Sorrento, Day 4 - Capri

We took a bus to the port at Sorrento and caught the hydrofoil to Capri - a smooth crossing, and it took about 25 minutes.

Once we'd disembarked, we bought tickets for the funicular railway to take us up to the maim square in the town.

The funicular is a kind of cable car but it runs along the ground (there used to be one at Vesuvius - hence the song 'Funiculi, funicula'). It takes 75 passengers at a time (counted through the gates as you stamp your ticket in the machine) and runs every 15 minutes.

Capri town is very pretty; we stopped for an ice cream and a wander round.

Then we caught the bus to Anacapri. It wairly scary if you were on the seaward side - very narrow roads, hairpin bends and sheer drops!

Had a wander round Anacapri, very pretty, with lots of bougainvillea.

Then we headed for the chairlift.

We'd been recommended to use this to visit Monte Solaro, the highest point of the island (559m above sea level). You travel 1211 metres, up an incline of 288 metres, at a rate of 1.5m per second (i.e. it's about 15 minutes each way).

Was pretty scary going up (hence the poor quality of this picture - I had one arm wrapped round the pole!).

But the panoramic views at the top were worth it.

Going down on the chairlift wasn't quite as scary as going up (though this pic shows the incline better than the 'up' pictures do).

We stopped for lunch at a caffè (and, as we were in Capri, I ordered pizza Caprese, i.e. with mozzarella, sliced tomatoes rather than sauce, and rocket).

Coming back to Capri was a little tricky - the bus we'd expected to catch to the port was full, and for some reason the next three 'every 5 minutes' buses to Capri town didn't turn up... But we were very lucky with the timing of the funicular, and made it in time for our return trip on the hydrofoil.

Then it was the gala night dinner - melon, mozzarella, tomato and bruschetta, followed by turkey, and then 'Vesuvius cake', which the children really enjoyed - a kind of baked alaska but with layers of ice cream.

Sorrento, day 3 - 10,000 steps in Pompeii (part 3)

Then we visited the Necropolis, which was built in the 1st century BC.

From there, we visited the amphitheatre; it was built in 70 BC and apparently is the oldest known and most complete Roman amphitheatre anywhere. Apparently there were riots there in AD 59, resulting in a 10-year ban on gladatorial contests; however, after the earthquake in AD 62, the amphitheatre was one of the first buildings to be restored, and the ban was lifted to help with morale.

It’s MASSIVE.

This is the entrance.

And this gives a bit more of an idea of its size…

After that, we took the main road back to the Porta Marina – you can see here where the pavements have been worn in the middle by people walking there (pretty much like the steps to English castles and English church towers).

On the way, we found another caupona (and you can see the storage jars in the room behind) and some lovely frescoes that can speak for themselves.

Sorrento, day 3 - 10,000 steps in Pompeii (part 2)

So we crossed the road (via the stepping stones, of course)

and visited the House of the Small Fountain. Very clever stuff, here – the roof slopes inwards so the rainwater drains into a pool in the centre, runs off into a tank below, and could be drawn off via wells. This particular fountain has mosaics with vitreous paste and seashells, and I thought it very pretty.

Next we visited the House of the Fauns. This was the largest house built in Pompeii in the 2nd century BC, and is 3,000 square metres. It gets its name from the statue (shown here with the very posh floor in the tablinum), and has the word ‘have’ (or ‘welcome’) picked out on the doorstep.

I also rather liked this mosaic and the floor.

Then it was down some side streets to see the brothel.

Apparently the frescoes showed which act was performed in which room (cough). But the rooms themselves were tiny, and as for the bed – not much room, there!



From there we visited the small theatre. I rather liked the red marble floor of the stage.

And then the large theatre, which was built on a lava flow in the 2nd century BC.

Then we saw the Temple of Isis

– and I rather liked this dolphin moulding.

But then it got very sad, because we visited the Garden of Fugitives. Giuseppe Fiorelli, who directed the excavations from 1860-75, took plaster casts of some of the shapes left by the bodies in the compacted ash. I think what upset me most was seeing the children. I could imagine being there, with the volcanic ash raining down, and not being able to save my children…

And when we turned round and saw Vesuvius looming over the vineyards, even though the volcano’s quiet right now (that’s a serendipitous cloud, not ash), it makes you realise just how little protection we have against nature.

the sweetest thing

Readers are just the best.

Had a pretty rough day yesterday (visit to Dad did NOT go well - clearly he wasn't pleased that I was away last week and decided to punish me by being absolutely horrible) but woke up to some lovely reader emails telling me they'd enjoyed my last book and wanted more.

You know who you are - so thank you. That helped a lot.

Other than that, this week, I've been doing mountains of laundry post-Italy and loafing with DH and the kids. We really enjoyed Toy Story 3 and have a long list of films we want to see, this summer. Plus there's the seaside...

Sorrento, day 3 - 10,000 steps in Pompeii (part 1)

We had planned to go to Capri but - despite a notice on bus stop saying that you could buy tickets on the bus, the driver said we had to buy a ticket in advance and wouldn’t budge. We'd already waited 20 minutes for the bus, and realised that we wouldn’t be able to catch a decent ferry, so we decided to visit Pompeii instead. Today's act on the train was a band with a singer-guitarist, accordion player and double bass player, and they were very good.



We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but Pompeii was much bigger than we'd expected. (I would advise (a) taking lots of water and (b) making sure you have VERY comfortable shoes – we were glad we did both.)



First of all we went through the Marina entrance and into the area with the basilica, the Forum and the temple of Apollo. This is the Forum, which was basically the law courts.


But the thing you’re really aware of is the looming presence of Vesuvius.

The architecture was stunning. In the second century BC, the Romans were able to build brick columns like this one. What incredible skill their builders had. (That’s the outer. As with all columns of this type, brick or stone, the core is rubble. Ditto the huge Norman pillars you see in English churches. Nerd alert over for now.)



Then we took a wander over to the House of the Tragic Poet (with the wonderful ‘cave canem’ mosaic – not a good pic because the sun was in the wrong position). There are lots of stray dogs in Pompeii (and Chloe wanted to take them all home); there’s a campaign for people to help adopt strays, and the mosaic is used as its symbol.



We noticed that the pavements are raised, and there are stepping-stones to cross the road. (I liked these very much, and we spent rather a lot of time crossing them.) You can also see the grooves from the wheels of long-gone carts that have worn away the paving stones on the road.



Then we visited the Forum Baths. The mosaics and frescoes can speak for themselves.





There are lots of little cauponae scattered around the town – basically these were bars where people would have a drink and buy snacks (which might be hot stew or a bowl of olives). The bars themselves were marble and utterly beautiful, and I rather fell for them.

Here we have a barmaid and her customer… (He said her prices were too steep and went to refill his water bottle from the free fountain in the street instead.)

Sorrento, day 2 - 5000 steps on a volcano

(Actually, it was more than 5000 steps – I'd changed the sensitivity of the pedometer and went a bit too far - but it’s a good enough title. And note that half these steps were uphill, on a skiddy surface, i.e. worth a lot more calories...)

On Tuesday, we took the train from St Agnello to Pompeii, where we were serenaded by a busker playing the saxophone really loudly (Chris grinned his head off when I surreptitiously switched sound off) - then caught a bus to Vesuvius itself. The road was very steep, with hairpin bends and lots of gorse and amazing views over the Bay of Naples.

Vesuvius is the only active volcano on mainland Europe (Etna and Stromboli are on islands); its last eruption was in 1944, but the most famous eruption was on 24 August AD 79 (more of which later).

The ‘walking paths’ to the summit start at 400m and are steep zig-zags. (They don't look that steep, here, but believe me they are!)

Plus, as you’re walking on little piece of lava, it’s quite slippery; so we needed the stout sticks we were offered.

To the right in this pic, you can see the scree on the side of the volcano. It's dust and pumice and lava - some of it's pink, some of it's grey, and some of it is silvery and glittery.

At the top (1267 m), the view of the crater was stunning.

I'm bright red here because of the sun. (Oh, all right, it was a long haul up those paths.)

You could smell the sulphur (as well as seeing the bright yellow deposits on the top of the crater) and we were thrilled to see the smoke coming out of the vents.

The views over the Bay of Naples were pretty stunning, too. You could follow the line of the last eruption by the green of the vineyards.

We bought some lava souvenirs, and the children were thrilled to be given some haematite by the boys who handed out the stout sticks.

We caught the open-top bus back; you could smell the sweet scent of gorse (which is so huge that it becomes a tree here, rather than a bush).

And in the town there were lots of gorgeous blue flowers.