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If It Was Good Enough For Ulysses... By Kamouraskan & Lariel

Disclaimer: This article is copyright to the authors October 2004. All photos used were taken by and are the property of the authors.

Once again we were risking it all.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate. I have been known to do that. But we had certainly repeated one mistake. Once again, we had stacked part of our vacation weeks on top of the other. Most of last month had consisted of overtime work so that I could spend a guilt free week in Canada. So when I got back, it was to another week of meeting my targets and setting up activities for the residents in my Home to do while I was away for yet another week, and Lariel spent the time travelling in The North setting up a national training program for her charity so she could also have a break. (Note: non-Britains may not know where The North is in Britain. It's easy to find; highway signs indicate The North as soon as you are past Watford Gap. I think Canada should have signs saying The West as you leave Ontario. Perhaps Britain should expand and have signs for The Sea. The Sky. The North by North West. Anyway….)

Clearly, as can be seen by the above ramble, I'm the type that needs LOTS of breaks. Lariel, as she has to live with me, needs them even more.

As I hope we have made abundantly clear, we are cheap. So the first lesson is book ahead. It was back in June when we first started our planning and as always that began on the web. We looked at many locations on the Med, finally settling on Southern Italy. We did searches around Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, so that not only would we have a place to collapse in the sun, but also a chance to visit the greatest Romano-Greco treasures: Pompeii and Herculaneum.

But the prices! Over a thousand Euros for a week for a basic space. And not including any meals! (For the purpose of this article, all money will be expressed in the money it was spent in: Euros. As of today that works out to 100 Euros = 68 British pounds/122 US dollars/156 Canadian dollars.)

Then I stumbled across a listing of a small villa, just outside Sorrento. Family run, in the midst of lemon and olive orchards, only €315 for eight days and seven nights.

Had to be a pit, right?

But we did a search through virtualtourist.com and Rough Guide for comments and there were many raves for the place. They all mentioned that the road leading to the place was too narrow for big cars, but as we were not packing a car, we weren't worried. So we mailed them, and eventually exchanged a few letters. They could even pick us up in Sorrento if we liked. We liked. We booked.

We also did our usual search for local restaurants that were good and still reasonably priced, copied /pasted and printed them to bring with us.

The night before we left, I sent an email reminder to our hosts that we were coming the next day, but there was no reply as we waited for a taxi the next morning. And of course, through exhaustion of travel and work, I had already come down with my expected pre-flight cold. Stepping onto the plane seemed more and more like a leap of faith.

We got to Naples, took the airport shuttle bus to Sorrento (staring at the highway signs for Pompeii as we passed, craning our necks to see something; anything,) and when everyone else got out at Piazza Tasso, we obligingly did as well.

Sorrento's main square is a rats' warren of tourists, massive open-air restaurants and strangled traffic with very little to show that it is in the centre of a very beautiful city. We stood in the glaring sunshine, in the midst of this bustle, chained to our suitcase, stunned into insecurity to the point where we were once again unsure of what an Italian telephone booth looked like and how it operated. We finally dragged our fetter over to a phone, jointly figured it out, (put the money in AFTER you complete the call)called our hosts and thanked God they were in. We arranged to meet at the bottom of the Piazza Tasso underneath the flags, and returned there to wait.

The son of our hostess soon showed up. Smiling, courteous and with enough English to make conversation on the drive minimally stilted. We squeezed up a road so narrow that the door handles on either side seemed to be brushing the high walls and the wildflowers that grew between the blocks. As we approached each of the many blind turns, a warning honk was made. We later found out that most of the paths in the area were originally goat tracks that predated the Romans. Above them dangled lemons, bunches of purple and white grapes, interspersed with olive, fig, hazelnut and walnut trees. After about 20 minutes we turned down a drive and the car stopped. We looked about in awe. Surely this wasn't our villa? Maybe he was stopping at his home and ours was waaaaay out back.

No, this was our home for the next week.

It was only one (large) room with a (large) bathroom. There was no bath, only a shower, and the bed was a double rollout. But the kitchen was fully stocked with implements of construction. There were jars of local jams and a gift of the local liqueur, limoncello, on the bar. Our hosts provided a complete schedule of trains, local buses and a map indicating where the nearest bus stop was and in response to our query, marked down the nearest shop and a recommended restaurant.

But it was the exterior that had grabbed us.

We were near the top of levels of terraced hillside orchards looking out onto the Isle of Capri that was beautifully misty enough to have me humming 'Bali Hi' from South Pacific. The table and chairs on our terrace were surrounded by plants and we were only a few feet away from their vegetable gardens. And all around us were the family's lemon and olive trees, all swelling with ripening fruits.

It was heaven.

We weren't the only ones to think so. Our villa looked out onto Massa Lubrensa as well as the Isle of Capri. We were standing on what was once called Sirenussai, as it was where Ulysses was supposed to have been lured by the Sirens.

Capri is usually called the most beautiful place in the Med and the home of the Blue Grotto. Roman Emperor Tiberius must have agreed because he made it the capital of the Roman Empire. He was reputed to have had a great time there; or as the writers of the period put it, became insane through debauchery. No doubt grooming his eventual successor, Caligula, that all-time party kind of guy, rather well.

Unfortunately for the locals and their antecedence, the history of our area had more of a resemblance to hell; a short walk uphill could reveal Mount Vesuvius, where once Pompeii and Herculaneum had existed.

I'd like to apologise right now to any Italian historian for my short fractured history, but in my defence I can say that my readership in general will now be quadrupling their knowledge of the area.

The region had this general habit of either backing the wrong guys, or not being sufficient supportive of the right guys, at least in the right guys' opinion.

First, you had town and agricultural settlements that developed about 8th century BC, no doubt trying to get by much as they do now. When in the 6th century BC the Etruscans were expanding, the locals went into an alliance with the Cumai Greeks. Bad move, as the Greeks lost. So they tried to get along and go along with the Etruscans. Bad move, as in 474, the Greeks took it back. Then the Italian based Samnites beat back the Greeks until Rome came a-pounding on their doors.

The Romans made most of the larger cities, like Sorrento and Pompeii, allies and independent city-states. That was okay for a while until a number of these cities decided that REAL independence wasn't exactly what they had and they banded together against Rome. Bad idea. Rome stomped the whole idea down as forcefully as you might imagine. There were a few rebellions, like one in Pompeii's amphitheatre. It started in theory over some gladiators, split on political lines and became a ‘horrific massacre'. Meets were banned for ten years after that, and you think British football riots are bad.

Then there was the earthquake in 62AD. It hit Pompeii particularly badly and people spent the next 17 years rebuilding the place. Bad idea. On Aug 24th, 79 AD, renovation was not a worthwhile way to spend the day. Historians might take comfort in the fact that 90% of Pompeii's inhabitants got out when Vesuvius erupted. That might not have been any comfort to the 2,000 people who didn't, and died in screaming agony.

And the 2,000 might not appreciate their ash-coated corpses, frozen whilst writhing in pain, being objects of curiosity or even humour to the millions of tourists that flock to Pompeii each year.

So on our second full day, Lariel and I went to Pompeii.

The route to Pompeii started at Sorrento and not having figured out the local bus service yet, we took the scenic walk into town. We loved our walks along the ancient goat paths. More orchards, more plump fruit and nuts scattered about. One of our neighbours called to us as we passed while they were twisting the wire to suspend the net hammocks under the olive trees to catch the olives as they fell. And laughed out to us, pointing to the nets, calling out in English, ‘fishing!' The mature lemons seemed to glow and we plucked ripe grapes that strained to stay on the vines. Each turn of a path showed us another vista.

Occasionally we would startle a neighbour's dog into barking and snarling, and I would suddenly find myself acting as a human shield when Lariel would grab me and place me between her and the beasts. They would usually stay on their own property, satisfied they had saved their owners from the foreigners. But this did not stop Lariel from referring to them as ‘packs of bloody marauding dogs'. I tried to point out that they were not in a pack, not bloody, not marauding, and just doing their job. I'd usually get hit on the arm. Lariel is more of a cat person.

Otherwise we did love the area. Even the recommended local restaurant was a treasure, and we soon became regulars. Although it required a short walk along a major road with no sidewalk, this was worthwhile as it was so friendly, with wonderful pastas and pizza, cheap wine and a memorable view from their terrace of the Bay of Naples, always overshadowed by Vesuvius glowering over it all.

Where we were now headed.

The bus to Sorrento was only a 10-minute walk uphill, but we had decided to push our calf muscles to the maximum and walk down into town. Even Lariel enjoyed it, possibly because ‘the packs of bloody marauding dogs' were asleep in the sun. It was so peaceful and beautiful; contrasting achingly exquisite vistas at one moment, then an unspoiled stone wall hung with grapes the next, so that the sudden immersion into city and tourists was hard to handle.

Still, we consoled ourselves by immediately finding the best ice cream parlour in the town, Bougainvillia, which had the largest selection of ice cream with the most amount of space to enjoy it. The mandarin flavour was strong enough to start me coughing and Lariel was praising her pear ice cream for days later. We went back, as a sort of ritual, every trip although we never did find the mandarin or pear ice cream on the menu again. We stumbled onto the tourist info office in the old town by chance. A small place, it was almost lost in the blocks of tourist tat and open markets that dominate that part of Sorrento, and seemed to function more as an internet café than a place catering to tourists needing information.

As usual, our plan was to window-shop for gifts for family and mementoes for ourselves for the first few days, putting off the purchase until the end of our trip. Pausing only to check the prices of the limoncellos and brightly decorated plates as potential souvenirs, we made our way east through the old town, crossed the Piazza and arrived at the main bus/train station.

A short note: Do not plan to use Sorrento's Circumvesuviana station's washrooms, as they don't exist, even though the devil has made them post signs indicating imaginary toilets. Also try to avoid the train times of the school run, when the trains are overrun by anorexic schoolgirls with short skirts and ample bosoms. Despite any paranoid accusations by my partner about what I was busy observing, the one thing I did note was that Lariel seemed to be the only person with blue eyes on the train. (I also love how Lariel can boil water with a glare. Her Flinty Stare of Death when a passenger lit up a cigarette was worth the whole ride. And then there was the look she gave when another laid his coat on the seat beside her; you'd swear he'd deposited a turd.)

Like most cities, Circumvesuviana has an integrated system of trains and buses, and the fares are based on time and zones. The cost of a one-way ticket to Pompeii was only €1, but had we taken the bus from our villa and transferred, it would have been a Zone 3 ticket, costing €1.80 - still a bargain. As in the rest of Italy, tickets can be purchased at the station or at most tobacconists. They can be bought days ahead of time, and are good for 100 minutes or if you go the whole hog and pay €3.60, for the entire day. We found that it really was a matter of luck which one we ended up with when we asked for return tickets.

We checked that we had our tickets for Pompeii itself. We'd decided on the three-day all-inclusive pass. This meant that we could visit Pompeii, Herculaneum, and several destroyed villas throughout a 3 day period. It cost €18, though a single day pass is only €10 for Pompeii and €8 for Herculaneum – it represents excellent value if your feet can stand the work for 3 days. We planned to spend at least two days in Pompeii and the other in Herculaneum. Whether this was a good decision will be argued, sorry, discussed, later.

We boarded the train with our map of Pompeii, our KINA guidebook to Pompeii, and squeezed between the chattering and preening school kids, set off.

Pompeii

We have been to a LOT of Roman ruins. We have visited nearly every site in Britain and Wales, and spent days in Rome wandering about the Forum there. But nothing can prepare you for the vastness of Pompeii. 20,000 people lived here, and if that doesn't sound like a large space, remember, they were working with a two-story maximum. Then add in that it was a commercial centre with hundreds of shops, temples, brothels, public squares and public baths. Then in the outskirts, there are mansions and the burial grounds. So instead of a few pillars and a couple of mosaic floors, you have miles of streets, between fifty and a hundred square blocks of ancient Roman city.

We began to regret having already walked a few miles to get there.

I think I thought of Pompeii as being like the Marie Celeste. That we could walk into homes and find the pipe still lit beside a laid out dinner. But the people had 24 hours from the time of the first blast of the volcano to the final holocaust. As well, the pipe, the dinner, and anything else of value have all been either looted, stored in huge buildings designated as warehouses, or taken to the Naples Museum. Again and again we would read of a statue or some piece of art that was duplicated, and we never did get to the museum.

Still, what remained behind was extraordinary. We walked roads that were still worn by wagon tracks from the days when Pompeii bustled with commerce and trade, paused to rest at ancient water fountains whose only concession to modernity were the ugly copper pipes which now poked from their mouths, and walked through villas and gardens where once wealthy and not-so-wealthy Pompeian's lived and loved. A few of them were still there, frozen forever in their death throes and thoughtfully placed in glass boxes for the paying public to marvel at.

We hadn't noticed at first – peering into one of the Forum buildings now being used as a storage area, we had thought they were statues until we realised otherwise and we quickly retreated, shocked, wanting to show respect to these ancient citizens and profoundly touched by what their stances told us of their final moments. Sadly, respect seemed in short supply as people clustered round the glass coffins, cameras thrust in for close-ups and flashes popping, smiling and laughing at the spectacle. Lariel in particular became quite upset at this, but we supposed that at a distance of several thousand years, people lose their humanity and become museum exhibits. We couldn't see them that way and neither could a group of German girls who went to follow us into a room in the Villa of Mysteries and quickly retreated when they realised what was in there.

Now, we don't want to be wrapping ourselves in imagined moral superiority, but how could you not feel some sort of empathy? These were clearly once human beings. How can you see a woman still grasping a cloth to her face in a vain attempt to block the poison gas that descended, or a man holding a small piece of tile to pathetically ward off white-hot rock and not make that connection?

Here's an interesting point; does time make something less of a mass gravesite? Do the ancients deserve that much less respect than say, Ground Zero in New York? Will Auschwitz have rides in a theme park in another twenty generations? Both Lariel and I did think that at the gate there should have been some sort of sign requesting respect, but instead there was an imposing plaque in several languages stating that this was a World Heritage Site, so Please Don't Litter.

Emotional traumas notwithstanding, Pompeii was exhausting. There was just so much to see, and all of it revealing some new facet of ancient life – corner shops, community baths, temples to Gods, mosaic floors and elaborately painted walls, poky little houses, ornate benches and statues, public toilets, elaborate villas, brothels – there was even election graffiti scrawled all over the walls.

We dodged tour groups of Americans, braved the scorching sun and walked until our legs gave out and still we only managed to see about a quarter of the place. We had to come back. The only problem was – we were exhausted.

Tips we can pass on about Pompeii:

Buy a guidebook, plan your itinerary and get a good map – it's a huge place and can be quite daunting. Above all, be realistic about what you will be able to manage.
Don't expect to see everything you want – several places were closed while work was carried out on them.
There is virtually no information about what you are seeing in the site – you really do need a guidebook to make any sense of it. Audio tours are available for an extra €5.
The guardrails and almost anything else in Pompeii are not for support. Unless you are an ant. Don't touch them unless you want to be swarmed by the little biting buggers.
The water fountains are redundant (or at least were on our visit) but there are handy little taps outside the restaurant where you can fill up your water bottle, which as ever, we would recommend you take.
The restaurant in Pompeii itself (not the roadside stands clustered at the entrance) is surprisingly decent, unobtrusive and inexpensive, an admirable piece of self-restraint considering they have a captive audience.
The gift shop alongside however, was filled with overpriced tat of dubious quality.
Toilets were at the entrances/exits, and upstairs in the restaurant.
Consider going later in the day when the temperature is cooler and the crowds are slightly less. We managed a good 3 or 4 hours there and that's probably about the limit of what you can reasonably take without killing yourself. The site closes at 6pm but you are not asked to leave at that time. Instead we had a few hours of sunlight to wander about long after the large tours had left.
Avoid the tours (the charges we looked at were quite a rip off) and do it yourself. In fact, try and keep away from the tour groups altogether or you'll struggle to see anything amidst hordes of Americans, British, Dutch and Italians. And please, if you are American, don't jump up onto the ancient monuments, flex your non-existent muscles and shout ‘Hey, lookit me – I'm a God!!" while posing for your mates to take pictures. And another tip for Americans – well, any nationality really… do some reading up about the place before you go. At the very least, you won't be asking out loud as one person did, ‘this here destruction thing – did it happen in modern times?'

Herculaneum

Having worn ourselves out completely at Pompeii, we decided we had better recharge our batteries the next day and do nothing, so we lazed about our apartment and went for a slow creaking walk around the orchards. We'd hit the supermarket in Sorrento and brought back eggs, bacon, lots of local mozzarella, croissants, tea, milk and cappuccino for a full breakfast each morning. To top it all off, we also would steal a few fresh Italian tomatoes (I say tomaytoe) from our hosts.

Having the feeling that Herculaneum was smaller and therefore wouldn't kill us off again, we decided we'd break ourselves back in and spend the last day of our 3 day pass (having wasted one day in this very necessary recovery mode) at Herculaneum.

Allegedly founded by Hercules during one of his Labours, and named in his honour, the town had been a lot less commercial than Pompeii, consisting mainly of summer residences and well-to-do inhabitants. It was also smaller because most of it still lay under several hundred feet of hardened mud and the residents of the New Herculaneum (or Ercolano as it liked to call itself) refused to shift their homes and businesses and themselves to allow some pesky archaeologists to dig it up.

We found Herculaneum in some ways to be better than Pompeii; it was smaller, less exhausting and with far fewer crowds. Destruction by boiling mud saved more of the upper structures and in fact, being surrounded on all sides gives a greater feel for the lives lived. The mud also preserved some of the wooden artefacts, and so for the first time we saw windows with shutters and the original doors in the doorways. Ceiling frescos were a new experience for both of us, and seeing the second floors were a revelation. There were more complete floor mosaics to actually walk upon, paintings and frescos seemed to be more intact and there were less commercial and public places, giving a real ‘towny' feel to the place. Best of all, there were no ants!

And the dig really does stop under the new city walls. Herculaneum is about 50 feet below the new city, which is perched on the cliffs created by the excavation. The streets still entombed below are partially exposed, revealing doorways and arches all still to be explored.

Many of the buildings listed in our guidebook were closed, although it looked like this was due to continuing work as we could see scaffolds and planks propped up. It is worth mentioning that the guide book we bought – a companion edition to our excellent Pompeii one – was complete rubbish as the maps and directions bore no resemblance to any coordinated plan of walking, and half the properties had no information about them. We gave up trying to use it to navigate our way round and just wandered. As with Pompeii, there was very little information available on site, but at least the premises were more aptly named so you could kind of tell where you were; ‘The Wooden Partition House' (which had a preserved wooden screen), ‘The Villa of Scrolls' (where scrolls were found), ‘The Skeleton House' (where a skeleton was found), ‘The Charred Furniture House' (you get the idea).

Points about Herculaneum:

Definitely make sure you've got a good guidebook, or buy the audio tour.
There isn't a restaurant or anything on this site, although there are plenty in the town. No toilets except at the gates.
Directions to the site aren't great when you get off the train – follow the main road down through town and its at the bottom of the road. Follow the signs for ‘Scavia'.
Apparently the tour guides hang around waiting for tips before they'll open the gates to the properties. We don't know how true this is – most of the closed places were definitely having renovations done.
Pompeii and Herculaneum can be ‘done' together as a full day tour by the operators, and judging by the lack of crowds, Herculaneum is just a whistle-stop on the tour. It's very nice, not having to battle your way through gangs of bemused tourists.

Capri

The view from our apartment was spectacular; every morning as we pulled our shutters back, we were greeted by bright blue skies and the glittering azure of the sea, with the Isle of Capri rising mysteriously from its depths, usually steeped in early morning mists. So romantic was the view, and so good the things we'd heard about it, that we'd resolved to go there, so again we took our walk into Sorrento and headed down to the Marina where the ferries and hydrofoils zizzed over regularly, as our guidebook told us.

What a con. We should have realised that Capri was a dupe when we paid hydrofoil prices to get on the one ferry that ran all afternoon. It set the tone of a disappointing day. Appropriately, or perhaps tone settingly, it was our first cloudy day, and we got lost in the drizzle amongst the overcrowded and overbuilt roadways. When we found out that the last ferry sailed at 6.30pm, leaving us two and a half hours to spend on Capri, bang went our visions of a romantic meal watching the evening sun set on the mainland. All we could do was haunt the tourist area killing time, try and find somewhere not hideously overpriced for a disgusting (and microwaved) meal and wait for the ferry home with not enough time to travel out of Capri Town.

We did take the Funicular up to Capri Town, jammed along with hundreds of other tourists all playing with electronic toys; screaming into cell phones, ‘I'm in Capri! Yes, right now!' filming or snapping the bleak misty Med through cameras and playing digital games while their arms and heads were pressed even further into our faces. Very disappointing. Reading through the history of the Isle, Lariel later noted that self-castration performed by priest was one of the ancient rituals originally performed there. I said, ‘so I assume it wasn't a weekly event? It must take a while to train a priest.'

Lariel replied, ‘Takes even longer to train one to cut their willy off.'

After only a few hours on Capri, I was beginning to think it wouldn't take all that long.

Recommended Restaurants:

As ever, being quite cheap as we are, we took the recommendations from various guidebooks and found the following gems amongst the overpriced restaurants in Sorrento:

Parruchiano – The Rough Guide comes through again, though the directions were spotty. Looks small on the outside but is a massive greenhouse expanding ever upwards with scores of waiters giving great service, and the omnipresent greenery allows for some intimacy. A bottle of good house wine was only €5 and the Pollo Alla Cacciatore was excellent. To balance this rave, we must criticize their choice of deserts, which just weren't decadent enough. Though is it their fault my lover chose vanilla ice cream in the end? Dinner for two with wine was under €40, including lots of side dishes and service.

Il Borgas – recommended by our hosts and lying in the hills above Sorrento (reached only by a car, the bus or by foot if you were staying at our apartment), with wonderful views of the Bay of Naples across to Vesuvious, we visited it many times as the food was excellent, the wine reasonable, the staff very friendly and the prices great. A typical 2 course meal with wine came to around €25.

La Lanterna – we stumbled across it by accident tucked away just off Piazza Tasso down a little street. Again, excellent and cheap house wine, great pasta (the cannelloni – apparently invented locally - was excellent) and so was the bruschetta. Another below €30 job.

Bougainvillia – as already mentioned, an excellent ice cream parlour with the best choice we saw; also does excellent snacks and sandwiches, toasted paninis and drinks.

La Fenice – another recommendation from our Rough Guide, and serving excellent soups and pizzas. Sadly we ended up sitting next to the Chain Smoker from Hell who apparently couldn't go more than 5 minutes without a fix and seemed impervious to all the pointed coughing and filthy looks he was getting. But why should we expect him to care about total strangers when he obviously had no problems giving his non-smoking wife lung cancer? Lariel gives them both five years, and she works for a cancer charity.

Torna a Sorrento (or Return To Sorrento)

Wherever you go, you will find references to Return To Sorrento. The tune is played in the markets, in the music boxes and there are statues and plaques to its composer. They refer to it as one of the most recognised songs in the world. I admit I spent some of our travelling time listing at least one hundred tunes, including Arrivederci Roma, which had better claims to the title. But the fact was, that we do plan to return to Sorrento. We never had the chance to visit the beautiful cliffside track and private beach described by our hosts. We didn't see any of the Roman Villas, or travel to Amalfi or along the Amalfi Coast. And what of the treasures in the Naples Museum? We would have been happy just to rest in our villa for another week. Conversations like the following occurred regularly; ‘You know, we are European citizens. We could stay as long as we like."

Once again, t hanks to booking long in advance, spending several hours searching for the best flights, lodgings, and decent places to eat, we managed to keep within and in fact under our budget. We ate in excellent restaurants, stayed in a comfortable though out of the way residence, visited only half of the places we wished to see, and hated to leave. Yes, the entire vacation cost about €1,000, divided between two people for a week of paradise in Southern Italy.

And we will return. After all, you can never have enough of paradise.