Italy Travelogue
Copyright 2003
Jeffrey Valjean Cook
Featuring Jeff Cook,
Sylvia Aroth, and Mika Cook
20 June 2003 – 17 July 2003
This travelogue is dedicated to my mom, Patricia (Pat) Ann Lowe-Jones,
who originally intended to come with us on our trip, which would have been her
first trip outside of the American continent, and also to my oldest sister,
Debra (Debbie) Ann Cook-Cummings. Mom was unable to come because Debbie died on
9 May 2003 of brain cancer, brought on by inflammatory breast cancer contracted
three years earlier, and then my youngest sister Valerie Lynn Cook-Custer was
scheduled for abdominal surgery on 9 June 2003, and mom had to be there for
her. Last we checked, the day of
our departure, Valerie had been home from the hospital for a week and was up
and walking around and continuing to get better. We expect a successful and
complete recovery for Valerie.
Most prices mentioned in the travelogue use the symbol “€” that stands for
the new unified European currency, called the “euro.” At the time of writing,
the exchange rate was about 1.2 dollars per Euro. This makes things more expensive now for Americans, because
the exchange rate was the other way around (1.2 euros per dollar) not
more than 6 months ago.
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Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
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June 20
L.A.->Italy |
June 21 |
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June 23 Entry.3 |
June 24 Entry.4 |
June 28 |
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June 29 Entry.12 |
July 1 |
July 3 Entry.17 |
July 4 Entry.18 |
July 5 Entry.19 |
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July 6 Entry.20 |
July 7 Entry.21 |
July 8 Entry.22 |
July 9 Entry.23 |
July 11 Entry.26 |
July 12 |
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July 13 Entry.27 |
July 14 Entry.28 |
July 15 Entry.29 |
July 17 Entry.32 Italy->L.A. |
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Italy
Travelogue........................................................................................................................ 1
Entry 1: Positano, 4am,
Sunday, 22 June 2003.............................................................................. 3
Entry 2: Positano,
11am, Sunday, 22 June 2003............................................................................. 4
Entry 3: Positano, 5am,
Monday, 23 June 2003............................................................................. 6
Entry 4: Positano, 7am,
Tuesday, 24 June2003.............................................................................. 9
Entry 5: Positano, 7am,
Wednesday, 25 June 2003........................................................................ 11
Entry 6: Positano,
11am, Wednesday, 25 June2003....................................................................... 12
Entry 7: Positano, 7pm,
Wednesday, 25 June2003......................................................................... 17
Entry 8: Positano, 8am,
Thursday, 26 June2003........................................................................... 19
Entry 9: Positano, 6pm,
Thursday, 26 June2003........................................................................... 19
Entry 10: Positano,
9am, Friday, 27 June 2003............................................................................ 24
Entry 11: Positano, 6pm
Friday, 27 June 2003............................................................................. 26
Entry 12: Paestum,
10am, Sunday, 29 June2003........................................................................... 26
Entry 13: Paestum, 9am,
Monday, 30 June 2003.......................................................................... 34
Entry 14: Naples, 3pm,
Monday, 30 June 2003............................................................................ 37
Entry 15: Rome, 8am,
Wednesday, 2 July 2003............................................................................ 39
Entry 16: Rome, 2pm,
Wednesday, 2 July 2003............................................................................ 41
Entry 17: Rome, 6pm,
Thursday, 3 July 2003.............................................................................. 54
Entry 18: Rome, 8am,
Friday, 4 July 2003.................................................................................. 62
Entry 19: Peschici,
3pm, Saturday, 5 July2003............................................................................. 62
Entry 20: Ravenna,
11pm, Sunday, 6 July 2003........................................................................... 66
Entry 21: Venice, 8pm,
Monday, 7 July 2003.............................................................................. 69
Entry 22: Venice, 7am,
Tuesday, 8 July 2003............................................................................... 71
Entry 23: Venice, 7am,
Wednesday, 9 July2003............................................................................ 72
Entry 24: Florence,
6pm, Thursday, 10 July2003.......................................................................... 78
Entry 25: Florence,
10pm, Thursday, 10 July2003........................................................................ 83
Entry 26: Panzano, 6pm,
Friday, 11 July 2003............................................................................. 84
Entry 27: Panzano, 5pm,
Sunday, 13 July 2003............................................................................ 91
Entry 28: Panzano, 9am,
Monday, 14 July 2003........................................................................... 95
Entry 29: Panzano, 2pm,
Tuesday, 15 July2003............................................................................ 97
Entry 30: Panzano,
11am, Wednesday, 16 July 2003...................................................................... 98
Entry 31: Panzano, 6pm,
Wednesday, 16 July2003........................................................................ 99
Entry 32: Airplane,
12pm, Thursday, 17 July 2003...................................................................... 102
Impressions.......................................................................................................................... 109
Addendum............................................................................................................................ 109
Positano Church................................................................................................................ 109
Capri Seacoast................................................................................................................... 111
Montepertuso Walk............................................................................................................ 118
Positano Apartment............................................................................................................ 124
Positano Food................................................................................................................... 134
Ravello Duomo and
Museum............................................................................................... 137
Villa Rufolo in Ravello....................................................................................................... 142
Paestum Ruins and
Museum................................................................................................ 146
Pompeii Artifacts............................................................................................................... 151
Rome Tour....................................................................................................................... 155
Florence Statues................................................................................................................. 158
Table of Photos..................................................................................................................... 162
The End............................................................................................................................... 169
Entry 1: Positano, 4am, Sunday, 22 June 2003
Woke up about 4am, jet-lagged (I thought it was morning), to the sounds of people on the streets and some drumming, which I presumed was a procession for church, an impressive example of which we saw on the beach the night before. When I got up and found out it was still dark, I determined that the sounds were coming from just a few Italian revelers from the night before, carousing around on the beach. The night was still and, because of our location on hillside overlooking the beach and bay of Positano, sound carries quite a way.
There were many boats lying at anchor in the bay. Below are two side-by-side photos I took from our apartment overlooking the bay, around 5:30am. Our apartment faces south into the Mediterranean.
Photo 1: Positano - Bay East at Dawn
Photo 2: Positano - Bay West at Dawn
Our flight for our trip left from LAX at 4:40pm on Friday, 20 June 2003. We got to the airport by 2:30, breezed through the line for business class, and had some time to kill before our flight left. We arrived in Munich, Germany at3pm local time the next day, with an uneventful flight except for three different sets of screaming kids. We had a 2-hour layover in Munich, after which we boarded a much smaller Lufthansa flight for Naples, and we arrived at approximately 5pm. We took a taxi to Positano from the airport, at a negotiated rate of €100 (down from €120). The actual price on the meter when we got there was €51, the taxi driver looked unhappy, so we ended up giving him an extra €15for a tip (he still looked unhappy at that point, but so what?). The ride from Naples to Positano was spectacular (we passed Mt. Vesuvius), with magnificent views of the Mediterranean and hilly terrain of the Amalfi coast, but it was also slightly nauseating, because of the twists and turns and starts and stops due to heavy traffic and narrow roads. Of course, Mika fell asleep.
After we arrived at the town center parking lot (our designated rendezvous place), we called the manager (Antonietta) of our local apartment and she picked up our luggage in her car, while we walked up the street (Via Cristoforo Colombo) to our apartment. We have a 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment with living room, kitchen, and balcony and terrace overlooking the ocean. (The apartment miscalled La Conchiglia, the street address is Via Cristoforo Columbo, 38, the country address is 84017 Positano (SA) Italy, and we found it on the Internet at http://italian-itineraries.com/.)The apartment is more than adequate for our needs and will allow us to take advantage of the local produce, which is abundant.
After put our luggage inside the apartment, we decided to take a stroll down to the beach, grab a bite to eat, then come back and crash. Our apartment is approximately 200 steps above the beach, and is just up the street from the Hotel Sirenuse, but there is no direct route to the beach, and one must walk down winding streets through the center of town to get to the beach and bay. Our leisurely walk to the beach made one fact abundantly apparent - Positano is shoppers’ paradise, especially if you are interested in clothes and/or ceramics. Each side of each narrow street is covered with shops and restaurants, and the streets are filled with tourists of all nationalities, with quite a few pretty Italian girls (and boys) dressed to the max with skin-tight clothes and high heels. On the way to eat we found quite a few deli’s with fresh produce, and we bought a couple of huge ripe Mission figs with a miniature pear to snack on, for €1.50. We strolled onto the beach, stuck our feet in the water (cool, but refreshing), and then had a drink and some food at a touristy place on the beach. The food was passable for a touristy place (Campari and soda, Bellini, & bubbly water; grilled squids with mixed salad, seafood pasta, & proscuito and funghi pizza). On the way back we stopped at a bar/deli for dessert, and Mika got a double chocolate ice cream cone, Jeff a Lemon Granita (lemon ice dessert). Both were delicious, and I now realize that maintaining my weight will be a challenge.
Entry 2: Positano, 11am, Sunday, 22 June 2003
After taking a nap, here is a new view from the balcony, taken at 10:30am.
Photo 3: Positano - Bay East at Mid-Morning
Photo 4: Positano - Bay West at Mid-Morning
Photo 5: Positano - Hillside West at Mid-Morning
Entry 3: Positano, 5am, Monday, 23 June 2003
Mika woke me up at 4am claiming she had not been sleeping for 3 hours. Sylvia gave her part of a sleeping pill and we sent her back to bed. But before that, I told her that I had been sleeping fitfully, and had just had dream, concerning my 30th high-school reunion, which I am planning on attending right after I arrive home from Italy. The dream was that when we got to the high-school reunion, the place where it was to be held was shut down by the police, so we regrouped somewhere else, and Gerardo (my best friend from high school) handed me a bag of what I thought were little white ceramic plates, that I was to rinse, but which I discovered were little plates covering a bunch of frozen shrimp, that was defrosting, and we were going to have a bar-be-que to feed our classmates, but I had no idea how we were going to feed everyone with just one bag of shrimp! Then Mika woke me up!
The dream was obviously brought on by the last thing we did before returning to our apartment last night, which was to visit an Internet café, which inhabited the space inside of a disco bar right inside the entry and directly across from the bar. The price for usage was €2.5 for 15 minutes, in 15 minute increments, up to €8 for an hour –very reasonable. I checked my email, deleting at least 40 items of SPAM, then read the two remaining emails. One was from Cindy Grall, giving her new contact information and announcing her semi-retirement, and the other was from Gerardo, verifying that he would attend the reunion on Friday and Saturday.
Now, back to the regular scheduled sequence of events. After taking Photos #3-5, and since Mika was still asleep, we left her a note and walked into town to a deli we saw the night before, and bought fruits (pears, white peaches, figs, apples, yellow plums), olives, bread, brie, peach jam, and Nutella, and came back for breakfast. Mika had awakened by then, and below is a photo I took of her with her mouth full of plum, sitting in our apartment’s eating area outside our front door.
Photo 6: Positano - Mika at Breakfast Outside Apartment
While laying around after completing the journal entry above, I was thinking about the problem I had with SPAM at the Internet café the night before, and if I could come up with a technical solution to the problem. I came up with a potential solution that had a good chance of working, so I wrote up a patent idea with the intention of sharing it with someone who can do some research and work on it during my vacation – probably Jud Hogan, since I can’t use anyone from my old job, because of the conflict of interest issue.
After that, I was still grouchy, due to not enough sleep, and took a nap while Sylvia and Mika visited the tourist bureau and did some planning for the rest of our weeklong stay on the Amalfi coast.
When I woke up, we walked down to the beach and got into the water. Thebeach we visited was the one in the middle at the bottom of Photo #4, and Mika and I swam to the blue floatation barrier ringing the swimming area, and back. The water temperature was cool and delicious, and the beach was composed of black pebbles about the size of your little finger. Sylvia commented that the pebbles felt good, because they didn’t “get into things” like sand did, and then Mika pointed out to me that one of the young women asleep on a lounge chair “did not have her shirt on.” I asked her to always inform me from then on when that situation presented itself!
After our swim, we visited a bar and restaurant on the beach called Buca di Bacco, which our guidebook had indicated was good restaurant. We sat down, had a drink (Sylvia and I had an exotic lemon liqueur called a limoncello and Mika had a lemon ice) and made dinner reservations for 8pm.
Photo 7: Positano - Sylvia and Mika at Buca di Bacco
After our drink we went to the rocky beach to the right of the boat landing and derelict pier in Photos #4 & #5, and Sylvia watched while Mika and I dived off of the rocks and swam in the ocean. The photo below is an example of why it doesn’t make sense to use the zoom on the Fujifilm MX-2700 2.3 Mega Pixels digital camera given tome by Dave Balenson. It has a digital zoom and the loss of quality is significant if you use the zoom. Note the granularity of the photo below.
Photo 8: Positano - Jeff and Mika on the Rocks Near the Dock
I dared Mika to dive off a rock into shallow water for a few feet before it got deep, and after a couple of tries, she did it without a problem. We also skipped some flat broken pieces of white ceramic pottery on the water, which I seem to have also incorporated into my dream. By the time we were finished horsing around, it was time to walk back up to the apartment and get ready for dinner. But before that, I took a couple of photos from the bay, one of the hillside beneath and to the west of our apartment, and a close-up of the church dome. Our apartment is the one with a green door in a white façade, the right top of which is covered with reddish purple bougainvillea. It is in the middle vertically, and 2/3rds of the way to the right. We couldn’t have asked for a better location, and our quite pleased with accommodations that Sylvia got purely off the Internet. [JVC Note: Outline landmarks in photo below.]
Photo 9:Positano - Church, La Sirenuse, and Apartment from Bay
Photo 10:Positano - Church Dome from Beach
For more photos of the church, taken on July 25 by Sylvia, see Positano Church in the Addendum.
We had dinner at Buca di Bacco, where it was apparent that many like us had read the same guidebook, since the restaurant was full of English speaking people. For dinner I had proscuito and melon, and the antipasti buffet; Mika had fettuccini with meat and red winesauce; and Sylvia had fettuccini with Lobster. All dinners were quite good, but I am already pining forsomething simple like whole grilled fish. During dinner we started playing the game of identifying the nationalityof the people we observed. TheItalians are fairly obvious, and not just because of their olive complexions,which not all have. The Italians all seem to dress in a certain flamboyant and stylish manner that is hard toexplain. The English and American are almost boring in comparison. Some day I may just sit in one spot and take photos of various people, for a pictorial explanation of what I have just related.
To test our theory, we spotted some people who had to have been of English origin, perhaps Australian, and sent Mika to hang out near the dessert display to overhear them and determine their nationality. Unfortunately, she came back with a chocolate pudding and no idea of the nationality of our target, because when she arrived at the case, the waiter intercepted her and she had no choice (in her mind) but to order something.
After dinner, we took a walk along the hillside shown in Photo #5, and walked to the next beach around the hill. Positano at night is magical – calm and temperate, with wonderful smells and sounds, and ancient paths loping along the hillsides overlooking the sea. Ciao!
Entry 4: Positano, 7am, Tuesday, 24 June2003
My first decent night of sleep! Yippee! Today we are going to Capri! We are taking the ferry over to Capri at 9:30am, and coming back at about 7pm, for €26 apiece.
Yesterday morning, both Sylvia and Mika slept until about 10am, meanwhile, I read and had my breakfast (sausage, and egg, and apple slices with brie). After Sylvia and Mika got up, we went and took a tour of the church, and today I will bring a camera and take some photos on our way to the boat dock.
After the church, we walked back up to our room to prepare for a day at the beach. This walk up and down is getting tedious, since it is quite a ways, perhaps 1/4 mile each way, and a fairly large vertical displacement. We did it four times today, back and forth. It is a pretty walk, however, as can be seen in the photo below . This walkway leads to the courtyard of the church, and is covered with bougainvillea.
Photo 11: Positano - Mika on the Bougainvillea Walk
We spent almost the entire day on the beach today, renting some lounge chairs and umbrellas at €10 apiece.
Photo 12: Positano - Sylvia and Mika and the Beach Chairs
We went swimming a number of separate times, once again at the rocks near the boat dock where we dived off yesterday, this tine jumping and diving off a rocky platform about 7-8 feet above the water. Later in the afternoon, we were presented with the sight below, and we could not resist photographing the event!
Photo 13: Positano - Sylvia Greeted by Profile of Italian Man on the Beach
We ate dinner at Chez Black, another restaurant on the beach, right beneath the church, mentioned in our guidebook. Mika had gnocchi in tomato sauce, Sylvia had an Insalada Capricciosa, a salad that is a combo between an Italian mixed salad and a salad Nicoise, and also had grilled Mozzarella wrapped in citrus leaf. The Mozzarella around here is completely different from that in the states, both in texture and taste. There were at least four different types of Mozzarella on the menu! As our last course, we split a zuppa di pesce (fish soup), which took about 45 minutes to prepare. It had an incredibly savory and slightly spicy broth, and was packed full of shrimp, langoustine, clams, mussels, whole fish, and squid. It was also enough by itself for all three of us.
Entry 5: Positano, 7am, Wednesday, 25 June 2003
Last night, after returning from Capri, we had the best dinner so far this trip. We were intending to go to Chez Black, but Sylvia and Mika were going to do some shopping on the way (dress for Mika, hat for Sylvia), so I was just hanging around, and I happened to walk down a stairway and glance at the menu for Ristorante Max. It just happened that they had ravioli on the menu, which Mika has decided is her favorite food after eating Lobster ravioli at our little corner French restaurant “12Washington” near our house in Marine del Rey. Anyway, I found Sylvia and Mika walking down to Chez Black from Via Cristoforo Colombo, intercepted them, and casually asked them to checkout the menu for this restaurant before we continued on our way. Needless to say, we went no further. (The only complication was that I was wearing shorts and sandals, and we did not know if it was appropriate in this semi-fancy restaurant, with its own musician, but it turned out they didn’t care, as has been the case at every restaurant so far.) Mika had the lobster ravioli with sautéed plum tomatoes, which was delicious, and Sylvia and I shared grilled small squids stuffed with tomatoes, octopus carpaccio, and a green salad with cherry tomatoes, arugula, and lettuce, all of which were excellent. This restaurant is a great find. It is on the main walkway down from the road near the central parking garage to the beach. Highly recommended.
Before describing our trip to Capri, below is a photo of Mika taken just after she woke up yesterday morning.
