May 22, 2008

We woke up early to catch the boat to Capri. Salvatore met us at the hotel to wait for the Rotaract members to show up. Domenico and Max came by motorscooter because there was bad traffic on the autostrada so motorscooter was faster than car. We picked up the boat in Castellammare, it made two stops before reaching Capri. We were joined on the boat by a number of German tourists. The Italian shipmate who was serving drinks came around with bargain deals of 5 euro hats and 5 euro bags. The sales pitch was, “Special Price 5 Euros” and he actually said it in English.

Once we arrived in Capri we waited for our guide, Sascha, at Dock Zero. He found us and told us we were going to try to catch a boat tour since the Blue Grotto was closed due to rough waters. While we were waiting for the rest of Sascha’s tour group to arrive, we went to Pizzeria Buonocore. Buonocore is Martina’s grandmother’s maiden name. After ordering some breakfast, she spoke to the person behind the counter to find out who had the last name Buonocore. It turned out to be him. She told him about her family and had her picture taken with him. Nick said that the guy looked like Martina.

We then caught up with Sascha and his group to take a tour by boat around the island. The tour group was made up of English speaking visitors and Spanish speaking visitors, so he had to translate everything twice. First spot on the tour was the white grotto which is a small cave in the island. Sascha then pointed out a very high cliff and told us that Titus used to push slaves, messengers, and ex-lovers over the edge. Titus was ruler for a period and lived on Capri so during that time Capri was the capital of Italy. There were a number of large beautiful homes along the cliffs. There is a natural arch which looks like an elephant. There is a cove where teenagers take boats and go behind the rocks, but Sascha wouldn’t tell us what they did back there and Jane emphatically stated she did not want to know. On the other side of the island is a harbor which was placed there by the Romans and the ruins are still there. Today it is a private harbor. In the coral grotto, there is a waterline along the wall and just below that is the red coral. Scuba diving is forbidden so that people don’t come and steal the coral. At this point the sea started to get a bit more choppy causing a few of us to get wet, luckily it was a beautiful sunny day so we dried off quickly once we returned to port.

Sascha then told us to wait a moment while he spoke to the person who was coordinating the buses. He explained that he’d be back in two minutes, but it would be two German minutes, not two Italian minutes since an Italian two minutes is more like fifteen or twenty minutes. He told us that there is a problem if an Italian tells you, “No problem, only two minutes.” We then took a bus ride up the one road to the top of the island to a place called Anacapri. We could see the Rolex Boat Race as we squeezed up the small streets past many other buses and trucks. Once at the top of Anacapri, we were left in a high end store while Sascha went to see if we could have an early lunch. Everyone managed to slip out past Martina and she was left in the store wondering where everyone went. Luckily the group came back to find her. We sat for lunch with Domenico and Max. We had pasta as the first course. Martina and Jane didn’t have the second course which was a choice of meat or fish. Instead, Jane had an apple.

We then had a few minutes of free time to shop before we headed to Capri, the next town down. We were given some free time in Capri which the team took advantage of to do some shopping. We decided to head back to Sorrento earlier than scheduled so we could see the city. Our guides, Domenico and Max, took us around the city center and we were able to do more shopping. Jane then treated us to drinks before she, Domenico, and Max headed back to Castellammare. Jason, Nick, and Martina stayed around Sorrento and did some more shopping. They took the 6:22 train back to the hotel and had a chance to walk through Castellammare, which is a lovely town.
Stefano picked us up to take us to the Ercolano Rotary Club meeting. Stefano is a member of Rotaract and a pharmacist. At the club meeting we were treated to a presentation about advertising by a professor who created all of the advertisements in his presentation. We then exchanged flags and gifts with Antonio, the club president. Then we headed downstairs for dinner where we were treated to pasta, fish, and fruit for dessert. Stefano drove us back to Castellammare.

May 21, 2008

With much sadness, we left our host families this morning and headed for Castellammare di Stabiae. We arrived at Hotel Montil and dropped off our bags. Ciro and Salvatore Iovenio brought us to a nearby city where we met up with another Rotarian who, along with Salvatore, brought us to Ercolano.

In Ercolano, we met up with Antonio (a gynecologist and president of the Ercolano club) and his daughter, Luisa, who is studying to be a judge. Martina joined Antonio on his scooter and Luisa brought the rest in her car. We all convened near the historical site of Ercolano and headed inside. Like Pompei, Ercolano was destroyed in 79 AD. Our tour guide, Salve, spoke perfect English and gave us an amazing tour. Ercolano was originally excavated in 1738. There is still a large portion of the city buried underneath the current city. Ercolano differs from Pompei in that Ercolano was buried in pyroclastic mud and Pompei was covered in lava. Much of Ercolano is better preserved because of this fact.

For many years, it was believed that most of the inhabitants had fled because they had only found 3 skeletons on the site. However, 300 more were recently unearthed at the port. Romans used to work from 6 am to noon and then spent their afternoons and evenings taking in the public baths, exercising at the palestra or just being their Roman selves. The word “siesta” actually comes from “sexta” which represents the 6 hours of work the Romans did daily.
In 62 AD, just seventeen years before the Vesuvius eruption, there was an earthquake which caused the city’s inhabitants to reinforce their structures brick and stone. The newer buildings show their advancement in architecture and building skills from the lessons of the earthquake.
While only 2 roads have been excavated, archaeologists believe there are 5 roads in total. Interestingly, these roads were built at right angles, were all one-way and provided space for pedestrians at crosswalks. Many of the villas have carbonized wood beams encased in glass to show the original structures. The wood survived because no air was able to reach it for so many years. Many of the villas still have original mosaic floors and iron grill windows. For apartment-type buildings where there was a second floor that was a separate family than the first, the higher floors were always the cheapest. For those searching for labor, they lined up outside the houses of the local businessmen and waited to be seen. The houses with the most people waiting outside were the richest. In ancient Ercolano, husbands and wives slept in separate rooms. Oh, how times have changed.

In these villas, some walls were covered with beautifully preserved frescoes. These were created by placing 6 levels of plaster on the wall, then they painted the fresco, and finally polished it with wax to further preserve them. It was very time-consuming but, if you had these in your home, then it was obvious you were a wealthy household. In a particularly large villa, there was an original bed still there in the bedroom. Bedrooms were actually very small by today’s standards because they only used them to sleep – any entertainment or socializing was done in the atrium or other areas of the villa.

After Ercolano, we headed to Antonio’s house for lunch. There, we met his wife Maria, who prepared a great lunch of mussels and pasta for us. We chatted for a bit over lunch then headed to Antonio’s roof where we could get a good look at Mt. Vesuvius. We had planned to climb Vesuvius in the afternoon but, once again, the weather trumped our plans. The peak of Vesuvius was closely guarded by some very large, selfish grey clouds, keeping the sight to themselves. It was an easy decision for to hold off climbing to the top of a volcano amidst some of the most ominous clouds we’ve ever seen. Next, we were given an impromptu musical performance. Antonio played guitar while Maria sang the lyrics to a classic Neapolitan song. It was a beautiful song and gesture. When asked if we had a traditional Philadelphian song that we could sing for them. We were stumped.

After the song, we headed to back to our Hotel for a couple hours before Salvatore picked us at for dinner and a brief tour at a local pasta factory. We were joined for dinner by Salvatore’s wife, Angela, his daughter, Anna, and her husband and daughter, Guido and Vittoria. Since we were at a pasta factory for dinner, it’s fitting that we had 4 dishes of past for dinner. They were all quite tasty. Vittoria is 4 years old and was one of the cutest little girls in the world. She got great pleasure out of making faces at Nick, drinking water one-handed from an adult’s glass, and clinking glasses with her mother. We were given some nice ceramic cups as gifts and headed back to the hotel.

Thank you and good night.

May 20, 2008

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.

May 19, 2008

We all met up at Hotel Maiorina in the morning and headed to the Amalfi Coast. We stopped at a famous bakery, Di Riso, where their famous dish is Ricotta e Pere (ricotta cheese and pears). Directly in front of the bakery is a gas station, the only one on the entire Amalfi Coast.

After a serpentine journey along the mountainous coast and countless times of passing within inches of other vehicles, we arrived in the beautiful town of Amalfi. We walked through town to the duomo, fraught with tourists from around the world. Inside the church, there was a crypt with walls lined with exquisite inlaid marble patterns.

Next up was Ravello, a city on the top of the hill which provided beautiful vistas of the coast. We visited Villa Rudolfo, which is a restored villa with picturesque gardens overlooking the Amalfi Coast. We had an awesome lunch with an amazing view at Hotel Villa Maria, which is owned by Vincenzo Palumbo, a Rotarian of the Ravello club. Mr. Palumbo owns and operates an organic farm directly next door to the hotel and provides fresh fruit, vegetables and chicken daily. Before lunch, we were able to view the organic gardens, on terraces down the mountainside.

SMALL COMMERCIAL BREAK: Hotel Villa Maria offers a discount to Rotarians. In addition to lodging and food, they also offer cooking classes.

On the way back to Cava, we stopped by Rita’s family’s vacation home, which provided the best view of the coast we had all day. It was truly beautiful. Down on the beach was a town in which no cars were allowed. Jason was very intrigued.

Our next stop was Vietri Sul Mare for a bit of shopping. Jane and Martina bought a few of the local ceramics. After shopping, we returned to our host families. Nick and Jason were guests at a wonderful dinner party thrown by Carlo and Adriana at their home.

Thank you and good night.

May 18, 2008

In a very unusual turn of events, Jason and Nick arrived to breakfast before the fair ladies, Martina and Jane. In fact, they arrived a full 15 minutes before anyone else in the conference showed up. Maybe they got their times mixed up.

We saw many of our friends at breakfast and said “arrivederci” to those not accompanying us to the ruins at Paestum. Entering the parking lot of the hotel, we quickly had to make a choice: regular old single decker bus or exotic, life-altering double decker. Believe it or not, we chose the double decker and sat right in the front on the second deck. Paestum is an ancient city with Greek and Roman ruins dating back to 600 B.C. The city was built rock by rock from the local mountain. However, the mountain isn’t so local so the rocks were shipped down the nearby river to the city. The Tyrennian Sea used to be only 400 meters from the city limits, now it is over 800 meters away.

Three temples currently reside in Paestum. They were originally built by the ancient Greeks and then were occupied, updated and used by the Romans up on the expansion of their empire. The temples are still standing to this day for many reasons. One of them is that the Greeks used bronze (the original rebar) inside the marble columns as reinforcement. Historically, temples have always been situated East-to-West and Paestum is no different. For many centuries, Paestum was abandoned due to a high population of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

The site was also chosen as a residence for soldiers because the view of the sea provided them notice of incoming brigades from Africa and around the world.

The Greeks erected a huge Parliament building to elect officials but the Romans deconstructed it and used the blocks for other buildings.

It wasn’t until the past three hundred years that Paestum was rediscovered by a German traveler who stumbled upon the site. Today, much of the site is privately owned by local home and property owners, so we were only able to see a fifth of the entire site.

We visited the museum and saw the most famous piece from the site at Paestum. It is the lid of an ancient sarcophagus with a metaphoric painting on it. All sarcophagi had some sort of painting that told a story. This particular one, titled The Diver, shows a man diving into a pool of water. It signified the cycle of life: he was passing from this life into the next.

After the Museum, we headed to lunch on the beach. After several different plates, Nick joined Gianluca and Ricardo while they were attempting to fly a kite on the sand. While Nick was successful in helping them put the kite together, he failed miserably at flying the kite. Gianluca, however, was an ace and Ricardo showed much promise.

Lunch ended, we headed back to the hotel, got our bags and left for Cava with Ciro (Jane and Martina) and Maolo (Jason and Nick). We arrived at our respective host families: Martina stayed with Ciro and Rita, Jason and Nick stayed with Carlo and Adriana, and Jane stayed with Pio and Maria. After some decompression, we all reconvened in downtown Cava.

In Cava, we met up with Ciro’s wife, Rita, and their daughters Elvira and Laura. One Sunday a month in Cava (and some other places in southern Italy) is Passegiata, which is a night with a carnival-type atmosphere. Shops are open, the streets are filled with people and there are other activities to entertain. This particular Sunday, we got quite a treat because there were several high school groups participating in a 600-year old competition in which bands play music while another member is juggling several flags – there were some very impressive routines.

Following this event, we continued to walk around town. Martina bought socks for her Yikes and Jane bought deodorant after hers spontaneously combusted earlier in the day. Our next stop was a 2,000 square foot Nativity scene in which everything was made by hand in painstaking detail. This site was associated with the nearby St. Francis of Assisi church.

A wonderful dinner soon followed at Ciro’s house. Rita had prepared a great meal for us – pasta, pork, bufala mozzarella with tomatoes, a potato/cheese/ham casserole, peas, a fruit tray and babas (rum cake muffins). Stuffed with Italian food yet again, it was time for bed and we all headed to our host families. Lucky for Martina, she was already with hers.

Thank you and good night.

May 17, 2008

Today is Jason’s 5^th wedding anniversary. Bellissima! Congratulations! Auguri!!

Today was the Rotary District Conference. We saw the Italian GSE team and sat with them at the conference. The conference was held in a very large hall. The schedule ran a little behind due to the informative presentations so we ended up not presenting until late in the afternoon even though we had been scheduled for the morning. There was a presentation done in the morning about the Rotary programs and the presented included a slide with our blog. We did a ten minute presentation on ourselves and Philadelphia. Jason, Nick, and Martina had Maria Louisa and Elvia help them translate their parts into Italian. THANK YOU MARIA LOUSIA AND ELVIA!!! Jane presented Giancarlo, District Governor, with a flag and gifts from District Governor Russ and Mayor Nutter. The conference ended around 7pm.

We headed to dinner at Hotel Savoy. We had to take a bus to get there and back. During the cocktail hour we met Gianluca and his family. Elvia and Amadeu had us join them for dinner. Amadeu liked sitting at the American table because he was able to take his jacket off. He pointed out that the Americans were the only ones who took off their coats even though it was very warm in the room.

After dinner there was a group of musicians playing a mixture of American and Italian music. Jane, Elvia, and Amadea headed back to the hotel. Nick and Jason wanted to go dancing so they tried to locate dance partners. Nick convinced Annamaria to do the twist with him. He then participated in an Italian line dance and managed to master the moves very quickly. Roberto was a dancing fiend and knew how to dance to every song. Jason, Nick, and Martina left around midnight to head back to the hotel.

May 16, 2008

This morning, we were picked up by Gianni and headed to a Bufalo farm. The group from last night's dinner joined us on our excursions this morning, including Grace who is Gianni's niece. Grace is originally from Canada and moved here to marry her husband Ciro. Our hosts for the day were from the Battipaglia Rotary Club.

The bufalo farm used to be a small village and had a small church on the property. The employees of the village visited Paestum infrequently. We saw the nursery which houses baby bufalos ranging in age from 19 days to 6 months. The mothers are artificially inseminated. The bufalos don’t start to produce milk until 18 to 24 months of age. They live for 60 days in small cages. They are using an experimental process called intensive farming which means that the animals do not have free range. The females have horns. The males are only kept for two years before being sent to slaughter. The meat is very lean and full of iron. There is an inn where you can come and stay or where they host many events.
We then visited the Casa de Ficcio, also known as a Dairy and Cheese Shop. We sampled bufalo mozzarella and toured the cheese processing area. We also learned that Ricotta means “cooked again”, and it is made from the leftovers of the mozzarella cheese-making process.
We visited an agricultural institute where they make wine, jam, and various other food products. This secondary school is for students starting at age 13. The purpose of the school is to train students in the art of making food and wine. We witnessed applesauce being made and had the opportunity to sample a very young, but very delicious red wine from aglianico grapes grown on site. We were given jars of orange marmalade, strawberry jam, and applesauce.
Next we headed to a coffee factory called Pareo which is owned and operated by Ciro, Gianni’s nephew and Grace’s husband. We learned that Italian coffee is typically made of a blend of at least seven types of beans. The beans are roasted on site and are imported from all over the world. Coffee beans of the highest quality tend to be grown in the mountainous regions along the equator. Ciro explained that he uses traditional oakwood fired roasting. They offer three lines of coffee: Pareo (traditional), Bio (organic), and Orzo Mondo (barley). He exports to the US a brand called Suave which can be found at Costco.
Then we visited a grower of strawberries, Roma tomatoes, cantaloupe, Italian peppers, and grape tomatoes. The farm is part of a 15 farm cooperative of which Paolo is the President. Two of the farms are organic.
We had a great lunch with typical food from this region including artichokes, eggplant parmegiana, and smoked buffalo cheese.
Then we headed to Paolo’s farm where he operates a food packing plant that during peak times can process 100 tons of produce per day. He grows nectarines, peaches, kiwi, and fennel. There was a large scale in the packing plant so Martina, Nick, and Jason each weighed themselves to see what they had gained since arriving in Italy. They were all disappointed.

We were then dropped off at the hotel to get ready for the evening festivities. We had a reunion with the people we had met over the last two weeks. We couldn't believe how many people we knew. Jason and Martina even sat at dinner with the hosts for next weeks excursions. After a dinner of speeches, pasta, fish, and so much more, the Inner Wheel planned an after dinner show of opera singing and dancing.