MetaCategories |
Wednesday, April 5. 2006Waiting for a ferry to Greece
(written 16/4/2006, in Ohrid, Macedonia, by Liz)
We woke up quite early, and during the night, it had occured to Tim that we may need to be at the ferry port we were aiming for a few hours before the ferry actually departed. As we were aiming for the 11.30am ferry to Greece that we had seen on one of the ferry company's website the day before, we packed up and got on the road. The drive from Matéra to Bríndisi (the ferry port) looks quite simple and short on our map. But Italian roads never seem simple, and somehow we got detoured completely in the wrong direction, and found ourselves driving north. In the end, we just continued on the road we were on until we made it to the next major town, and then got on a different highway heading south again. We finally made it to the ferry port in Bríndisi, and we were even in time for the 11.30am ferry to Greece. Only the 11.30am ferry to Greece doesn't exist. The friendly Italian at the ticket office was helpful... 'Maybe it sails...ahhh... 10th of May, maybe not'. As it was the 5th of April, this wasn't really of much use to us, but he ended up selling us two deck-class tickets and a ticket for our car on the Blue Star 7pm ferry to Patra, Greece, sailing that evening. So, now we had a day to fill up. Bríndisi isn't exactly known for anything other than it's ferry port (at least to us), so we drove south along the coast until we came to a tiny and seemingly deserted sea-side village Casa l'Abate. We were going to sit on the beach, but due to the huge drifts of rubbish, and the lack of sunscreen (another stolen item not yet replaced), we spent the day sitting in the car, reading books, eating food and relaxing. Tim walked up the road to a 'bakery', that didn't seem to sell anything except the 'local specialty' - so we ate two pastries filled with cheese and tomato sauce that he had heated up in the microwave for us. It was actually nice to just have a slow and lazy day. We had to board the ferry two hours before it sailed, so we went back to the ferry port just before 5pm and had a coffee outside the ferry terminal. One of the port staff said 'Ahh, I know Australia - the Big Rock, yes?!', to which we replied, 'Yeah, it has a big rock' :) before I managed to do a burn out on the boarding ramp (well, it's not often I have to drive onto great big ferries with Italians all yelling at me which way to go!), and finally parked to car where we were told. Our 'deck-class' tickets provided us with two seats in a windowless room that looks like a big bus, and where the heaters were turned up much to high. Luckily there were plenty of seats available, so we had a bit of room to stretch ourselves out. Dinner was on board the boat, and was expensive but not too bad. The boat left at 8pm Greek time (we put our watches 1 hour forwards), and off we went. Sleep was not too easy, but a little was managed, and sometime in the night we chugged into Greek waters. Tuesday, April 4. 2006Nearly Finished Italy
Nowhere to upload any more blog stuff recently - we are in Matera in mid-south Italy and have had a great time around Naples the last few days.
Hopefully getting a ferry to Greece tomorrow lunch time where we will be for a week and a bit before hopefully moving north through Eastern Europe. Both fine and enjoying our Honeymoon together! Missing everyone back home. Pompeii, Matéra
(written 16/4/2006, in Ohrid, Macedonia, by Liz)
Up early again, we packed up the tent and headed out of Sorrento. Our plan was to drive to Amalfi, and spend the morning seeing the Amalfi Coast, but the weather was truly against us - the further we went, the worse the weather got. When we had all our fog lights on, we decided that sight seeing wasn't going to be too productive, so we turned the car around (that bit was easy - misleading road signs had lead us to a dead end) and drove to Pompeii. At Pompeii, the sun was out and shining, but you could still see the heavy cloud cover in the distance where we had been. After parking the car, we stopped at a café for breakfast including delicious freshly squeezed blood-orange juice, before crossing the road and heading into the ruins of Pompeii. We were given free entry to the ruins, as they were having a Cultural Week, so we payed for some audio guides (which turned out to be a bit rambling) and then spent a few hours wandering all around. I had no idea what a big site it is, and a lot of the ruins are not even open to the public. There is a lot to see, but the highlights for us were the two ampitheatres, the colliseum and one of the large houses complete with garden. Some of the ruins are just walls and nothing else, but a few are quite amazing, with detailed frescoes on the walls inside. Mount Vesuvius is not far away, but due to smog, we couldn't really see it too well from Pompeii. Back outside, we bought a very refreshing frozen orange juice and then drove out of Naples, heading East. A few hours and one roadside food stop later, we arrived in the small town of Matéra. We found a nice hotel, went to the nearby internet cafe and then spent a while wandering around the town. Dinner was memorable - we found a quiet little pizza restaurant just off the main square. I decided to try a 'Four Seasons' Pizza, Tim decided to try 'this one' (points to menu). I laughed long and loud, when two tasty pizza's turned up - mine with mushrooms, ham, olives, capsicum, and Tim's - with brocolli and spinach piled all over it!! Just in case you don't know, Tim's most detested food is brocolli, very closely followed by spinach, and as much as I have tried to make these two foods tempting, he just doesn't like them. So to have ordered his very own large pizza covered in 'green stuff' by accident was very funny. But, being the lovely wife that I am, I swapped pizzas, and the day was saved :) I must say, I am a big fan of 'green stuff', but even a pizza full of it was a bit much for me, and it was the only pizza I didn't completely devour in Italy. Tim hasn't been quite so keen to choose random menu items since :) (Note by Tim: In my defense I ate about a third of the green stuff pizza, although Liz will never admit it!) Monday, April 3. 2006Capri
(written 16/4/2006, in Ohrid, Macedonia, by Liz)
We woke early and walked down to the ferry port where we bought two tickets to Capri on the ferry. Our boat didn't leave for a while so we found a cafe to have a coffee to while away the time. The ferry trip was a little rough, and the views along the Bay of Naples and across to Vesuvius weren't too good due to smog. The ferry trip took about 40 minutes before we arrived at the main port on Capri (tourism: link). Capri is really touristy - it's main income seems to be solely from tourism, so we weren't the only ones there. But instead of jumping on the bus up to the main square, or the boat to the Blue Grotto (a sea cave) with everyone else, we climbed up many flights of stairs to get to the main square in Piazza Umberto. Even though it was a fair way to go up, I am still a bit surprised that we were the only people that bothered to take the stairs. But we got to see the island itself, and it felt like we had it all to ourselves. The main square was busy with cafés touting for tourist business, but after a quick look around, we walked through and continued uphill towards the Villa Jovis, ruins of an old Roman fortress. The only way up here was on foot, so we did actually see a few other people making the journey, but not many. We walked along narrow little streets, past lots of homes and the Capri people going about their daily lives. At one point we were a bit unsure of which way to go, but a friendly old local pointed us in the right direction. At the top, we spent a while looking around the ruins, stopping for a snack of biscuits and water, admired the views looking all the way back down to the harbour we had arrived at, and below us to the clear blue sea before beginning our journey back downhill. We had intended to catch a ferry to Naples to have a look at the city before going back to Sorrento where our tent and car was by train or ferry, but we decided at this point that we didn't really spend the rest of the day rushing to things. So when we made it back down to the main square, we rewarded our walking efforts with a beer while sitting on the busy square. Then we made our way down the rest of the flights of stairs, again being the only ones going this way, before we made it back down to the harbour. We bought ferry tickets to take us back to Sorrento, but the boat didn't leave for quite a while, so we walked along the coast a little way and spent an hour sitting on the (very pebbly) beach. A few people were swimming, but the water felt really cold (aside from that, our swimmers were some of the things stolen from the car, and we haven't replaced them yet), but Tim amused himself with trying to throw my shoes into the water instead :) A very rough ferry trip later, and we were back in Sorrento. It was late afternoon, and we hadn't eaten much all day, so we settled on The English Inn where we had fish and chips - our first 'English-style' meal in ages. Back at the camp ground, we sat in the car reading until the light faded from the sky before going to bed. Sunday, April 2. 2006Sorrento
(written 16/4/2006, in Ohrid, Macedonia, by Liz)
The next morning, we opened the shutters of our hotel room to find that our "75 Euro room with no view" had a spectacular view of Mount Vesuvius stretching out behind us. After breakfast at the hotel, we decided to go a bit further along the coast, so we spent an hour driving around Bay of Naples until we came to Sorrento. Again we dodged increasingly crazy Italian drivers and pedestrians all the way. Once we made it to Sorrento, we got quite lost looking for the caravan park, first ending up winding all the way down to the ferry port, and then getting stuck in a tiny little one-way dead-end road with two other cars, all of us trying to turn around together. Eventually, we made it to our very nice caravan park Nube D'Argento (even with the unmentioned sewerage treatment plant on the hillside underneath the camp site), set up our tent and then followed some signs down the hill to the 'beach'. The beach wasn't all that crash hot for swimming, but did have some cool black sand, which is maybe a remnant of Mount Vesuvius exploding in the past. We found some lovely little restaurants by the water, so we sat in the sun and enjoyed spaghetti with clams (they look like little pippies, and are delicious) for me, and gnocchi for Tim (who was given ravioli at first, but eventually got his chosen dish). With bread and beer, it was quite a filling lunch, so we struggled back up the stairs to our tent, and then spent the afternoon dozing in the shade. Later on, we walked into Sorrento proper, which was about 500 meters from our camp site. The town was full of Sunday afternoon shoppers and families out for a stroll and a coffee. We looked in a few shops, stopped for coffee, found the information center which was closed, and had more of a wander. We found a quaint little gorge in the middle of the town, with an derelict old stone house surrounded with green ferns and bushes and a little stream running past it - not sure if it was some sort of heritage listed or what, but it looked very pretty. We found a narrow little alley, full of different stalls and shops, spent a while tasting Italian lemon liqueur, and then found a little restaurant where we enjoyed our dinner. After dinner, we went and bought some of the lemon liqueur to bring home, and then walked back to our camp site for the night. Saturday, April 1. 2006Driving around Napoli
(written 11/4/06 16:55 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
After paying up, the farmhouse owner man proudly showed us his wine cellar, babbling on in Italian and occasionally getting his point across to us. We think we gathered that he made it, it was strong wine (14%), and, of course, it was good! Not wanting to taste any, or really being able to afford any, we thanked him and got on the roads. Being cheaper and coastal, we used slower roads all day on our way south towards Napoli (Naples), leaving the motorways much further inland. While some of this was scenic, most was just slow going. In retrospect the motorways would have been a much better option. We stopped in a servo for some lunch, before heading onto Roma's ring road - we weren't going in this time around, having spent several days there last time. Very tempting though. The general idea was to look for a camping ground slightly out of Napoli and use that as a base for exploring the city via bus, and the surrounding areas of Sorrento, Capri and the Amalfi coast. The areas looked very dodgy from about 40km north of Napoli along the coast, with lots of derelict buildings, hotels nobody would want to stay at and what were reasonably obviously prostitutes offering their business. It was getting on in the afternoon, so found a camping ground but nobody wanted to answer the bell. I guess from a sign that they opened from Easter, but there were plenty of other people living there. From here the drivers started to get completely crazy. They were driving whatever speed they wanted, overtaking anywhere, pushing you off the road (which was not much better than a dirt track in places) and pulling out in front of you at every intersection regardless of what speed you were traveling. In fact, in several cases people looked to see if you were coming, saw they didn't have enough room to pull out and did so anyway! There really were road rules that we could make out in about a 60km radius around Napoli. Also in the same radius, it seemed like there had been no rubbish collected for about six months, with huge piles of trash overflowing every bin. We battled our way into the crazy packed seaside place of Pozzuoli, and after not really moving much at all and loosing our sanity rather rapidly, we went straight back out again. Not really knowing what to do next, we headed straight north from there and found a campsite. At least differently to the one in Mar Menor a while back, the guy flat out stated that we couldn't put tents up there, even though there was some beautiful perfectly flat grassy areas! To do with his licensing apparently, but still very annoying. There was a train station just down the road and everything. So, there was nothing for it but to go further. We didn't even slightly feel like driving into Napoli proper after seeing what it was like on the outskirts, so we jumped on the motorway and for the best 2euros we've ever spent sailed around all the crazyness below us. It was getting darker by now, so camping was pretty much out of the question, plus after the long drive and crazy traffic we just wanted a nice soft bed to crash on. We got off the freeway on the eastern side of naples, turning towards the coast at Ercolano. Straight back into the insane traffic, I really didn't like the effect it was having on me - making me make crazy decisions I would never take elsewhere or get totally surrounded by honking Italians. We pushed on for another 45 minutes or so, seeing at least a million pizzerias but not one hotel. When we finally did spot one further south in Torre del Greco, we pulled in as quickly as we could manage, and I went inside to investigate the poorly-named Holidays Hotel. There were two room types on offer, one with a view of the Bay of Napoli and another cheaper on on the other side. Cheap was good at the rates they were charging so we went with that. Liz was overjoyed when I returned to the car with one room key and one TV remote, and we drove the car into the secure parking lot, happy to get out of the thing and lug our backpack and plastic bags up to our room. Not really liking the look of the dinner on offer, we wandered in search of what we really wanted - two big pizzas and two big beers. Even though this was only the outskirts of Napoli (where pizza was invented), the pizza was amazing and so so cheap. Combined with a couple of huge gelatos a bit further up the road at Gelateria Gallo, it was exactly what we needed to cap off one of our less enjoyable days away. We walked back past half a street lined with bags of rubbish that could house enough rats to spread the plague, but we didn't care, collapsing exhausted in our room. Friday, March 31. 2006Relaxing in Sienna
(written 11/4/06 15:53 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
As we really liked our little farmhouse with so much space to ourselves, and we had been rushing so much recently, we decided to spend a second night there, looking in Siena, relaxing and reading, but not having to drive anywhere. We spent the morning lazing around, making tea on our campstove (not allowed to "cook" in the kitchen - weird) and munching breakfast from our supplies. I did some blogging for a while, while Liz read. Going to advise them we wanted to stay another night, the funny old couple who presumably owned the place gave me advice on how to catch the bus into town - neither could agree on bus numbers, but they did give me a map showing where they went from so that was good enough for me. After a while of sitting at the bus stop with a guy idling his truck right in our faces for the entire twenty minutes (don't understand how some people can't give a stuff about either other people or the planet they live on), the bus came and took us into town. As usual, we were happy just wandering through streets with no set aim. We found an out of the way restaurant Osteria Titti (previously Permalico) where we enjoyed lunch - easily the best gnocchi I have ever had, and a great osso buco we both had as a main. Again we went back to the main square Il Campo to enjoy the atmosphere, and through back streets where we got a bit lost. Back on track, we went into the distinctive Duomo where the exterior white and black segments on the walls is carried over to the inside. We found most interesting the old music books on display in a side room, huge elaborate things which we had never seen the likes of. Feeling satisfied with what we had seen, we tried to catch bus back to our farmhouse but it went completely the wrong way! It turned around at the end of the line and ended up back in town where we decided to leg it instead. We got off bus at railway and walked the remainder of the way with the GPS as a guide. It turned out to be quite a walk on a rather hot day, but an unexpected way to see the suburbs of the city. In the evening we had tea and sat around with our sore feet well off the ground. Thursday, March 30. 2006San Gimignano, Siena
(written 11/4/06 15:53 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
As with other places, it would have been nice to stay in Riomaggiore but we had set ourselves a lot of ground to cover this trip so there was not too many chances to sit around. We headed out further south down the coast on much faster roads this time, curving inland around past Pisa where we could see the leaning tower and field of miracles, etc. in the distance. Again, been there, done that. Abandoning the mountains and hills, we turned east into rural flat-land Italia. First stop was San Gimignano - a fortified town on a hill. We parked in a park and ride place (finally, they get the idea! Don't let cars in the middle of your towns!), but after deciphering the bus timetable decided to walk it instead (they don't really get the idea after all :( ). Following our noses, it turned out not to be that far to walk at all. The town itself wasn't amazingly impressive - we have seen plenty of these places now and this didn't have the charm of Morella or Riomaggiore, plus the layer of litter really didn't help it's cause. Still, a pizza slice and gelato apiece kept us going for a bit of a wander through the squares and some streets. We found some phones and attempted to use a phonecard we had purchased to call back home, but the Italian-language-only message wasn't what we had been told to expect, no matter what we tried, and it wouldn't let us make any calls. Not to much further away, we had a bigger and hopefully better target anyway - Siena. This was a city which, as with Cinque Terre, fellow travellers were surprised we had missed last time. Not meaning to make the same mistake twice, we attempted to locate some accommodation with little to guide us. First instance upon looking at the prices we may have to pay according to Lonely Planet was camping, but after a long windy drive to the place north of the city, it turned out to be closed, at least for another couple of weeks (lots of things are apparently going to open at Easter - perhaps this was one of them). So, there was little for it but to drive towards the town itself, find a park and then search for a hotel. Luckily, we parked and walked in near a room-finding service, which tried lots of places in our budget and what we were looking for before eventually hooking us up with Casale Virgili, a re-fitted medieval farmhouse with great hosts and a lovely setting (with the exception of the nearby motorway, but you can't have everything) about 4km out of town. While we had parked, we chose to have an hour or so wandering around the town since we had already paid for the parking, so we had a couple of coffees in Bar Sport and wandered the attractive streets, squares, etc., before hitting the huge central Piazza del Campo. This huge shell-shaped plaza was packed with people, but still had an amazing charm surrounded by both renovated and original old buildings, and the huge imposing Torre del Mangia. To be honest we didn't notice any of the buildings or roofs being more "burnt sienna" coloured than anywhere else, but apparently this was where it all originates. We stopped in a supermarket for supplies for dinner back at our accommodation, which we then set out to find. As usual, we got a little lost but eventually sorted it out with not too much hassle. The place was set out with three rooms per apartment, with each apartment also having a loungeroom, kitchen and balcony. We had the whole apartment, in fact whole place to ourselves, so it was nice to have these extra rooms to spread out in instead of just a bedroom. We relaxed in lounge for the evening reading books on the lounges, having a dinner of cheese, bread and nibblies. Wednesday, March 29. 2006Riviera di Levante, Cinque Terre
(written 11/4/06 15:53 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
We awoke to a morning where the weather was hugely improved - blue skies and sun all around us, quite a change from the clouds and fog of the past few days. The included breakfast was big and hit the spot nicely, but we decided to move on and see more of this picturesque part of the Italian coast while the weather was working with us. Part of the coast that fellow travellers had spoken to us about but we had missed last time is the World-Heritage listed Cinque Terre (literally, five towns). Linked primarily by footpaths and a rail line, we hadn't chosen the ideal method to explore it, as the roads into each town plunge off one windy coastal road, making for a lot of driving to cover not much distance. Still, we love that sort of driving, so as we followed the tiny roads, some barely wide enough for one car let alone two, we pushed south-east along the coast. At one point we stopped and made cup of tea by the road overlooking the sea, resting both the drivers and the car. As we drove along to the Cinque Terre, we wound down into Monterosso al mare, the first of the terre. This looked interesting enough, but we only had a quick stop before winding back up and along the tiny road further, watching the remaining five terre pass underneath us, each with a unique but spectacular coastal setting. The last, Riomaggiore, we decided to stop in for the night. Hairpin upon hairpin took us most of the way down into town, until we hit the end of the road with a parking lot. Chancing upon a spot, we paid an extortionate toll and wandered off to quickly find a hotel, hopefully with parking. Tiny windy streets with tall buildings and no more than a dozen shops or so in total, the town was gorgeous and the people nice and friendly. The first hotel we looked at had a great terrace to enjoy the still-sunny weather, parking, but no views to speak of and was quite pricey. A little later we found another cheaper option, no terrace, but amazing views across the tiny port to the surrounding sea. We pounced on it, but had to climb way back up the steep streets to move the car to their reserved parking and grab our gear. Being very careful not to leave anything behind (didn't want to have to walk back to the car up these hills!), we trudged back to the nice room to relax and do some washing. The afternoon was spent wandering along a small section of the coastal path, enjoying first gelato and later a beer and nibblies at Bar Centrale with some fellow travellers. We lazed in our room for evening with the sound of the sea crashing just below us, and I fell asleep at about 7pm so we didn't bother going out for dinner, instead enjoying the cheese, bread and wine in room. The TV strangely had three separate "coast cam" channels where we could get live views of separate sections of surround coast and buildings. Tuesday, March 28. 2006Towards and along the Italian coast
(written 11/4/06 15:32 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
It was raining and misty when we woke, and as such we decided not to hang around Torino. On our way out, we attempted to locate olympic sites but failed - we had certainly expected far better signage than we able to locate, but perhaps a lot had been pulled down. Liz observed the buzz that seemed to hang around Sydney for months after the games just didn't seem to be here - so much was closed and deserted it was as if people had just gone off somewhere else entirely. We stopped at a café on the outskirts of the city where lovely man served us coffee and a bit of breakfast while his assistant stopped a dog from jumping on the window she had just cleaned, cleaned it again and repeated this several times. Getting out of town on small roads (hence avoiding the hefty tolls you pay on most motorways in Europe), we drove south through flat farmland towards the coast. The weather improved but then deteriorated again, not exactly the great sunny days we were hoping for. We drove up into hills heading to the coast at Savona where we were consumed by amazingly thick fog. Luckily weeks earlier we had located the control for the fog lights on Schnee Three, so we flicked them on and proceeded carefully around hairpin bends with about 10m visibility. In retrospect this was probably safer than the motorways, where no doubt some idiots would have still been driving at 130km/h. Only for the last couple of hundred metres were we out of the fog as we hit the coast at Savona, turning east along the coast to Genoa. The choice not to use the motorways let us find some lunch at Taverna Marinara in Varazze a little while before Genoa, but meant very slow going as we went through the city itself and out the other side. A little while further along these narrow scenic coastal roads and we wound our way down through yet more fog into Santa Margherita Lígure, a little place we liked the sound of at the northern end of the Riviera di Levante. We parked and wandered, finding a nice hotel Nuova Riviera which was still very posh, but within budget, with helpful staff and nice to relax at. After a bit of negotiation we we able to put the car in the front, although the way the old owner directed me in to the tight spot ended up putting small scratches on the front bumper. Can't be helped I guess. We wandered around town, but the weather still wasn't fantastic. We end up at Ristorante Sangiacomo on the waterfront for a couple of great pizzas with nice views. Monday, March 27. 2006Into Italia - Torino
(written 11/4/06 15:04 Greek time, in Náfplio, Greece)
We had, of course been to Italia before, so this time we could be more selective and see things off the railway line (last time our campervan Rosie blew up on us just outside of Venice, leaving us to travel the rest of the way across/around Europe by train and backpack). The first of these was the reason we had chosen the way into Italia that we did - Turino, recent site of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. As we crossed the border into Italia, snow was still all around us as we wound our way back down the side of the mountains. We could see thick fog off in the distance as we joined a motorway from a much larger more northern border crossing and headed due east to Torino. The typical big-city problem occurred and we couldn't really find where we were going with no map and no decent signs, but after crossing the entire city on the main road I saw a camping sign which we decided to head for. Turned out to be Camping Villa Rey, listed in Lonely Planet and plenty nice enough, set up on a hill just outside of town. We had hoped to find cheap accommodation in the glut after the Olympics, but nothing obvious hit us and we couldn't find the tourist office. We set up our tent and had a bit of a look around the site complete with old buildings, and I was just asking the camping guy for a map and some directions into town when he offered us a lift back down the windy hill to the bus stop! Us being us though, we had a map and would rather get the exercise, so we walked from there into the middle of town. We stopped for a drink, stumbling into Caffe' Elena, surely the most ritzy place in town and feeling very out of place, but enjoying a chat there in the corner all the same. After the pain of the cost of that, we moved on looking around the streets. Not too surprisingly, Liz managed to find the chocolate festival that was happening, filling up one of the central squares with all manner of sugary goodness. I let her wander around and sample for a while, and when we re-joined we went through the Lindt tent - her favourite - together sampling what they have on offer. Even though she wasn't feeling well after eating too much chocolate, we went off for some dinner anyway. The restaurant Ristorante Pizzeria Lampara we found was packed with locals, and our attempts at remembering Italiano again were rather faltering. Still, we got some great food, and my primi (entree) could have fed about six people - a huge pile of tasty spaghetti with sauces and meats. When I didn't eat it all, feeling very full and still having a main course to get through, I got a nasty look and gesticulations from a waiter obviously not impressed with me. No matter, we enjoyed ourselves and paid just as well as anyone else, managing the much more reasonably-sized main courses, a carafe of wine, some bread and coffees. We walked all the way back to camping, a good way to get digesting the great Italian food.
(Page 1 of 1, totaling 11 entries)
|
QuicksearchArchivesPowered byLicense |