2019.April 15-19: Vietri Sul Mare, Amalfi Coast (Gulf of Naples, part 2)

first view of Salerno's port from the train

After Herculaneum, we hopped a train to Naples then to Salerno then to Vietri sul Mare -- amusingly, there are two sets of train tracks in Salerno, the ones for long distance trains (1,2,3,..) and the local trains (1TR,2TR,3TR,...) on the same level, just adjacent. So that 3TR is next to 1.

The Amalfi Coast is maybe 40-60 minutes by train from Naples, the southern coast of a peninsula whose northern side is host to Sorrento and whose finger of land points out to Capri.

The red balloon is at Vietri Sul Mare, where we stayed in a nice place we found on Booking dot com.

sunset over Vietri sul Mare

BEST PART: The host had tons of great advice (restaurants, website of regional hiking club for routes, etc) and this made what could have been a really frustrating experience something we could navigate. 

Example 1 of where you need to know someone:
There are three kinds of bus tickets relevant from Vietri Sul Mare, each in a different zone and bought from a different company (sold by the same people, at least):
1. Vietri sul Mare to from Salerno
2. Vietri sul Mare to from Amalfi, and towns in the Vietri district
3. Amalfi to from any other town nearby, or between towns kind of near Amalfi (this region belongs to Naples, probably )
Having someone explain this who could speak English was really useful.

Example 2:
The Vietri sul Mare train station does not have a ticket machine. 
I asked our host, and he wrote back (after a pause, where he had phoned ahead actually :) ) that we needed to go to the newsstand (Edicola) and we could buy our train tickets there.

PRO TIP: always go to the news stand (Edicola) or Tabbaco store (Tabacchi) for your train/bus/metro tickets. I traveled home on Easter Sunday and skipped hours of lines of tourists at the 2-3 ticket machines by going to the Hudson News in the station. 

Why Vietri sul Mare? (Someone else's reasons, similar but different)

1. Being "not Amalfi", it is more affordable 
2. Awesome reviews for the apartment we stayed in 
3. Reachable by train (the only town on the Amalfi Coast where this is true); it is about 40 Minutes to Pompeii by train 
4. Quiet, charming artisan community 
5. good food at good prices 
• Recommended by our host, Carmine: da Giufe 
• discovered via tripadvisor, Il Principe e la civetta

Food at " Il Principe" -- if you are anywhere nearby, you should go to this restaurant. 

We ate there twice. 

The first time for someone's birthday. Mixed appetizer, I had the swordfish, he I think the catch of the day (poached fish of some kind, perfectly cooked). Dessert included the ricotta pear cake, which was apparently invented by a chef in Amalfi. I was a little grumpy as we had asked for wine and gotten a bottle instead of two glasses. 

The second time we ate there was after a long hike (followed by a fruitless trek down to the Marina and back, where the recommended restaurant was closed), and I had my grumpyFace on as I walked in. The chef asked what was wrong, and we said "long day". We ordered the appetizer again (asking them to mix it up), each a glass of wine, as well as mains, and they threw in a big bucket of mussels (I like mussels, and these were the second best I have ever had (best was at a malaysian restaurant in Vancouver)) with the appetizer (I think because of grumpyFace plus inhaling the appetizer, which was really sweet of them). Left very full and very happy :) 

Review from TripAdvisor:

"Best Restaurant in ItalyThis was one of the BEST meals of my entire life (and I'm married to a chef)! The only thing better than the food, was the service by the Chef and the wonderful atmosphere. [...]. He wants you to have the best experience possible and is happy to share his passion for food with you [...]Everything was beyond incredible! I cannot recommend this wonderful place enough, by far the best meal of our two weeks in Italy! Definitely make sure to have a meal here when visiting Amalfi coast!"

 Vietri sul Mare is a town full of incredibly talented ceramic artists. Ceramics decorate everything, and stores advertise that they will ship your purchases home for you.

Tiles decorating the stores:

 

The largest ceramic store (and also workshop -- pinto is an example, but not the largest) is at the end of the main street, Ceramica Artistica Solimente. The building reminds me of work of Gaudi:

Gaudi-esque face of the factory/store

fountain across the street

view inside Ceramiche Solimente

• Previous post about Herculaneum
• Next post about hiking along the Amalfi Coast

2019.April 13-14: Herculaneum (Gulf of Naples, part 1)

20 years ago, I missed out on our Latin Class trip to Italy (Rome! Pompeii! Herculaneum! Probably other stuff I since forgot), and finally got to make up for it. Also, given it has been 20 years, apparently a lot of excavation work has happened in between, so maybe it is even better in many ways now that it would have been then.

[For those not in the know, I had three years of Latin in High School and a fourth in college. For some reason, Latin clubs are really popular in Texas and get-togethers involving everything from written exams in various areas to quiz-show style teams ("certamen" -- i was the mythology expert) as well as how-tos (wear a toga) or theater pieces (in English, with classic themes)]

First stop: Portici/Herculaneum (Present day: Ercolano)

TL;DR if you have to choose one of the two (Pompeii or Herculaneum), choose Herculaneum. Quality over quantity (as our guide said).

Worried somewhat about the notorious crime in Naples, we planned the trip to fly in/out of there and not actually spend any time in the city. So we stayed in Portici. The place we were staying suggested we could pay 30 Euros (and save an hour time) and be picked up from the airport.  The view from the hotel room was nice, and the recommended restaurant for dinner was quite good.

Sadly, we seemed to be located across from (but 3 (very tall) floors up) a night club with incredibly high quality speakers which blasted music from around midnight/1am until 4 or 5am and we slept terribly.

The weather prediction the next day was rain, so we had cancelled our pre-booked tour for the afternoon. The morning dawned reasonably clear, so we headed to the site and there were people standing by the line, advertising tours in various languages. We expressed interest in English, and in the end we were 10 people.

Pompeii and Herculaneum - what happened? In 79 AD (we are pretty sure now it was October, not August), Vesuvius erupted in a rather catastrophic way, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum (and some of the other area neighboring current-day Naples). Pliny the Elder told his son (Pliny the Younger) to stay behind while he checked it out, and our account of the whole thing comes from the younger Pliny's writings,   including some notes salvaged from his father's trip.

Pliny the younger was in Micenum (left finger of land). Pompeii is the lower right of this picture, and Herculaneum (Ercolano) is halfway between Naples and Pompeii on the coast:

Why has everyone heard of Pompeii?

• It was excavated first, and much longer, and 
• (as a result) a lot of the good stuff was already taken away during the reign of the Bourbon King(s). 
• It is also much bigger.  

It was a town of middle class, new upper class, and tons of workers.
Herculaneum was a resort town with nice weather.

first view of Herculaneum site

Back to that first point -- Pompeii was covered in incredibly hot ash, effectively vaporizing the inhabitants. Herculaneum was spared a few days (and some of the temperature) due to winds pushing things over to Pompeii. So Herculaneum has actual remains of peoples' bones, which was useful for figuring out interesting stuff like -- that the lead in the pipes was not being absorbed into their bodies (theory being the calcium lined the pipes so quickly, it formed a protective layer)).

Oh, right! Pompeii has stepping stones. Herculaneum does not because they had actual sewage systems/pipes. They also all could afford pipes bringing water from the fountains into their fancy houses.

There is also a theory that it was not the gasses that killed the people of Herculaneum, but their blood boiling in their veins. Grim. This analysis was done using what we have of their bones.

Herculaneum was covered more aggressively with lava, Pompeii was ash and a little lava, which makes Herculaneum much much harder to excavate, but what is excavated is well preserved. E.g. the second floors of some buildings, and even some wood.

Example: shutters and doors of still-extant wood:

You can see how much material was dropped in the eruption, because we were standing on it, looking down. I think 25 meters?  Here, Vesuvius is behind the clouds in the upper left.

what used to be the edge of Herculaneum, facing the sea

Back to the bones, and the timing of the eruptions. People in Pompeii died here, there, everywhere. People in Herculaneum died at the sea, having all fled to the docks hoping the escape by ship. These are where the ships were, and they found bones (replicas are there now (that is what everyone is looking at), the real ones elsewhere):

Down by the bones is a swamp with a cacophany of frogs.

Some insights into Roman construction and life

1. Cheap housing for workers 

Our guide explained some interesting things about construction (better preservation = more information), including that while the fancy villas were stone, the occasional building in Herculaneum which was built to house workers was built of much less quality materials, basically like "half-timbered homes" (Fachwerkhaeuser) in Germany, with wood frames and kind of mixed materials between as cheap insulation.

I thought this was cool, as it to me it suggests that it is not so much that people forgot architecture during the dark ages, but only remembered how to build stuff for the lower classes (which maybe involved fewer people/was built faster).

Example:

workers apartments in Herculaneum

2. Pyramidal shaped building blocks , Marble-clad columns

There had been an earthquake in 62 AD which destroyed a fair amount of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and astonishingly, people came up with some interesting ways to deal with future earthquakes. The stones used were sort of tetrahedrons, on their sides, and concrete was poured between (Reminder: Romans invented concrete). Left picture, with our guide explaining the blocks.
I enjoyed that the columns (unlike in Greece) are brick and mortar, covered with marble (right):

3. "Pompeii red" -- maybe sometimes just oxidized ochre

There is a theory that the infamous "pompeii red" is the result of the oxidization of yellow paint (in at least some cases). You can see here the yellow paint which sort of morphs to red about a meter off the ground (warm air rises, makes sense original color might stay close to the ground).

5. Pricing via color of the amphora (pretty clever)

6. Penises as good luck symbols (here in the baths):

 Some beautiful things still there

This was a temple dedicated to the cult of Augustus (see: emperor worship) which we know because there is a plaque on the wall stating as much. It is a good example of the really well-preserved frescos which are still on the walls (in Pompeii, you often need to go to the museum in Naples (former residence of the Bourbon Kings, who ran off with the stuff 3 centuries ago)). Note: women were painted white, dudes painted brown. Brown dude here is Hercules.

This is another nice example of the kinds of mosaics/art still preserved on-site in Herculaneum:

Lots of floor mosaics. Here is an entryway. You can see the compluvium (the buildings were open, letting light, air and water in, which collected in a small pool that overflowed into a reservoir under the floor):

To the next post: Vietri Sul Mare, where we stayed during our week of hikes along the Amalfi Coast.

2019.02.21-25. Valencia, Spain for a long weekend

We went to Valencia, Spain for a (blues and fusion) dance weekend. The dancing and music was mostly meh, although Saturday night was quite good. Since we only had the pass for the parties/dances, we were able to spend the days playing tourist.

Thursday: Arrived in Valencia, had amazing dinner at Huerta y Huerta. 

We were 6 people. 3 of us split this menu (3 appetizers, 2 mains, and a plate of 3 mixed desserts for 25€), an extra appetizer and an extra main. Was delicious. 

Friday: Headed to Sagunt(o) to hike.

Sagunt/Sagunto is a town about 30-45 minutes from Valencia by train (2 trains an hour, either direction, about 5 Euros each way). They have a castle/fortification which you can walk up to and around. There are some mountains nearby, but we felt sufficiently challenged by the castle.


The old town of Sagunt was very pretty and quaint and full of buildings for sale (which seemed rather sad -- I am guessing people are moving into the modern apartments on the other side of town). First time seeing a jade plant blooming (left pic), and that was an impressively tall cactus (right):

One thing rather interesting was the intact Jewish cemetary adjacent to/just below the fortification. They mentioned that they had two types of burials there, one being in fake caves, which you can see here on the left:

It's a bit hard to read, but it really looks like that stone at some point said "FORUM".  (The fortress of course started life as a Roman structure, so there are some semi-reconstructed Roman ruins)

reconstructed Amphitheater on way up to fortress

Here are more gratuitous pictures of the awesome views from the fortress. Including the mountains which we thought were right nearby and would offer a good hike. We were pretty warm in long pants and shoes, and it would take another hour easily to get to the base of the mountains, which would mean coming back might happen after dark (not interested in doing that).

the mountains where there is good hiking

Some pictures from Old Town Sagunt. This reminds me of the Spanish Colonial kind of feel of old town Albuquerque:

I really liked the texturing of the brick on this building (the individual bricks kind of lean out or are recessed): 

Friday Afternoon: Walk to and along the "River" (Jardin de Turia)

In 1957 there was a really devastating flood (e.g. the bridges over the river were a meter under water), and after that, Valencia rerouted their river to run south of town, split in two, one artery going to irrigation. Originally the town was going to replace the river with a highway, and much protesting led to them making it a very nice part instead.

weird trees

 I was very impressed by this cross-stitch-on-wire in town:

Dinner at Flammam Gastrobar (outside of the desserts, just as good as Huerta y Huerta).
We had wine from a grape we had never heard of (Bobal). It was fruity with a tannic finish.

"It is native to the Utiel-Requena region in Valencia, Spain. The name derives from the Latin bovale, in reference to the shape of a bull’s head. It is grown predominantly in the Utiel-Requena DO where it represents about 90% of all vines grown, and is also present in significant quantities in Valencia, Cuenca and Albacete. "

Saturday: "Free" Walking Tour of Valencia. 

The standard basics tour. There is also a tour for just the murals, which I would do if/when I return to Valencia. That and/or the boat tour of Albufera, the swamp/lagoon where the rice for paella is grown.

The tour started in the town square (which has been since the foundation of Valencia, the town square). We learned that when the Christian King James I conquered Valencia in 1258 or so, he was pretty pissed off at the Muslims he had just bested, and ordered all of their buildings to be torn down (unlike Cordoba, Granada, etc). As a result, there are no buildings from that earlier period, just the ones built starting in the 13th century (e.g. the Church). 

The city had flourished under Muslim/Moorish  rule, and in the 1st century afterwards the population doubled -- because it had been made the capital of the kingdom around it, and capitals are centers of commerce. They built walls around the expansion in around 1400 or so, which were then torn down in the late 1800s when the town needed more space (and more space to build) and the silk trade suddenly did rather poorly and tons of people were unemployed. The solution was to employ everyone to tear down the walls, which they did with gusto and within 2 years. 

This gate and one other were not torn down because it was a jail at the time: 

It turns out that there is a rule in Spain that when they rebuild something old, they have to make it clear that the new stuff is, well, new. The way this was done on one building (the former Silk merchant headquarters) was by carving a bust of Chewbacca between the busts of people:

Chewie

Nearby the Silk Merchant building is the largest covered market it Europe, and I think maybe also the longest/continuously running market in Europe, the Mercado Central.  It is open 07:30 to 14:30/15:00.  We were allowed a 15 minute break during the tour, and sped through it, buying several tiny servings of snacks for a quick lunch on the go.

The building on the left is the narrowest building in Valencia -- 107cm. It houses a family of four. The daughter's confirmation dress was too big to put on in the house, they had to dress her in the streets. Picture on the right is a cool tower. I assume the funky pattern has to do with Spain's rule about making renovations obvious: 

Stuff we learned:

• There is a bat on the coat of arms of Valencia because supposedly while James I was working on attacking Valencia, some of the then-inhabitants of Valencia snuck into camp to try to kill him. Supposedly a bat was startled by them and knocked into a bunch of stuff in the King's tent, waking him up, and he then killed the would-be assassins with his sword. 
• The Cathedral took something like 3 centuries to build, and has 3 architectural styles 
• There is a water tribunal which dates back to the Muslim/Moorish period and still runs now.
• one person per irrigation canal to serve on the tribunal 
• farmers bring in their disputes/complaints, and get a (legally binding!) judgement within an hour or less   

Sunday: Short walk around in the sun. 

 There was a sort of odd dance party something going on on Sunday, so we walked to the venue to check it out. It had the kind of sound you would expect on a beach in summer, but inside and with the bass turned up too high. There was also a drone flying around (filming, I think). Short video on the right. View from the dance venue ("The Palace of Arts and Sciences") on the left:

Monday: returned to Germany.