Ciao from Rapallo

I have now left Rome and traveled four hours by train to the Italian Riveria. Beautiful here by the sea. The weather is perfect. There was a little delay on the train with a medical emergency. I considered answer their call for a medico but since all I can do is count and ask for the location in the bathroom, I decided not to make my presence known.

Day twenty three, September 9, 2010


UGH! Somehow I wrote out this whole day and when Microsoft moved it out of Wordpad to Word, it all got destroyed! Did I say how much I hate computers! I should go back to writing in my journal.

I wake up at 5:40 AM. Did I ever tell you how I get mad when I have to get up early. Well I am feeling a little pissed off right about now but I hit the snooze and make it up by 6 AM so I can be ready for today’s adventure. I get ready in the weird little sit down tub/shower and get downstairs. They have made me a little to-go breakfast since I will be missing it today. Okay, the rest of the staff here are making high marks with me. I wait about 15 minutes for the shuttle to show up. The shuttle bus goes around to about six hotels in this downtown corridor. We pick up a couple from Australia (those Australians really get around). The wife gets confused and thinks her husband is getting in the driver seat. Funny, how did those English( and all those countries they controlled) end up with the drivers on the right and the rest of us on the left. Note to self…look that one up sometime. We then are taken to the Greenline tour bus office. I pay for my tour and then told to get on the bus.

I get on the bus and find a seat on the upper deck; only the best viewing for me. The seats are all in a reclining position, which might be okay for trip across the ocean but not so good for city viewing in my opinion. Some of the seats, the backs are broken and the person in front of you, practically has their head in your lap. May I do your dental cleaning?, you want to ask (actually this is quip from Ellen Degeneres so I will give her credit). A woman sits down next to me but she does not seem in the mood to chat so we don’t. I look around the countryside for awhile. I notice a Hummer dealership just outside of Rome with no Hummers in the lot (move over big boy, this is the land of the Smartcar and the scooter). It is a bit cloudy this morning so viewing in the distance is a little difficult. We pass the town of Cassino(famous for its monastery not its black jack wheels) and . I wonder why some words remain close to the same meaning and some are completely different. Here camera is a room and piano is a floor(like the second floor of a building). Another thing to ponder and Bing in the future. I sleep a little and then we make a stop for the bathroom and coffee. I wonder why these big tour buses do not have bathrooms aboard…I guess more excuses to stop and get your coffee since they don’t do that to go cup and linger thing with their coffee. Hint: Don’t order a latte here or you will get a cup of mile because that is what latte means in Italian. I go to the restroom here, one euro! Of course I pay because we have stopped here after all. I get a peach juice and water and then eat this weird prepackaged croissant in a foil bag( once again I think the French would be appalled but of course the Italians don’t care what they think!). Time for snoozing until we reach Napoli about about 10:30 AM.

I have always wanted to check out Naples but have head it is a sketchy place. There is a lot of garbage under the freeways here (This is not the Italy of postcards) but to be fair I know they had a garbage strike here recently(well, within the last couple of years and you know Italians have quite a different time perspective than we Americans). There are many old and new buildings down here on the waterfront. I guess 24, 000 bombs were dropped on this area during World War 2. One more reason to hate war…destroying all those great antiquities. Some buildings were destroyed but some just replaced with new buildings…its in odd mishmash. We are dropping of some of people who are going on to Capri. We had the option of going to Capri but I have been there before and I did not get much from it except the great sea views and the short pant style so I opted for Pompei again. Another thing to ponder, why do we put two “I” at the end of the word Pompeii and the Italians only one? It is short little tour around the Naples water front. The cute old Italian guy can’t remember a word said in English so he asks me what those thinks are called that they used to carry soldiers on The traffic is horrible here. Oh yes I remember the traffico intenso(no translation needed for this Italian term I would think) trying to get to my lovely flat in Positano but the snarl lead to a night in flop house in Sorrento( I think it all was San Francesco’s doing though).

We continue on and we make an unexpected stop at a cameo(you know, usually the profile of a woman may from a shell, usually worn on a pendant) factory. Not much of show here, would have been nice to see a demonstration, more of just a show room to hauck their wares. We stay there longer than anyone’s liking but at least they didn’t lock you and give you the big pitch like the rug merchants in Turkey.

Next stop is lunch in the town of Pompei(the new town). I sit at a table with Matt( a journalist from Miami here for one day with an AP assignment), an Australian couple(of course), two gals from upstate New York(Mary Kay the iron lady here for training) and a dude from Iceland. The man from Iceland gets everyone talking and we have a nice little chat over our meal. It is a preset meal. We get spaghetti with red sauce first, then a meat dish( some say it was veal but I vote it was pork with a few others) and fruit for desserts. Drinks are extra and I just want water and get a whole liter…now I can’t afford that many trip to the bathroom in this neck of the woods. We finish up and head for the bus. Out on the street, is a wedding party. The women are dressed in burgundy with these elaborate burgundy head sashes. The men are dressed in some type of black pleather numbers. I don’t see the bride. The maid of honor is in a brown and black lacey number…or I assume this is the maid of honor. They are about to drive off on the decorated party bus… actually a street car and they all getting in their smokes before the big event( or perhaps it is acceptable to smoke during the ceremony). Fun to see on this Thursday afternoon. Interesting that there are big weddings on weekdays but I guess they have to compete with the tourists for church times(but they do seem to have plenty of churches around here).

Off to Pompei now on our own party bus(not really). Pompei is as amazing as I remember from the first time. This town of 25,000 preserved by 25 feet of ashes. There is Vesiveus and its partner volcano looming out there in the distance telling these cities that they too may go the way of Pompei someday. Of course, I do live the shadow of a large volcano myself. We Washingtonians can imagine such a pile of ash. But hopefully someone would come to dig us out and not wait several centuries to be discovered that we were stopped in our tracks doing our daily lives (hopefully I won’t be caught in the pose of cutting someone’s toenails…not how I would like to be remembered for the rest of time.) We get to see the typical city elements including the theatre, the gym, houses(of the wealthy and the poor), the winery and of course the brothel. The baths were elaborate with different temperature rooms, but this was for men only. Funny how today that woman many socialize and dig a spa….guess we are making up for lost time. We see the first welcome mat and beware of dog signs…see things have not changed that much. There are a lot of stray dogs around this ancient city but not as much as the last time I was here. Matt says there are signs out front that there was a program to adopt Pompei dogs. Hmmm…I have been thinking about getting a dog, maybe an Italian dog with the dust of Pompei on his paws! We spend about two hours touring, this could take two days but this has been plenty. Our little guide Giuseppe does a fine job even singing a little rendition of “Oh Solo Mia” in the theatre. Bravo Giuseppe! Our little tour guide has taken a shine to me. When I give him a tip, he asks for a kiss so I add this to show my appreciation (Darn why couldn’t Giuseppe be a few decades younger). We stop for a gelati but I get a fresh lemon granita to wet my whistle…tart but tasty.

We board the bus again and head back to the port of Naples to pick up the Capri crowd. I get off the bus for a little bit since we have 20 minutes. I look at the pizza available here on the wharf but I don’t think is going to be a good representative of the Neopolitan pizza so it will have to wait for another trip. I have a chat with my seat mate. Michelle from Quebec Canada. She takes a trip on her own every year. This year leaving behind the husband but the two kids are grown (21 and 23) and she is three years younger than me. We have a nice chat. She thinks the best cities to visit are New York, Cairo and Vienna. I will have to consider the two later one in the future. She says she works at a store with 110 employees and she is the only one to speak English! Snobby French Canadians although we have a lot of Americans who won’t try another language so who are we to talk although we better start learning some Spanish (Rodriguez and Garcia surpassed Wilson on the top American names list this past year). Here she speaks French and it was not one of the languages offer in the laundry list of four languages that we heard all day long today.

We set out for Rome again and I chat with Michelle now. We stop for a short break again. I have a quick cappuccino for my dinner and Michelle has potato chips and a Coke. Not exactly the fine Italian meal this evening. We arrive back in Rome at 9:30 pm. I bid adieu to Michelle and then I get back to my hotel about 10:00. Time to use the internet one more time. Pietro is there to tell me now that I should have picked the package deal for the internet use but I tell him Claudia told me different advice but it seems hard to get my point across and get the better deal but oh well.

I pack most of my stuff because I am getting up early tomorrow to make it to the Villa Borghese and I will need to check out before I leave. Time to bed down at midnight for my last night in the Eternal city!