We woke up today planning on taking a flight. Ciro had worked hard to arrange for us a private plane ride for a few hours over Mt. Vesuvius, the Amalfi Coast, Pompei and the local terrain. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate and the skies were painted grey. Quickly, Ciro and Maria coordinated a visit to a local abbey of the Holy Trinity, which turned out to be pretty amazing. Maria accompanied us into the abbey and we received a great tour by one of the abbey’s English-speaking museum attendant.
It was over 1,000 years old and had been built on and improved by many different inhabitants. In the ancient times, the monks made wine and sold grain. Until recently, there was a college located on the premises. Immediately after the Napoleonic wars, this abbey was one of a very small numbers of abbeys still in operation. Amazingly, the 1980 earthquake, which heavily affected many places in this region, did not harm one single little hair on this abbey. We visited the museum with several paintings, gilded ornaments, Gregorian chant sheet music, and maps dated well back into the 13th century. On our way out, we stopped in the monks’ meeting room, which had a beautifully painted mosaic tile floor (created in 1777 and representative of the Port of Naples) and frescoes on the wall (from 1632) depicting many different saints.
After the abbey, Maria delivered us to Ciro, who was waiting to deliver us to…a delivery store. We headed to Salerno and went to a shipping center to give Jane a chance to ship some of her many gifts – GSE Team Leaders get more than Team Members. Once we finished at the shipping center, Ciro took us through the municipal court building, in which civil and penal cases are heard. There are two levels of courts here – the tribunal and appellate courts – and the third (currently unknown by this author) is located elsewhere (also unknown) in the city. This was our first court with a security system that actually checked our bags so we felt a whole new level of security. Judges here have hall lockers where they store their robes.
We headed to a local pizza place, Pizza Margherita, and happened to be waiting to cross the street as a few police officers approached. It turned out to be perfect timing because they stopped traffic for us and we were sitting in the restaurant in no time. At lunch, we were joined by, Ermanno, a GSE Alumni (he went to Ohio last year with Stefano Alcaro’s team) who spoke excellent English. He is a lawyer who does zoning law. As we awaited our pizzas, Ciro explained the origin of the pizza style “Margherita” (it was especially made for the Queen of Naples, Margherita, and includes the 3 colors of the Italian flag – tomatoes are red, mozzarella is white, and basil is green) and that this particular place had the best pizza in Salerno.
After lunch, we headed to the hills. Ciro took us to Castello Arechi, a medieval castle on a hillside overlooking the sea. The Longobardi people, a group from present-day Germany, built the structure. We had some great views of the city of Salerno and the sea. We had a quick visit at the castle and headed back into Salerno to meet up with Ermanno again. On the way, we passed by a portion of a Roman aqueduct. He took us for a walk through Salerno to the Basilica Cathedral of St. Matthew & St. Gregory, which at one point was an abbey. The sarcophagi of the monks are located in the courtyard, prior to the actual entrance to the church. The cathedral was built by Arabs as trade for corn. As we exited the church and headed back to the city center, we saw a man pouring a white powder on the grates in the streets. We asked Ermanno what it was and he informed us that it was to keep the rats away – aka rat poison.
Next up was a fountain dedicated to St. Matthew, one of the Apostles, and is located at the site of his death. It was around 4:00 and most of the shops were closed for their afternoon break so we headed to the promenade and walked along the sea for about half an hour. After some discussion about law, iPods, and the internet, we headed to a café for a quick snack/drink. Post-café activity? Shopping. We spent some time looking at many different nice shops but the end result was that Nick and Martina ended up getting an extra bag for all of their gifts.
The nightcap was the Cava di Terreni Rotary Club Meeting, where we did a brief presentation for the group. Ciro’s daughter, Laura, did a wonderful job translating for us so everyone could understand. It was a very nice dinner and we were able to give gifts to the people who hosted us for the past couple of nights.
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