Double Digest - A Tale of 4 Cities

 Our last two days have been filled with action, with limited time to write about them. We’ll catch up here with a double digest of days and sights..

Tuesday:

Our itinerary left Tuesday with no firm plans, planning a day of on-foot exploration.  We walked back streets of Naples, browsed through interesting shops, and took naps.

Jane and Joel in the old town.  We walked all over in beautiful mild weather, wandering for miles.  We stopped in every store that looked even remotely interesting, viewed every monument that appeared in squares, and generally avoided food all day (Italian food is too filling, and it’s catching up with us.)

We encountered a few shops making these sculptured dolls of various Italian and Napoli characters.  They’re expensive and fascinating to look at.  Not sure who buys these and what they do with them, but this artist’s work was even featured in a Gucci promotional line on their packages and bags.

Random street art is fun to discover.

A pie made of pasta noodles

We all 3 enjoy a pen store, and we happened upon an outstanding one with many Italian pens.  

Our only booked activity was a tour of subterranean Naples.  The Greeks were the first to develop an underground aqueduct and series of cisterns beneath Naples.  Later when the Romans came and displaced the Greeks, they expanded and modernized the underground system of tunnels and rooms.  As Naples grew, each of the houses were connected by a well straight into the cisterns, perhaps the earliest form of running water in homes.  This system worked well until the 1800s in an outbreak of Cholera.  During the use of the system, the tiniest most nible men would climb down 1-meter square shafts to service the wells and cisterns.  They would be paid by residents in each home who left money or goods on the sill of the well access.  The well men wore hooded brown robes similar to a monk’s.  An entire mythology grew out of these well men, who morphed into a mythical figure called “the little monks”.   The little monks apparently brought good luck (but perhaps more historically accurate brought better fertility and happiness to the women home alone when they serviced the well.) The entire underground was forgotten and the water system replaced.  Abandoned, it was only remembered in World War II, when it was needed as a bomb shelter.  Thousands of Napoli residents took shelter in these wells.  In order to access them, they built a few access staircases like this one shown.  

We walked all the way down to the bottom (40 meters).  Our slogan is, “Whatever goes down must also go up.”  Suffice to say they did not have an elevator.  

Tiny shafts that fit one person sideways connected the larger cistern rooms.   They called this the “Indiana jones” part of the tour.  The Spanish folks on our tour opted to not do any of this, but your intrepid Griffith travelers were first in line behind the guide.

The shafts have small foot holds on them.  This is what the “little monk” well men would climb into apartments above.  

Our major hikes an climbs this day made eating at this Michelin rated restaurant rewarding.  Everything they made, which still resembled the standard Italian menu, was beyond outstanding.  This place was worth the multi-day wait to get in.

Wednesday:

Team Griffith was interested in seeing the Amalfi coast, but our research showed it wasn’t a place we wanted to stay very long.  We aren’t great relaxers and have a constant appetite for signs and entertainments.  Small towns can’t contain our vacations for very long, so we decided not to spend the night in other towns on the coast.  Instead, we got a small group tour with a guide and driver.  In line with all I had mentioned before about driving here, we were even more thrilled we had avoided driving this ourselves.  We congratulated and lavishly praised our driver and tipped him equally to the guide.  I detected that the praise was as well received as the tip; he knows driving that mini-bus in Naples and the coast was a valuable skill set.

We instantly loved our tour guide Francesco.  A 20-year old still in college, Francesco was endlessly patient with our two other tourists on the ride, asked and answered questions with humor, told great stories, and gave every signal that this was his career of choice.  He actually “majored” in hospitality in high school and is now studying it college.  We were huge fans.  He and the driver let the other lady on our trip squeeze in between them for the whole ride, despite 2 open seats on the 2nd row.  If the crowding bothered them, neither let on at all.  

We stopped first for a view of Vesuvius.

Vesuvius is lovely to look at from all angles.

Our first stop was a Limoncello factory.  This is one of the standard gigs where the tour company or guides get a cut of anything you buy.  We Griffiths are strongly opposed to forced shopping and tour sites, but this as a 10 out of 10.  This was an active factory where we watched them make limoncello and then were able to sample their products, both the alcohols and chocolates.  We bought drinks and bakery goods, used their clean bathrooms, and generally had a jolly time with our guide and driver.  We praised them for the stop and made sure Francesco got his credit at the checkout.  

The factor floor had below-floor displays of their products in the various packaging they produce.

The smell of lemons was everywhere.

They had a cabinet full of lemon treats, which Joel and Jane took for the road.

Joel samples a homemade lemon Oreo, Italian style.  Joel and Jane gave these rave reviews.

A little behind the scenes:  We are not cut from influencer cloth.  We are not skilled at documenting.  Even taking a video is a bit of a challenge for us, because it’s never been a form of media we’ve embraced.  Jane and I got hearty laughs from this series.

This lemon oreo cookie was apparently excellent.  

Our first top was Sorrento.  The format of our driving tour included background discussion and tales of the history of places we would see.  Once we stopped, they set us free until a return time to our van.  Our other two travelers were a sweet retired couple of Iowa, and we had a lovely adventure with them all.

Ceramics store with small items

There were many sandle stores that sold only jewel-encrusted sandals.  We weren’t so excited about those.

Tiny streets in villages were pleasant to walk through.  We particularly enjoyed the local dogs.

Sorrento offered a wide array of aristan ceramics and wood inlays.  We appreciated all of the craftsmanship.

Our second stop was Positano, a town focused on producing homemade linen dresses that were generally out of our budget.  We walked down that hill to get to the beach level, on theme with “what every goes down must go back up again.”  The foot path was truly the only accessible way.

Amalfi

Amalfi

It was a very windy day, as seen with Positano in the background.  At this top, the driver convinced a local to give us free local oranges.  Perhaps the best tasting orange I’ve ever eaten.  the skin just fell off and the orange had so much juice you almost drink the fruit instead of ate it.

More Positano.

Eating ripe local strawberries in Positano.

Our driver was en expert Parker, getting us into sights I wouldn’t have assumed possible in a Fiat.  Even a couple of inches was too far from the edge for his taste.

Look now, don’t put your feet in the sink.  I can’t imagine what disgusting things happened such that the restrooms needed this sign.

Positano from a distance.

Our final stop was Amalfi.  Jane enjoyed this shop dog, and we’d have swiped her to take home to Woody and Nana if we could have.

The cathedral in Amalfi on the main plaza.

All of the towns were filled with ceramics, Italian made linen clothes, and local food products, with each town emphasizing one of those in its shops.  We appreciated this donkey themed ceramics shop, which we thought would have amused Woody.  The Goodranch’s Biltmore and Graceland definitely needed one of these wall-hanging Italian donkey ceramics but the prices were well outside of our budget.

Here’s Francesco at the end of our day.  We all gave him our strongest Griffith tour guide rating.  Jane thought he was adorable, and I agree heartily.  

We landed in this well-rated pizza restaurant for dinner, and it didn’t disappoint!

Jane loves truffle flavor and ordered a truffle cream pizza.  The menu said it came with “fried raw pork”, willing to experiment, but she soon realized fried raw pork is simply bacon.