Some favorite pictures...

Ok - I'm feeling lazy about writing. I wish I could remember all the silliness and funny things that happened.

Lia reminded me yesterday of what we said each time we saw a Smart car:
"Blue (or appropriate color) smart car, no smart alecky comebacks!" and you got to punch the person next to you. (Guess you had to be there)...

We all loved the small cars - cinquecento's and api especially.

From Abruzzo

It was great to watch the kids playing with other kids who spoke no english too. One night I remember was in Laureana - around 10:00 at night, and the small square had about 7 Italian kids, and Elena, Phillip and Celina and even Lia were playing an Italian version of hide and seek. It was great to watch.

Also in that square - Roger asking the man overlooking the action another night - Faciamo troppo amore? And Lidia quickly correcting him with RUMORE! Translated as: Are we making too much love? NOISE! The man replied that he was happy to have life in the town.

That square was such a magical place. Encircled by houses that looked over the square. It seemed like all the town's people would watch over you there and protect you. You could imagine growing up there and knowing everyone. Of course as a young person, that is probably why you would want to escape as soon as you could. And there were very few younger adults there in the town.

I also loved spending lots of time with Lidia and Phillip. Elena and Phillip are so different, but so similar. Even though Lidia made Phillip slave over his summer homework - that soon tapered off! I think they learned plenty this summer even without the worksheets.

From Poppi

The audio books were fun too - some so bad they made for some great bad lines to repeat throughout the rest of the trip. The one about he nuclear power plant in the woods. My brain is so bad - I can't remember the bad lines that we kept repeating now! But it made the bad books as good as the good ones. I do remember the "Hottie ghost" from another century book. A definite favorite to mock!

I loved seeing Lia, Jacob and the girls with Alessandro too:

From La Chaux de Fonds

From La Chaux de Fonds

The Cilento Coast - Campania, Italy

So our first taste of real southern Italy - we drove along the coast south of Salerno and it was a flat, not very attractive stretch of road. The things we noticed on the trip as we headed further south - no toilet seats, different pizzas, nothing open in the afternoon, gelato not quite as good, buffalo in the fields, palm trees, fewer olive trees (I expected more) and lots of lizards.

I loved seeing the first glimpse of the ocean, but we still had a long way to go before reaching Laureana. I admit feeling relieved when the flat lands along the coast started to rise and we headed up again to the hills. We kept climbing and climbing and I thought we were lost for sure, but kept following the signs above Agropoli. There were few towns above, partly because it is National parkland, and partly because it must be a hard place to make a living. Very steep and rocky or wooded landscape. I definitely would not want to farm there.

But when we finally turned into Laureana Cilento, it was a wonderful feeling. It is hardly a town. There is a little square that we needed to find with the Blue Prussia and Mimmo, our local contact. It was a step back in time. The house was in a row of old (medieval?) buildings off the square. Beautiful high ceilings, huge rooms, wonderful balcony overlooking the hills all the way to the Amalfi Coast. We spent a lot of time on that balcony - eating, drinking, watching the lights and stars at night, and the occasional owl that swooped past like a ghost.

Lidia and Phillip were already there, and we were thrilled to see them. Elena, Celina and Phillip immediately started to talk and play as though they'd been together the whole trip. And I was so glad to see Lidia. We hadn't had a long vacation together in so long - since when? I can't even remember.

Mimmo - He is quite a character. He has lived in Australia so spoke English quite well. His restaurant is more art gallery/antique/thrift store, with barely enough room to squeeze in. He offerred to make us dinner the first night since we hadn't gone shopping yet. And what a dinner!
It was at least 4 courses with many variations. And of course wild boar (seems as though that is a standard menu item in that part of Italy). We started dinner around 9:00, and ended close to midnight. We ended with his homemade liqueurs - hazelnut being the tastiest.

From Laureana

There were many wonderful things about that week in Laureana. The trips to Agropoli, the other hill towns. The coast - it changes from rocky, to sandy, to coves, to caves. Every beach we went to was different - all within a small peninsula. Only problem was that the kids all developed little bumps on their skin that looked like chicken pox. From the water we think.

One of the most amazing places to visit was Paestum. It is an old greek settlement that is so well preserved. You can walk through the town and see 3 huge temples, still mostly standing. There is a very good museum too.

Amalfi coast was beautiful too, but we were thrown in with all the other american tourists, and after feeling so wonderfully apart from our real lives, it was not as fun. I loved to feel like I was really away from the US, and all the other towns you could feel much more like you were in a another world.

There is so much more to tell, but I will just send you to the photos:
The house and the views:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/Laureana#
Agropoli:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/Agropoli#
An old abandoned wine cellar that Joe found and Roger and he explored:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/OldWineCellar#
Various parts of the coast:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/CilentoCoast#
Another archaelogical park on the coast:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/Velia#
An old city above Laueana, where we tried to get dinner:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/RoccaDiCilento#
The Amalfi coast and Ravenna:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/AmalfiCoast#
Paestum:
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/Paestum#

To Abruzzo and places unknown....

So with sadness and anticipation, we headed south - to the great unknown!

Never having been south of Spoleto before, we were unsure of what we would encounter. We drove down the autostrada and had a TERRIBLE experience at a stop on the way. Yuck - we won't dwell on it, but it did make us realize that we should never eat on the autostrada again.

So on to Abruzzo - a part of Italy that truly seems as though it is fading away into the past. It was spotted with small towns on the tops of small hills. The color of the towns were the same as the hills they sat on, and you had to look hard to notice them in some light. The smaller more remote towns are only about half full of people, but some younger entrepeneurs are buying up large parts of villages and turning them into remote hotels. I hope it works to preserve them. They almost remind me of the cave dwellings of the anasazi in the southwest. Fading into the hills and full of history but deserted.

There were beautiful towns - Scanno in particular. No way you could drive through it, and in fact there were long (and I mean LONG) stairs leading up up up to the tops of the town. The people seemed from another world - women still wear the black dresses and scarves.

We also had to adjust to the way of life. It was much more of the "typical" Italian way of the world once we escaped the German-influenced north. I remember as a child during our visits that nothing was open in the afternoon - from noon to 4:30. It is still that way anywhere we visited south of Verona, other than the very large cities. We did manage to avoid most cities, and certainly didn't see any in Abruzzo.

The weather was also remarkable in Abruzzo - like a desert. It was a good 20 degrees (f) cooler at night. You could actually cool down in the shade too - unlike the humid north.

But only 2 days here and then on to meet Lidia, Phillip and our house in Laureano Cilento in Campania.

On the way south, we stopped along the road at a archealogical site that was only marked with the triangular circles on the map. It was a great surprise to pull into a small parking lot with one person in a hut taking 1 euro for parking. We walked up a driveway not knowing what to expect. Soon we saw the remains of a large Roman settlement (Saepinum) that was home to about 3000 people. The arches of one great gate still stood with the names of Augustus Ceasar on the top. Parts of the theatre, forum, temple and houses were there connected by the straight roman roads running in the 4 directions. Cows grazed along the edges of the ruins. We only saw a few people there - one family, and some locals in their yards that abutted the ruins. A magical place really.

So - pictures are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/Abruzzo#
http://picasaweb.google.com/seterzio/Saepinum#