Ti Amo

I think we are finally getting Italy cabin fever and are keen to head off somewhere different. Another week in Pescara until then though, we may lose it!

So after returning from Vernazza with no incidents driving the crazy roads we spent the Thursday to Sunday in Pescara. We had a big dinner at Carlo's Zio Valentino's place which is up near Chieti.

He has a small property with fruit trees, chickens and rabbits (and apparently that night we ate one of them). The food was delicious and almost all from his garden, the highlight being the arrosticini.

David is apparently the spitting image of Zio Valentino, but I'll let you decide.

From left to right: Zia Emma, Zio Valentino, Zia Norina and her husband Zio Zopitto.

Anyway after a weekend in Pescara we got a little restless and felt the first nudges of homesickness so we decided to do something fun - Pompeii and Amalfi.

After arriving at our B&B just outside of Sorrento we hopped in the car and drove the amazing, windy and narrow road to Positano. The scenery was just so striking with steep, sharp cliffs rising straight out of the blue mediterranean and houses carved into the rock, almost defying gravity. The road was insane, so narrow at parts and so many traffic jams as buses try and navigate through.

We scored a great and free park just outside of the town (Carlo is just the same here as back home! ha) and wandered the steep and sometimes endless steps of the town. After this we joined the tanned natives on the pebbled beach.

We went for a swim in some of the best water ever, so clear we could see fish swimming around and so buoyant we could float vertically without treading in order to keep our heads above water. Carlo also had to save a group of young girls on a blow-up mattress thing as they were being pushed down the beach by the current. It was so funny seeing Carlo hold onto the back and kick frantically like an outboard motor as the three girls perched themselves up on the front like they were taking some ride. Guess you had to be there.

The next day we went to Pompeii. I found it fascinating learning about the history of Roman cities and imagining what they would have been like to live in.

It was also quite sad considering the sudden way many of the inhabitants died when Versuvius erupted. These are plaster casts the archeologists made when excavating the city as underneath the ash were cavities where people or animals had suddenly died from the gas from the volcano then been buried. Some casts were able to make out people's faces and expressions.

Carlo however found it a little boring a repetitive after a while, but we did spend a good 4 hours walking the streets in the hot sun.

The next day we grabbed a ferry over to the island of Capri, which is just a huge rock mass that rises straight up out of the ocean. It was spectacular.

On arrival we quickly got onto a boat that toured the island and we got to see famous people's houses like the former summer house of Mussolini and the houses of Giorgio Armani and Sophia Loren. We also got to get into a tiny row boat and go through the tiniest hole and into the blue grotto.

Amazing, beautiful, amazing.

But after waiting in line with 10 other tour boats at the entrance I got to feel very sea sick, along with this little boy who managed to stink out the entire boat with his sickness.

The rest of the day was somewhat ruined as I felt sick for hours so we headed back to Sorrento for a relax on the "beach".

That evening we were very exhausted, and were pleasantly surprised when the B&B owner knocked on our door with a the most delicious home-made wood fired pizza. The pizza aside, the Amalfi Coast is definitely somewhere I could go again.

That is probably enough for now, next blog will have Barcelona as well as some more tours of Abruzzo.