahead of me pull out. It was Paul. He was driving a giant pickup truck with a magnetic sign on the door, and pulling a large trailer loaded with landscaping equipment. The trailer had a sign, too. I couldn’t quite make it out, but the whole rig was pretty impressive. “You are an idiot” I said to myself. And I wondered where Paul and the kids are going this year. And I hoped he could beat that smoking habit; that would mean a few more dollars for that vacation.