Villa San Giovanni, Italy

In 2011, we spent about 4 days in Rome and did all the traditional tourist things – visited the Colisseum, the Forum, went to the Vatican and looked at the Sistine Chapel, ticked off the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, ate copious quantities of gelati and generally enjoyed ourselves.

When we decided to come back to Rome, the big question was what to see? After reading a few things and getting some suggestions from friends, we were ready to hit the Eternal City again… but first, Nick wanted to make a stopover to see the Italian Air Force Museum, which is located about an hour outside of Rome, by a Lake, in a place called Braccione. We found a campground on the lakeshore, “admired” the black sand, ate dinner at a local restaurant and then drove to the Museum.

I really didn’t feel like walking through an air force museum, so I sat in Oscar, reading whilst Nick had an enjoyable couple of hours walking around the museum. The Museum is set up in an old Dirigible hanger and he got to see lots of things that he said that he just wouldn’t see at home in Oz, like a huge variety of WW2-era Italian aircraft and post-war American jets. And the best thing was — it was free!

As we are travelling in Oscar, we found a campsite on the coast, near Rome. In fact, it turned out that we were only about 6 train stations from Ostia Antica, which was one of the things that we had been recommended to visit. In case you don’t know, Ostia Antica was the Harbour of Ancient Rome and is very well preserved. The river silted up and the harbour was moved. We also decided to visit the Appian Way (Via Appia Antica) and maybe the Catacombs. One of the benefits of staying at Ostia Lido (the beach) was that there was a very good suburban train which ran from near our campground to the middle-suburbs of Rome and we could then change over to the Metro and go almost anywhere.

On our visit to the Catacombs, we had an English-speaking Guide, but I’m not sure how much “English” he spoke given that he came from Melbourne! But we had an interesting tour and I saw the spot where St Cecilia was buried until she was moved to her church (I earned brownie points for knowing that she is the patron saint of musicians – thank you for that snippet of education from the nuns at Lochinvar). We walked along the Appian Way, to the spot where Sparticus and the slaves were crucified – according to legend and then finishing off with afternoon tea at Babbingtons on the Spanish Steps (us, not Sparticus & the slaves). Day two in Rome was a revisit to the Vatican Museum – but this time to see everything except the Sistine Chapel. Our visit to the Museum ended with lunch in the Café – which was huge, so we decided to go for a bit of a walk to help digest lunch. Well, that bit of a walk was down to the Tiber, along it for 6 bridges, and then across the last bridge to the “Mouth of Truth”. What’s that? I hear you ask – watch the film “Roman Holiday” and you will see it. It turns out that we did 20,000+ steps that day – no wonder my feet were sore! Day three was our day at Ostia Antica and Day four (our last day in Rome) was spent in Rome again, visiting the gardens at Villa Borghese, where we hired a pedalo (side-by-side two-person bike) with which we terrorised the locals enjoying a quiet Sunday in the gardens, and then we walked down to Piazza del Popolo before heading back to Oscar.

After a great 5 days in Rome, it was time to pack up and head down towards Naples. We had booked a cooking class in Sorrento which is just across the Bay of Naples, so that was our destination. Our original plan was to overnight in Sorrento to do the cooking class before heading to a campsite near Pompei but once we had driven through Sorrento in Oscar (give me another drink!!!) and seeing how handy the trains were to get around, we decided to stay at the Campground in Sorrento and catch the train back and forth. By the way, we think that Oscar must be part mountain goat given how well he handled the entry into the campground… it was THAT steep!!!

So, our cooking class – we learnt how to make potato gnocchi with a REALLY easy tomato and basil sauce, followed by chicken cacciatore and tiramisu for dessert! We sampled some local sausage and salami as an Antipasti and I got to sample some local Prosecco and Chianti. It is probably a good thing that we had to walk back to the campground so that we could digest our lunch!

Now it was time to sample the Circumversuviano train which runs from Sorrento to Naples around the Bay of Naples. Oh, that’s right – that will be this afternoon as we decided to get the hydrofoil across the Bay of Naples. One thing we had been told to do in Naples was to visit the underground tunnels. It turns out that the underground tunnels are the old water cisterns and aquaducts that were started by the Greeks and finished by the Romans. The Greeks were mining Tufa, a volcanic stone popular for use as a building material and then turned the holes were the Tufa was extracted into water cisterns. The tour through the tunnels lasted for 1½ hours and is excellent value but if you are claustrophobic at all, then it probably isn’t a good idea. I managed it fine (no claustrophobia for me), though my knees weren’t too happy with the steps, but I had no problems with squeezing through some of the water tunnels – especially the one that was pitch-black and you needed to carry a candle to cast a bit of light on things.

A big-tick item for both Nick and I was to visit Pompei and Herculano. Whilst Pompei was interesting, it was crowded with tourists and there was a lot of ground to cover – too much for one day. However, Herculano was definitely worth the visit! We had an English-speaking guide and the section of the town that had been excavated from the solidified mud, which was only about one-quarter of the whole town, was compact and easy to walk around. The citizens of Pompei were killed by the poisonous gas of the volcanic eruption and the buildings were generally collapsed by the build-up of ash that descended onto Pompei. In Herculano, it all happened a lot faster as it was much closer to Vesuvios but the big difference was that Herculano was flooded with a kind of liquid mud which which flowed into every nook and cranny so that the city disappeared under 25m of mud. It was only discovered in 1700s when a farmer was digging a well to get water and found marble statues! After the excavation, there are some really amazing mosaics still to be seen – all still in situ.

If you look at a map, you can find Naples and Sorrento, and just along the coast from Sorrento is the Amalfi Coast and Positano. Did we want to visit the Amalfi Coast and Positano – yes! Did we visit? NO! We left Sorrento on a Saturday morning, leaving early in the morning (by Italian standards, that’s about 9am) to get ahead of the tourist traffic and headed straight for the Autostrada and went south! Yes, the scenery in that part of the world is glorious but the roads are narrow, with lots of hairpins corners, filled with crazy Italian drivers and scooter riders. In fact, we have decided that the scooter riders are worse that the car drivers – there is no sense in how they ride and how they just push their way through any gap, no matter how narrow, totally ignoring all the other cars, buses, trucks and pedestrians, and blithely going wherever they want to! So, no – no Amalfi Coast for us!

Instead, it was time to head down to Sicily – which will be covered in our next blog entry.