We Ditch Venice For Padua

In the morning we woke up in our tiny caravan / bunk thing in the campground and decided we'd experienced enough Venice for one trip. We did a bit of morning Googling and decided to head in the opposite direction out to Padua, and perhaps on to Verona if there was time. 

We hadn't done any research on these two locations. I had never heard of Padua before. I knew that Verona was the setting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet so suspected there would be some tourism in that vein. I knew this from making a TERRIBLE website about Romeo and Juliet as a collaborative project during my first year of teaching.. 

Aside from that, the name Verona just made me think of the song by Elemeno P!

As we approached the front of the campsite we saw our bus drive past. We weren't in a rush - but the two ladies waiting at the bus stop were, and they were NOT impressed the bus driver had completely ignored them and breezed by. We caught the next bus together. 

I think it was around this stage of the holiday we may have accidentally started an intermittent fasting regime. We're not particularly early risers unless there was something special to get to, and often didn't carry food with us. We started eating later and later in the day and condensing our intake-hours. This was probably necessary given how much pizza, pasta and wine we'd be having! 

We had McDonald's for brekkie, from the slowest McDonald's in the world. 

Once our grumbling tummies were quieted it was time to explore Padua. And Padua was GREAT. It was far less touristy but just as Italian. 

We wandered into an old church (maybe it was the Padua Duomo?) with really high vaulted ceilings and an open, airy, welcoming feel. I was particularly taken by the artwork on the walls; murals where original fragments had been carefully placed into their position of origin and the rest of the art was lightly sketched in, to show what would have been there in the past. The picture doesn't look like much. I just thought it was such an unusual way to restore art and somehow.. respectful of the original. Not restoring and pretending, just doing enough to share a glimpse and acknowledge the loss. And I was impressed because I have NO idea how they worked out where to place the tiny pieces! 

Next we strolled along to Piazza dei Signori, where there was a market on. I agonised about whether to buy an apple-pear or a peach for morning tea. I went with the apple-pear, which turned out to be disappointingly floury.. should have gone for the peach.

Next stop was another church, which I have recorded in my Google Keep notes as "amaaaazing" but I'm currently recalling it as immense and garish. Hmm. Have decided to report both. 

It was the Basilica di Sant'Antonio. About it I have noted it "is apparently the end of a pilgrimage." Google confirms indeed it is - it's listed as one of eight international shrines of the Holy See. 

There were photographs and money pinned EVERYWHERE - people trek there and wish glorious things for themselves and their loved ones. I made particular note of a photograph of someone sitting their medical exam with a prayer to pass. 

I was told off for the length of my shorts again, so I unbuttoned the sides and tried to low-ride a little bit. To my great amusement, the Catholic Church decided to ALSO be offended by Kurt's knees that day - and he got scolded too. A grumpy old woman tried to alert security and have him kicked out of the church! It was all so ridiculous when there were statues of Madonna with her breast out feeding baby Jesus and women and men in all states of undress.. but.. but... we couldn't possibly show our KNEES! 

After enjoying the architecture and priceless artwork of the Basilica we decided to spend a minute in a local park and relax by watching some fish in the canals. 

Google tells me the park/canals are the Prato della Valle

Now we don't usually 'do' museums, but that day we did - the Museum of the History of Medicine! It was really interactive and had us measuring our heart rate (59 resting) and blood pressure in one room, looking at preserved (pickled) fetuses of varying stages of development (fetusi?), terrifying old surgical implements and deconstructed real arms..

There was also a white body sculpture on the ground floor that was at least 8m long and the Museum played a looping projection of different layers and organs in the body onto it which we stared at for quite some time.

We never made it to Verona.

Padua was too interesting! I'd love to go back for Verona one day. I think Mum and Dad might be going there in September..

Instead, we hit up a supermarket where I splurged on salmon for dinner later.. We caught the bus back and cooked our newfound fave of pesto gnocchi (salmon for me while Kurt insisted on staying loyal to the pesto-sausage combo) in the communal cooking shed while two friendly old ladies made "mmmm" sounds from the neighbouring laundry room over the smell of it.

The day finished with more wine and an early night.

A Day in Venice

Next on the list was Venice! Everyone said it would be full of tourists (like us, adding to the swell) and expensive. Both of those were true but we definitely still enjoyed ourselves. 

One of my favourite books growing up was 'City of Masks' by Mary Hoffman which is set in Bellezza, a magical, fantastical renaissance version of Venice. The city and islands matched my mental picture almost perfectly.  Just last week I gave that book to one of my Year 13's - the only Year 13 boy I teach. I'm yet to hear back what he thought of it!

We woke up in the morning in a tiny fixed trailer outside of the city. To start the day I spent 30 minutes on the phone to Sammi in NZ while I sipped a yummy Italian coffee from the uninspiring cafe area of the campground.  When I was all caught up we bussed in to Venice to spend the day soaking in all the historical and canal-y goodness.

The city was picturesque at every turn.

Masks are everywhere in Venice. I wish we had a way to know which were genuine and steeped in family history or tradition and which were tourist traps! 

Kurt rocking his growing 'stache in a corner of the city. 

One of the stores we explored was called Captain Candy and it turned out to be a 16 euro tourist trap. $32 of lollies! Not worth it. 

 Bustling Piazza San Marco which was full of a) tourists like us, b) all the same cheap plastic merchandise sold around Europe and c) some very grand architecture!

We thought about going on one of the gondola, but were put off by how many people stand on bridges and stare down at people in them! In my mind it had always been a private cruise at sunset looking up at the homes from the water, as they're intended to be seen - not looking up at 50 people with selfie sticks and cameras!

Some facts about Venice: there are 420 bridges, and another 30 islands. Some islands used to be a monastery, others were hospitals. Now some are abandoned. One of the islands is the University of Venice! 

After a morning of walking we decided that we 'got' Venice. Food was expensive but we had a quick sandwich while fending off some curious birds, and we had run out of ideas when - down by the sea - a good deal caught our eyes.

For the rest of the afternoon we explored three islands of Venice. The first stop was to observe glass-blowing on Murano. There are over 100 glass factories now on Murano - they moved off the mainland 100's  of years ago to protect Venice from fire AND to protect the art of glass making. 

This is the glass blowing master, and he manipulated, spun and pulled the liquid glass into this rearing stallion in about 10 minutes. The room was so hot but it was impressive to watch. 

Kurt used to have a part time job in high school at this Nelson glass blowing store sanding the base of penguins so had seen similar demonstrations before. Check out some of their pieces here:

The second island was Torcello. This river ran up towards the Basilica and passed lots of homes and shops selling lace - what they're famous for.  At Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta we also found the cheapest postcards in Europe!

The last island was this BEAUTIFUL island called Burano. Everyone there must have huge cans of paint and regularly refresh the front of their houses. Maybe they have a committee to decide who gets what colour! 

Do they rotate colours each year?

Some of the other islands we passed on the way out to Murano and Burano just grow fruit and vegetables!

Someone must have been married in the morning!

A nice man offered to take our photo :)

We finished the trip with our legs hanging over the edge of an island as the sun went down, enjoying each others company.

That evening (after the boat and bus trip back to the campsite) we walked to a restaurant nearby and sat down at a table. The waiter brought us water which we drank, we opened the menus.. we looked at each other.. and without much of a word we got up and almost RAN from the restaurant because it was so expensive and we didn't want to be trapped by politeness when the waiter returned!

That should be the end of the story, except when we ran I had left my phone on the chair next to me. I had to slink back in and bashfully pick it up, leaving again quickly with my tail down. 

Dinner that night was more cheap pizza!

Pompeii and the Secret Terrace

I was sad to leave Amalfi! It was the most beautiful, relaxing, cake-filled, cat-friendly, stair-heavy place we'd been and I felt right at home there. 

We got to the bus stop on time, along with about 8 other people. When the bus pulled up it was already pretty full. We got Kurt's bag and our two backpacks with all the passports and things in them stored up above our heads to try and make room for more people, but mine wouldn't fit. 

What I hadn't thought of was that as more and more people got on the bus we would be pushed further towards the back and away from all our important stuff which I should have kept with me. Kurt got a seat somewhere right at the back but I was trapped with my bag by some grumpy Americans who resolutely refused to move down the bus, even when asked by the bus driver in Italian (his meaning was unmistakable) and other passengers in English too. 

"No, we're having a conversation with these people here!" 

..."Ummmm well there are about 30 people squashed in the front half of the bus being blocked in by you and your special conversation.." I DIDN'T say, because I'm so non-confrontational. 

Instead I patiently waited and then at the next stop realised why they'd ACTUALLY refused to move down - their friends were getting off and they wanted their seats!

Once the Americans sat down we all spread out throughout the bus and had a bit more space for a stop or two before we were chocca-block again, and that's the way it stayed for the next hour. I couldn't reach Kurt because I still had my bag (standing up on it's wheels and doing it's best to tip onto people whenever possible) and I was also trying to keep an eye on our bags way up the front of the bus. After a while the bus had to drive past people and leave them stranded because we physically couldn't fit any more people on!

When we finally got to our stop we had to get off at the back door, walk to the front and then convince the people squashed at the front to get off the bus (promising them they wouldn't lose their place) so I could manoeuvre in and with the help of some nice people, unload all of our bags. Nothing stolen. Phew! 

The train station was up a hill and then what felt like a lot of stairs but was probably only about 20.

The ticket office wasn't open but Google said the train was due in about 10 minutes. There was another couple waiting with us and we all set about trying to buy train tickets online. They couldn't get through in time but we clicked 'buy' just as the train pulled up. They chose not to get on without tickets, which turned out to be a good decision because our tickets were checked within the first few minutes by a very grumpy guard; they might have been in for a nasty fine!

We arrived in Pompeii train station and left our bags there, before walking to see the ruins. We had bought a "skip the line" pass expecting queues but there were none!

I'm not sure how much everyone knows about the Pompeii eruption so I'll tell you a little bit - Mt Vesuvius erupted in August 79AD and released millions of tonnes of ash, pumice, and molten rock over a period of about 24 hours. 25,000 people lived in Pompeii and Herculaneum and a lot of people didn't get away fast enough - about 16,000 people died in the eruption.

The city wasn't rebuilt and it became a sort of time-capsule buried under about 5m of ash and debris. Looters did return to tunnel in and run away with lots of the city's riches, and nobody else really paid much attention to it until 1748.

When the archaeologists arrived they discovered that the ash and pumice had hardened around houses and bodies. While the bodies had deteriorated, the ash around them had acted as a mould that could be filled to create casts showing people's final moments. At one point the casts were painted and displayed in Pompeii but their expressions were a bit terrifying - I don't think they display them any more. There were a few of the plain plaster casts shown when we were there but we didn't take any pictures of them, it felt disrespectful.

I really enjoyed seeing rooms where even the colour of the murals painted on walls were still preserved and visible, and complete mosaics on the floors. 

They had a few amphitheatres of different sizes, a sports training ground/gym and an arena.

Here's Kurt listening to our audio guide in the arena. I remember liking that particular story because it was about a real event that happened with real people; spectators got into a bit of a fight with people from the village over and got themselves banned for something massive like ten years! 

When we walked out of the arena I realised we were standing very close to where my favourite Pompeii video is set. I show the video to my class every year at the start of the volcanoes unit; I shut the curtains, turn off the lights and crank the sound up to make it seem like a simulation. 

Since we were standing right there I set my phone on a rock wall and showed Kurt the entire thing. I've included the video below if you're interested!

I was a bit disappointed while we were walking around because I had been excited about coming to Pompeii for quite a while to see and experience and hear stories from their lives before the eruption.

Unfortunately though, the site had done some kind of audio-guide system upgrade and on lots of buildings there were two signs with two different numbers on them, and most of the time both numbers wouldn't link to any recording at all - and if it did then it was often the wrong recording.

AND! This was the kicker for me. When we found the right recording for a building, the directions in the recording would be so unclear moving around the house that we couldn't learn about the different rooms. There was one particular fantastically large house that had a central square courtyard with rooms off all around it; it had beautiful murals that must have had stories to be told, rooms with different purposes to be explained... but the instructions were SO bad that after the first room on the right, I wasn't sure where I was supposed to walk. "Turn right and pause at the peristonelium." I'm sorry the what? What is that?! "Now let's go over to the left." Yeah but.. the left from back at the entrance, or from the middle of the right side where I am now? Arh!

So.. that was a bit disappointing. I didn't learn much at all and after 2pm I gave up completely and just looked around.

So here is me out the front of a glorious house and it's gardens and statues out the back that I still know nothing about, other than it's very pretty.

Pompeii was massive. Before we went there I hadn't pictured the scale of it! 20,000 people lived there and the entire thing is open to walk around. There are streets and streets and streets of houses and shops and gardens and temples!

One thing I do remember (overheard from a tour guide that we casually stalked at a distance) is that these stones are for crossing the road without getting your feet and clothes dirty, because waste and water would flow down the streets while people walked above it on the footpaths.

I joked that this was my shop bench; "hello Sir, how can I help you?" and it turned out that it actually WAS a cafeteria! There were four holes in the stone bench and that was for keeping food warm in ceramic jars, ready to serve. Early takeaways for busy Pompeiians!

I thought this view was pretty cool :) This photo was taken on our way out, before we walked back to the train station and were picked up by our LOOOVELY Air BnB host Antonella. 

She drove us back to her house (this is the view from her driveway) in a very Italian-driving-style and then told us she had given us a free upgrade from the room in her house to a private little cabin across the road! Her room was $40NZD and the cabin was $80NZD, so that was really nice of her! We had also opted to pay 20 euro each for dinner in her "Social Eating Terrace." She said dinner would be about 7.30pm. 

Here's our cabin/house across the way.

It's shower had a base made from loose pebbles! I wasn't sure what to make of it at first but it was actually quite nice on the sole. We went for a walk before dinner up to the local village and bought some cheap wine and I got some chocolatey cereal and milk for afternoon tea too :D

Dinner was A-MA-ZING. Antonella cooked us three courses and everything that went in my mouth was the best of whatever it was I'd ever eaten. Seriously. If you ever go to Pompeii look up her Social Eating Terrace for one of the best dinners of your life! It was absolutely worth the money. I think one course was tomato and buffalo mozzarella, and chilli-brocolli with a single sausage (picture below). 

My favourite was the broccoli - 100% best broccoli I've EVER eaten. She said she cooked it with chilli oil but I'm not sure how it got this sort of... naturally creamy texture. Oh my god. It was delicious. Then came the pasta. So simple with just bits of bacon in it and so mmmmmm. The whole time her lovely husband was also making sure we had enough of the delicious local wine (once again we were reminded that you can definitely taste the difference between 2euro bottles of wine and proper wine!) and we they also gave us a glass of local lemoncello as well!

For dessert we had some homemade tiramisu and again it was delicious. 

Kurt was a very happy man :)

Before we went back down to our cabin I gave their sleeping cat lots and lots of pats, and that was a really nice end to the night of great food (and company).

We had a pretty good sleep after we went on a mosquito-killing rampage, although I did wake up a few times imagining that we were about to become Pompeii victims Part II!

Exploring Amalfi

From Naples we took a bus for a few hours out to Minori.  It's possible to do this as a day trip but we decided to stay three nights there and see everything we could. The bus trip was an experience on its own because the roads were SO narrow along the cliffs - the drivers were truly artists. I hoped they are paid well for their craft! 

Bare millimetres away from the other bus, and not a scrape or squeal on the way past!

I did take another photo on the way in to try show the terraced lemon orchards but it was through the bus window and very grainy and for some reason extremely green-tinged, so I haven't included it here.

When we arrived we waited at the cafe we'd been told to meet at. And waited. And waited. And called the lady who spoke next-to-no English to say we'd been waiting and she told us to keep waiting at the cafe because she was 2 minutes away so we waited some more and eventually ordered cake (EASILY one of the BEST cakes I've ever EVER had!!) and coffee and waited and eventually gave up waiting and walked the 40m to the Air BnB whose address was very clearly marked on the Air BnB map. 

When we arrived at the Air BnB her neighbour came out and chatted to us (she also showed us her own accommodation in case we wanted to change to hers) and then VERY helpfully rang the lady who was supposed to meet us and spoke in Italian to let her know we were at the house. We waited some more before Kurt went back out to the cafe we'd originally been told to meet at while I tried to talk to the nice neighbour in broken english and FINALLY the lady showed up - and SHE was grumpy with ME for not being where we had said! I said something slightly salty back but I don't think she picked up on it because of the language barrier, which was probably a good thing. Minori is tiny by the way. You can walk around in in under 10 minutes, so I don't know what took so long. 

We later discovered there are two cafes with exactly the same name (De Riso) run by two brothers only 50m apart, and we had sat at the wrong one (right in front of the bus stop) thinking it was the correct one. Why would we look for a second cafe with the same name!?

The apartment was very cute and little. It had a white curved concrete roof and was picturesquely Italian. Our bed was a fold-out couch and the kitchen was cupboard-sized and the bathroom was up a small set of stairs - the shower would completely soak the bathroom mat, toilet and toilet paper every time we had one! The apartment was one minute from the beach, 30 seconds from the pizza restaurant that became our regular, and 20 seconds from the second cafe that produced the most divine cakes and desserts. We had cake every night. One day I even had cake for breakfast. A few days later we were telling someone we'd just come from Minori and she said "oh, the town with all the cakes!" YES lady! ALL the delicious cakes! 

This was the beach a minute from our house. See the roped off area and the shaded beach chairs? Everywhere along the beach were shaded chairs belonging to the restaurant higher up the sand - you have to buy something to sit there. I had a yummy mushroom risotto and a glass of wine before we went to read and relax on the chairs. I can't remember what Kurt got but I remember it was expensive and quite a tiny portion, so he was still hungry afterwards!

I received a very special message from a friend that day that made me so, so happy and excited, and that was the topic of our conversation for the afternoon and well into the next two days! That evening we had pizza for dinner, cake for dessert, and some cheap red wine in our tiny apartment. We went for a walk to explore Minori but quickly discovered how tiny it was and walked back to our home only 10 minutes later!

The next day Kurt went off exploring by himself while I did some work on an application. He popped back for long enough to make me some gnocchi and pesto (the concentration was so great I didn't even want to stop for food) and we discovered the key to good gnocchi is having gnocchi as fresh as possible and that a great pesto is key. That one wasn't one of our best lunches!

He went left into the hills above Minori and took these photos with his (fairly bad quality) phone camera.

More photos. These are the only photos from that day, after I emerged from my bat-cave that evening after finishing the application we had more pizza and cake and wine! 

The next day we went for an afternoon walk out to the right of Minori. 

These are not even all the photos Kurt took of me patting all the kitties in the city, there were some adorable ragdoll kittens on the way down. I stopped patting cats when I went to pat one last one near our house but stopped myself in time - there were fleas crawling all over it's fur! After that we implemented the "no collar no pat" rule. 

People have a really interesting concept of pet ownership in Greece and a few other countries in Europe - Dubrovnik is another one that springs to mind. People don't own or keep dogs as such. Each dog is registered to someone and can be wearing collars, but they live outside on the streets, eat from public dog and cat-food dispensers and drink from water buckets left out for them. Then they wander into people's houses or sleep out on the street as they please. If anything happens to them and they get injured the person that they're registered to will get a call! 

When we were in Athens the second time we stayed in an apartment, and at the base of the stairs were a few dog leads and poop-bags ready for dog-walks. During our second day there Kurt wasn't feeling well and I was busy cooking him a healthy meal when I noticed a dog and cat in the apartment keeping me company. I gave them lots of pats and scratches while I was waiting for the veges to roast. That evening when we were out walking I saw the dog out on the street a few blocks away and I realised - it was one of those public dogs! He'd just popped in for cuddles and snooze. I didn't see the cat or dog again the whole remaining time we were there.

Here's some of the lemon terraces that surround Minori. 

On our third day we decided to walk the Path of The Gods. This is Kurt checking where the Gods are on GPS.

Sweat free and not very high yet. We're about to walk up to the top and a long way along that ridge!

We knew we were going the right way when we saw this sign.

The view from about halfway up.

The path was definitely for more than one God. There were crosses but there were also rock carvings and faces of Medusa and other Gods or Demi-Gods or what-have-you.

I thought this was clever, it's a pulley system to deliver goods from the sea to near the top of the hill.

There weren't many buildings up this high, there was only a church - perhaps it was a monastery? And this very chill dog.

Still not at the top but it was so hot I took off my shirt and tucked it into the back of my shorts to act as a sweat rag. The Gods must really have loved stairs, because there were a LOT of them!

The view from the top. We went pretty fast, I think, and occasionally had to really pump it get past massive and ponderous school groups.

We walked all along the top of these hills in the brilliant sunshine with one of the most beautiful views of our trip. We never had it quite to ourselves (you can see another walker disappearing around the next corner) but there was enough space to not feel crowded either.

Here we've started our descent down many many stairs and discovered a functioning church at the very top of Positano. People were inside singing hymns and outside was a shy cat, a young toddler running in circles around a tree with seats and her Mum, another family, and a stall selling locally made lemon slushies and Peroni! We had a break and enjoyed the view and the very energetic child. 

After a week of basically eating nothing but pizza and our exercise being limited to walking around (mostly flat) cities, my knees decided they'd had enough halfway down the staircase to Positano. I wasn't in a heap of pain but I quickly reached the "what can I do differently to avoid the pain" stage. I thought about trying to slide down the banister. I walked backwards for a while. I settled on a side-squat and changing sides every 10 stairs for the last bit, and I must have been far enough behind Kurt for him to have time to take out his phone and take a photo. Such concentration!

We thought I was just unconditioned but after we did a gym session in Budapest the same place was sort again - lucky I had my travelling physio with me who did some tests and prescribed some regular stretches and a strengthening activity before I do any bending or squats!

Once we reached the road we wound our way down to the town, which was full of tour groups and only had one small shop-lined road down to the water. All the restaurants we looked at on the way down were VERY expensive (€25 or more for a main, 17 for an entree sort of level!) and Google wasn't helping us much. Luckily Kurt found an ice-cream shop that made pizzas fairly cheaply (let the pizza diet continue!!) so we ordered two of them. We thought we had better head down to the water to try and catch a ferry back to Minori and (we're quite lucky like this) bought two tickets with 5 minutes to spare - the next ferry would have been an hour and a half later!

We were treated to some spectacular views from the water of all the cliffs we'd just walked over.

That night I ordered a salad instead of pizza (I just couldn't face another one!) and that was the end of my pizza-ordering for the rest of the trip. We got a big rush of endorphin from the exertion of completing the Path of the Gods and thought it might be time to start doing a bit more exercise!

We still got cake that night though. How could you not when it looked like this!?

I didn't take this photo. But it shows about.. mm.. 1/4 of the options available! The shop was Pastry Sal De Riso and it's rated 4.6 stars with 261 reviews on Google. It's A-MAY-ZING.

Now that we're home a lot of people ask "where was your favourite place?" We've talked about this too - are there any places that we would go back to? It's hard to judge a "favourite" place when they were all quite different. Minori and Amalfi would be up there as a place to go and relax for a week - there's really not much to do but eat, read on the beach, go for a walk or perhaps (which we didn't get to) go out to see some islands on a boat. We liked other places for other reasons - Slovenia for all the natural beauty and outdoor activities, Bosnia because it was such a different culture and so recently war-torn that it was interesting, Italy for the food - but if we went back we would probably explore new places rather than return to Minori. 

Although.. that cake was good...