Mom's Visit

While I have taken my mom to some of the same places we've taken our other guests, like downtown Naples, Herculaneum, and Positano, we've also done some things new to me as well. Such as finally getting Ischia right (see previous post) and finally visiting the Baia Castle, home to an Archaeological Museum. The Baia Castle was a biggie to visit because we can see it from our house. And yet, nine months in this country with no visit to the museum that's almost literally in my backyard.

Baia was a big deal among the Roman emperor crowd. They had parties that would have put 1980s Hollywood bashes to shame. And they partied in villas that once lined the shore, but now provide some supposedly fascinating diving since they're all underwater after years of the earth shifting in this volcanic region. The museum holds some of the things brought up from those villas, but most of the exhibits we saw were treasures found at the Cuma settlement and other artifacts from the Campi Flegrei region. And yet again, I've seen how underutilized these amazing archaeological areas are. While there was a large crowd of schoolkids on a field trip, other than that group, Mom and I were it for visitors. We headed to a different floor than the kids and had the entire museum to ourselves. The exhibits have well done, English translations, they show a variety of ancient life (from a bit of jewelry to statues to funerary urns and beyond), and they even have a cast of an Egyptian wadi (like a grotto in the desert near water) that is home to about 80 pieces of early graffiti (dating to about 4th century BC). Why would that be in a somewhat obscure museum on a small peninsula in Italy? Because the oldest graffiti was done by the freed slave of one of Pozzuoli's wealthy residents, and he apparently discovered, by happenstance, a really awesome trade route between Ceylon and Aden. This was a big deal, and so, his graffiti lives on. So next time you see, carved into a wall, "John + Lara were here, 2gether 4ever" with a big heart around it, don't be so quick to turn up your nose. One day, that might be important.

Roman road sign that means "River ahead"

In other news, we visited Herculaneum (Ercolano), and I took loads more pics of the frescoes so I can begin creating my "Frescoes of Ercolano" album. While I enjoyed seeing Pompeii's frescoes in the Naples Archaeological Museum, there is really nothing like seeing frescoes and mosaics where they belong. Being able to walk on the same mosaic floor or sit in a house and stare at the fresco it's owner commissioned two millenia ago allows us to get a unique window into their lives and stories. We also took a daytrip to Positano, down on the Amalfi Coast. I love Positano in the off season, but it's even better now. We've had limited and expensive food options on our prior trips, but now, charming cafes are open all over the place, and all the shops are going full speed. We'd not left enough time to lounge about on the beach - maybe next week.

Mom on the Amalfi Coast

Felice Anno Nuovo

Happy New Year! We have readied the house and yard for a festa tonight, which mostly involved stocking the fridge with Prosecco and picking up pieces of a dismembered gorilla (toy) that have migrated to every corner of the yard and terraces. For a small dog toy, Scully and his BFF sure managed to shred and spread it. The Glass House got an update with our all day trip to Ikea, which was as awful an experience as it sounds. Hours upon hours walking the aisles to decide on lamps and pillows and bookshelves and wardrobes! But we're now ready for the fireworks viewing. Italians LOVE fireworks. There are some for every festival and event. Every night, local teenagers light off firecrackers in the piazza up the street. It's now 2:40 in the afternoon, and we already have such heavy booming nearby that the dog is quivering on the sofa. He's going to have a long afternoon and evening.

Back to our previous two weeks though:
Nathan's Aunt B. and Uncle J. made the long trip across the pond for Christmas. After Nathan showed them Rome, Orvieto, and Assisi, I took over for a couple of local days. We visited Herculaneum, a place I've already blogged about. I did take some new pics this time, though:

The next day, we explored Centro Napoli, focusing on some of the beautiful churches there, as well as a walk down Christmas Alley. Napoli is famous for presepios (nativities), made of bark and moss, as well as many handmade figures to go into them. Christmas Alley is the place to go for these things. I didn't take many pics while down there, but I did get one that is so typical of Centro:

A gorgeous church, kids playing soccer in a piazza, and a humongous pile of trash.

Nathan had the Thursday before Christmas off, so we did an Aunt/Uncle split. Nathan and Uncle J. headed off to Benevento (a nice, mountain town) and then on to Pompeii, while Aunt B. and I headed to Vietri, yet another town I've already blogged about. Vietri is a small town on the Amalfi Coast and home to gorgeous ceramics shops and artist studios. Aunt B. cleaned up with some great finds that all made it safely back home in her carry-on luggage.

Christmas Eve found us on a train up to Rome, checking into the adorable M.D.M. Luxury Rooms next to the Vatican. I'd booked them online, and while the reviews were great, the name brought to mind a Vegas brothel. Thankfully, the hotel ran a beautiful, clean establishment. We stayed so close to the Vatican because the Aunt/Uncle combo had managed to secure tickets to the Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican. Despite a torrential rain all afternoon, the weather cleared just in time for our two hour wait in line in the square outside St. Peter's Basilica. Church doors opened at 8:30pm for the 10pm Mass, and we only had to elbow one group of nuns out of our way to get in. The others beat our elbows to the punch. Once inside, the dilemma was whether to try to sit closer to the front, but in the middle of the row, or further back and practically right on the aisle. We picked the latter, and if I'd transferred the photos of my iPhone, I could show you how this worked out! As they say in Italy, "Domani, domani" (tomorrow, tomorrow). Following a Christmas morning of sleeping in, we headed back down to St. Peter's Square for the Pope's noon blessing of the city and the world before running back to the Metro, and just making it before public transportation stopped running at 1pm. We headed home to Napoli and a nice Christmas dinner with friends.

The day after Christmas, we drove down to Paestum, an area that contains some of the most complete Greek ruins outside of Greece. There are three, standing temples that are just gorgeous. Unfortunately, we arrived 15 minutes after the ticket office closed, so we had to content ourselves with gazing at them over the fence line.

After another day of some local sightseeing right around our house, we said Arrivederci to Aunt B. and Uncle J. We had such a great time spending time with family and showing them a part of our new life here. And they'll definitely be back since they followed the time honored tradition of ensuring one's return to Italy:

Sunday in Herculaneum

Ancient Herculaneum, Modern Ercolano, and Vesuvius watching over it all.

When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79AD (following an 800 year dormant period), the ash fell onto Pompeii, crushing the buildings, burning what could burn, leaving us what is now an overwhelming area of ruins. Pompeii takes a full day to really explore. But head northwest along the coast, and you'll come to modern day Ercolano, home to some of the best preserved 2000 year old ruins in Europe...the ancient city of Herculaneum (actually, the city was built around the 4th century BC). And best of all, these fantastically preserved ruins take only half a day to explore. As a side note, there was a devastating earthquake that rocked this region in 62 AD, and Herculaneum was completely rebuilt after this...only to suffer complete destruction only 17 years later, which really makes one think about the frailties of life and, in order to be a complete Debbie Downer in this blog, how little our material efforts really matter.

Rope found at the seaport

 ...depressed yet? Anyhoo, while Pompeii burned under hot ash, the (wealthier than Pompeii) citizens of Herculaneum headed down to the port for evacuation by sea, taking with them their gold and jewelry. (Yet another side note: this makes me think that guy on TV who hawks gold at every commercial break may really be on to something). Back to topic, again...hours after the initial eruption, a surge of hot gas blasted the town. At 900 degrees, this immediately killed all remaining citizens and carbonized all organic material (such as wood framing in buildings, plants, fabrics, wax tablets, and more interestingly, preserved the joint connections of all the people). Following this blast was a whole bunch of mud (or solid ash) - Nathan has a good analogy: honey flows very slowly at room temperature, but stick the bottle in the microwave, and then out comes this fast-flowing liquid. That's what happened to the top of Vesuvius. Hot air liquified the mud/ash/lava. This is what flowed down in several surges over Herculaneum, burying this carbonized town under 50 feet of tufa (volcanic rocks). There the town remained until about 1709 or so, when it was discovered during the digging of a well shaft. Excavations have taken place on and off since then. Once of the neatest features of ancient Ercolano is that the site goes right up to the edge of the excavated area, around which are tall walls. Immediately on the edge and on up to Vesuvius is the modern town of Ercolano. I enjoyed looking at those apartment buildings and thinking of just what is underneath them...grand villas of wealthy Romans, filled with frescoes, statues, papyri, jewelry, perhaps a few temples, some restaurants, some ancient apartment buildings upon which are sitting the modern ones.

I'm not really sure how often I can use the word "amazing" when I write these blogs, but I'm probably reaching my limit. Yet they'll still come out. Herculaneum is amazing. I visited Pompeii seven years ago, and while it's a wonderful site, it's a whole bunch of ruins. A column or two here where you must then imagine an entire forum, a foundation there to use in imagining the villa it once supported. Herculaneum has buildings, homes, thermal baths that you can actually walk into as if it were a modern city. When you look up, you might just catch a glimpse of the wood framing used within the rock walls. Frescoes are on the walls and you walk upon mosaic floors, giving any HGTV aficionado a great glimpse of the decorating trends of 2000 years ago. We took a photo of Nathan sitting in the "locker room" of the Men's Thermal bath. There was a bathhouse for both the women and the men, complete with a locker room, a cold room, a warm room (sauna), and the hot room. Herculaneum also had a very large gym (palaestra), which included a marvelous fountain of a Hydra (mythical monster that was a many-headed snake) which apparently flowed water all around it into the swimming pool, where young Herculaneumanos would go for their swim practice, which just goes to show that no matter what millennia we're in, people are concerned about working out. Although this gym also contained a fish breeding pond, so the ancient gyms were a little more versatile.

Herculaneum was so well preserved that food was found in pantries and stores. In one home, a loaf of bread was found, and fortuitously, bread was apparently once stamped with one's name; therefore, we now know that the House of the Deers was owned by Q. Granius Verus because this loaf of bread found there had the stamp "Celer, slave of Q. Granius Verus." My mind immediately heads to such hypothetical situations such as: What if Q. Granius Verus sent over his slave, Celer, with a loaf of bread to his new neighbor? I am assuming that the professionals have much better detective skills and subject knowledge to rule out these types of things.

House of Neptune and Amphitrite, so named because of these richly decorated, glass paste, mosaics. This was a personal dwelling.

Nathan hanging out at the Thermopolium (i.e., lunch joint). One such taberna contained the following saying painted upon the wall: "Diogenes, the cynic, in seeing a woman swept away by a river, exclaimed: 'Let one ill be carried away by another.'" Perhaps this particular taberna was an all male establishment.

Grocery Store

Walking the ancient paths