Fred Hoyt's Travels

 

August 21, 2017

Twenty-two million tourists visit Florence every year, and while they aren’t all here now, the presence of 22 million in a city of around half a million certainly is obvious. It’s Florence’s biggest business (public restrooms are 1 euro—x  million); the other is fashion.  The Ferragamo family owns one of the biggest old palaces along the Arno, a no-longer navigable stream that cuts through the city. Gucci owns another.

The tourists have flocked here for centuries. Some have stayed.  There’s an old English cemetery that contains the remains of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for example.  Famous guests at our 1903 hotel include two infamous 20^th century leaders—il Duce and Hitler met here in 1938, plotting the Axis around which Europe would revolve.  So, too, the Allied high command in World War II headquartered at the Baglioni.

There’s good reason for the tourist influx.  Florence is a beautiful and historic city. The beauty came partly from Florence’s being the temporary capital of the united Italy in the 1860s, before the capture of Rome and the transfer there.  In the meantime, Florence was “modernized,” which meant it had to look like Paris, with broad boulevards (mostly) sacrificed, and new buildings—neoclassical, primarily, erected to house the embassies of foreign countries.

The significant attractiveness of Florence came from the reemergence of Roman and Greek ideas that led to the Renaissance. The reemergence of Europe from the dark ages—can you say Galileo and Michelangelo?—began here.  We’ll be seeing as much as we can of that today.

On the way here (it’s 30 direct miles from Siena, where Gothic prevailed until its 16^th century submission to Florence), we passed through the beautiful vineyards of Chianti, a province with a brand of wine (since 1924) that used to be in bottles with a straw base.  With candles in the empty ones, they were a staple in the dorm rooms at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Today the straw bases are so expensive, those bottles are mostly for tourists.

Chianti, though, is alive and well as a brand, the black rooster in the red seal, whose quality is enforced by inspectors at the variety of farms in the district.

We stopped at a small town, Greve in Chianti, for an introduction to the region, then went to one of the vineyards for a business visit. We learned that the good wines come from higher on the hill, table wines from lower down. Sugar is added to “priests’ wines”, a dessert wine that tastes rather like port.

The castle/vineyard was the birthplace of Verrazzano, who left to explore the coast of North America (for the French. Florentine bankers financed his trip, and wanted it led by someone they knew).  Verrazzano “discovered” New York’s harbor, and sailed from Nova Scotia to South America.

When the Verrazano Narrows bridge was built (he lost a z crossing the Atlantic), some stones from the castle were part of the bridge, while the castle acquired red, white and blue stones in return that are now prominently displayed.

Verrazzano, according to our guide, was part of the first Italian meal served in America.  Stopping in the Bahamas, a hungry tribe had him for supper.

We were luckier. We had wild boar salami, one of the delicacies of the district.

Now to be one of the 22 million.

August 20, 2017

When people ask me, “What’s your favorite place,” I usually respond, “Where I am.”

While that’s unusually diplomatic for me, it may well be true about where I am now; Siena would definitely earn a place in my top ten. It certainly has many attractions that have kept me busy the last two days, to my surprise and pleasure.

Our introduction to Tuscany (the part of Italy we’re in) was a series of fortified towns we whisked by, atop hills, an indication of the warlike period that dominated Italy after the fall of the Roman empire.

We stopped at Pienza, one of them, which gave us a taste of what we’d see in Siena—a walled city, dominated by a church and town hall that reflected the wealth of the Piccolomini family.  The family crest intrigued me, since it included 5 crescent moons, which our guide explained represented the five crusades that the family sponsored.  We were soon to learn that the family contributed at least two popes, and were partly responsible for creating, in Siena, one of the best medieval cities, still preserved as such, today. It “helped” that the plague in 1348 killed 2/3 of the population and reduced the ability of the survivors to update the city’s architecture.

In the middle ages, say 1100-1500, Siena vied with Florence for domination of central Italy, a rivalry that continues today. In 1555, the Florentines defeated the Sienese, destroyed the Sienese fort, and replaced it with a Florentine fort that exists today.  You know I love forts, and the Fortezza is a block from here.  Our guide said I was the first person on his trips to actually seek it out, and I took Carolyn there for dinner in what had once been the dungeon and arsenal.  The Florentine conquest inaugurated Medici rule.  The new rulers ordered the leveling of towers on the palazzos.  Towers had been necessary because the rivalries were not just between the cities, but frequently between families as well (see West Side story).

Sienese still celebrate a 1260 or so victory, and any football victories, with gusto. The city, which was larger in the middle ages than it is today, had three major centers.

The first was the religious. Atop one of the hills sits the Duomo, a 13^th century masterpiece in white and alternating black (they say it’s dark green) that is visible miles away, with a massive presence and glistening with medieval art. It’s part Romanesque and part Gothic. One of the most stunning chapels is the Piccolomini library, built to house the collection of manuscript-books of that famous Pienza family. I visited the church museum (where many of the real sculptures are kept; so is the rose window. Copies are in the church), the baptistry, and the crypt.  The last named was rediscovered in 1999; it had been filled with debris on which the church rested. Opening it required using steel to support the church.

Across from the church is what had been a hospital since the 12^th century.  Our local guide said it was a hospital until 1996, and she’d been born in it.  It’s now a museum, with some relics that date back to 1359, when they “came from the East.” I’d read that the Byzantines literally sold off the family jewels to repay debts, and these relics were purchased, and included what purports to be a nail from the True Cross and a vial with blood from Jesus.  That the Sienese could purchase these items reflects the wealth of the town.

There are lots of other churches here, too.  We visited one last night that houses the head of St. Catherine of Siena (15^th century).  Our guide said that before the Council of Trent, relics from martyrs were sold as money-makers for the church (the Duomo has an arm of St. John the Baptist, given by one of the Palaeologus, the Byzantine royal family, to the city).

The second center of the city is civil.  The city was a republic in its glory years, with Nove (9) elected counselors who held forth in a city hall.  I toured the museum there, which had some frescos celebrating the results of good government (people dancing), and lamenting the results of bad government (watch the news today).  There were 9 districts—today there are 42, and we visited one of the “community centers.” Their rivalry culminates in two horse races a year, one in July, and one August 15, which we just missed, run in the “Campo”, a field in front of the city hall.  The districts draw horses by lot and jockeys by lot, and bless the horses in the district and in the fountain in front of the city hall.  It sounds like the world series, but there’s obviously a lot of chance in it. The Romanesque tower, 500 steps high (I resisted the temptation to climb it), next to the hall, is iconic.

The third center is economic, and that was the key to Siena’s success.  Siena was on one of the major pilgrimage routes, from Canterbury to Rome.  Hence, the hospital, which started as a bed and breakfast, hence the churches, and hence the development of services for the pilgrims.  Essentially, that meant the evolution of banks.  People would set out boards (banko or something like that in Italian), and offer to change money, the ATMs of the day.  Thus emerged the bank of Siena in 1472, still in existence today, although a recent 8 million euro bailout has damaged its credibility.  And, when a banker died, his “board” was broken and left in front of his former place of business (hence, in Italian, bankrupt!)

In other words, Siena’s wealth came from tourism, and, from what I’ve seen on the streets in the old city, that may still be true today! Some things never change.

We’re ruin-ed

August 16, 2017

We saw a (bad) movie, “My Life in Ruins” on the boat, which was about a tour group in Greece.

Our ten days has been about “ruins” and yesterday we arrived in the “biggest open-air museum in the world,” the city of Rome.

The day began with ruins.  We woke up in Gaeta, the port where we were leaving our ship.  Looming high above us were two joined forts, one 6^th century Gothic wars, the other constructed under the Bourbons. Today, it serves as part of the Italian Navy’s training facility, but it’s a reminder of the conflict that marked the Italian peninsula after the end of the Pax Romana.  (Gaeta was, until recently, the home of the US Sixth fleet, the latest in the line of defenders; the fleet has moved to Naples).

Carolyn wondered why Gaeta was not in the Lonely Planet.  I pointed out that the guidebook was already 900 pages (thank you Wikipedia; ouch, I did say that?).

The road continued along the coast, with ruins of other towers that once withstood invaders. Today, they withstand hordes of tourists going to the beach in August, a month European workers basically take off.

We stopped at the ruins of a medieval village, which once housed 5000 people and had 14 churches.  While only the palace (with a huge tower; our guide said the higher the tower, the more powerful you were thought to be) and the town hall (restored as a summer home for the family that bought it) were in reasonable shape.  It’s called Ninfa, in honor of the nymphs who supposedly inhabited the lake. The village is now kind of a nature preserve, with 14 full-time gardeners, and 25% of the property set aside for animals.  We saw trees from all over the world, many of which have adapted well to the local climate. Incidentally, the area also grows 30% of the world’s kiwis, a plant we mistook for grape vines.

And then there was the grand entrance to Rome, past the arch of Constantine (it was in the battle for Rome that he saw the image of Christ and, at least in the telling, that image led to victory, his conversion to Christianity, and the rest is a different chapter in Rome’s history); the immense neo-classic building of the 1870s celebrating the emergence of the Italian state; the balcony where il Duce mobilized Italian fascists in the 1930s; the Coliseum; the Forum (where the Republic extended the Greek concept of democracy); and the obelisks brought to celebrate the expansion of Empire.  Rome should have a 900-page Lonely Planet, too. And a peek across the Tiber River revealed the dome of St. Peters and the Vatican City. And that was just on the way in!

We’ve been here once before, so I tried to see different things.  Our hotel is near the ancient walls—and the Borghese park.  The museum in the park is listed as “the one art museum” to see, and I’m off in an hour or so to pick up my reserved tickets (Rome has 4 million people and I think 8 million tourists).

It was really spectacular, both the contents and the building.  Cardinal Borghese was the secretary of state for the Papal States (appointed by his uncle, the pope), and used both his money and his power to collect art reflecting the greatness of imperial Rome and its Greek predecessor—and his own times.  The power helped; part of his collection came when he threatened its previous owner with jail if he didn’t sell. Fortunately, he liked a lot of the same artists I do: there was a Caravaggio room, paintings by Raphael and Titian, and sculptures by Bernini. The museum was so popular that I had to get reservations yesterday, and had only two hours in the museum.  I got there at 8:30, lined up to get my ticket, then lined up for the “rush” at 9 a.m.  At 10:50, the loudspeaker announced that we were to leave and make way for the next group. The grounds constitute the biggest public park in Rome, and I went back later to another museum, dedicated to a late 19^th-early 20^th century sculptor who had aristocratic clients.  One client was Atatürk, and the artist’s renditions of the great leader of Turkey are in Ankara. Another was Grand Duke Nicholas, whose statues were delivered to St. Petersburg in 1914, but did not survive the Russian Revolution.

Carolyn’s target was the Pantheon, built originally by Hadrian in 120 AD.  It was the largest dome in the world until the 16^th century, and remains the largest unsupported concrete dome today.  Once dedicated to all gods, it became a church in 608 AD and it still is. The 16 Corinthian columns in front are striking—and so were the armed guards, but this is Europe.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the on-off bus, mostly on, seeing what we could in the one day we were in Rome.

Otherwise, our day would have been totally ruined.

The Pontine Islands

August 15, 2017

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words.  If that’s the case, our visit today should be worth over 100,000 words, since I took over 120 pictures on our two trips to the island of Ponza, the biggest island in the Pontine chain. I’ll try to make writing about it shorter….

In some ways, it’s a fitting summary of our ten days at sea.  It’s our last full day at sea before we embark on the land portion, which will take us from Rome to Florence.

The two-plus hour tour circling the island revealed the power—and beauty—of volcanic action; the shapes and colors were spectacular. 100 of my pictures were from this part of the day (and I’ve only used 122 words so far!), with every kind of lava, ash, colors we’ve seen, all in one place: white, black, yellow, and brown; some of the formations dripped and dried, sort of like sand castles at the Indiana Dunes. There were caves and grottos that made me wish there were possible potential dive spots to see the wreck of the “water ship” that supplies fresh water every day to the 4000 permanent residents (and the 20,000 summer visitors). When we went back later, I quipped, “If we pool our water bottles, we might be able to buy the island.”  I’m not sure it’s for sale, but we did pass an island that a family had bought, and put the only house atop the cliffs on that island.

I’ll try to post some pictures on Facebook so you can understand why I took what would have been three rolls of slide film (for those of you who remember film!)

When we got back, the captain offered us a treat; we’re anchored offshore, and he created a swimming area behind the boat, so those of us who wanted to jumped in.  Having brought my diving mask, I couldn’t resist the temptation.  The water was cool; I confess I was expecting the bathtub water of the Keys.  It was, however, clear, but there wasn’t much to see underwater. I can cross off “swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea” from my to-do list.

If volcanic activity and its results have been one constant, especially since Sicily, the historic tour of the city (generously termed!) was a reminder that the Greeks and Romans really influenced the area.  In Roman days, it was a resort for wealthy Romans, and something of a fish farm.  Grottos, cisterns, and tunnels provided both fresh water and a farm for eels, apparently part of the Roman diet.  2000 years later, current Italians are importing water from the mainland.  Having seen many Roman ruins, I think Europe technologically is still struggling to get up to the civilization that disappeared when Roman civilization gave way to the dark ages.

I walked to the top of the hill, overlooking the town. It now houses a church, naturally, but it was the site of a Roman villa, and the headquarters of a Roman fleet. Next to the church is a naval headquarters, and behind it is a cemetery where Roman graves have been found. Along the way, I passed a Roman necropolis, a battlefield from the Napoleonic wars,  and a tower, remnant of the Bourbons as Kings of the Two Sicilies. The island was used as a prison, ironically, by Mussolini, who was housed here when Italy changed sides in the second world war.

Too pretty for prisoners, Ponza now brings loads of tourists in the summer from Naples and Gaeta, a port of Rome, and where we disembark tomorrow morning.

I’ve been to hell (again)

August 14, 2017

I say again because you may recall last year hell was in Lalibela, Ethiopia.

That was then.  This is 2017, and hell—the Roman entrance to it at least—is but a short cab ride from our boat in Pozzuoli, Italy.  I went there today, and discovered it is really Campi Flegrei, an active volcano that has “streaming jets of sulphurous vapour at temperatures of 160 degrees C…..” Set in a caldera, hell has fumaroles with traces of the “rare red arsenic Sulphur crystal called Realgar…”  For those who have never been to hell, I can report that it resembles places at Yellowstone.

This area is historic both in a geological and an historical sense.  In addition to being the entrance to hell, the volcanic activity is in the “epicenter of the cyclic phenomenon of the rising and lowering of the ground level in the Phlegrean Fields known as brandisim.”  I’m quoting from the brochure, since I couldn’t possibly make it up.  The rising of the land in 1538 created the youngest mountain in Europe—Monte Nuovo, 430 feet high, that originated when lava shot out of the earth. I can see it from the ship.

Historically, too, Pozzuoli was an important port in the early history of Rome. Some vestiges of that background remain, including a huge coliseum, one of the largest in the empire, and a partially reconstructed (and equally huge) marketplace. It lost its importance as Rome built ports closer to the city. I think we’re about 150 miles away.

Still, what we had come to see was not hell, or still more Roman ruins, but a picturesque 17^th century village on the island of Procida , the smallest island in the Bay of Naples. To get there, we boarded a public ferry, filled with merry makers; tomorrow being Assumption Day, many Italians were getting a head start on vacationing. (In addition, the earlier ferry broke down and so we had a double load; “this is Italy,” quipped our program director).

Fortunately, no one but residents can bring cars to the island during the summer—fortunately, because the roads, if one can call them that, are barely wide enough for a well-greased car to slide through, and there are probably 11,000—one for every resident on the 14 km island.  We took taxis for our tour of the island, which featured spectacular views of the Bay of Naples, the commensurate “special” church, this one with a baroque interior hiding behind a 1890s façade. Its claim to fame is a wooden vaulted ceiling. The town of Corricella, at the bottom of a cliff, is distinguished by pastel-colored houses, supposedly a nod to the fishermen there, who wanted to be able to see their houses from the sea. The colorful appearance is striking.

The other claim to fame for Procida is that the prize winning movie “Il Postino” was shot there (and one of the other islands we’ve been to). We had lunch at the restaurant where the movie was filmed—and now I feel compelled to see the movie!

In other words, I had a hell–err, heck, of a day.

Capri-cious

August 13, 2017

Heeding the strong northwest wind that more than rippled the waves, our captain changed course slightly today—we left Salerno at 5 am, bound along the Amalfi Coast for Sorrento, about 40 miles away.

While that meant we didn’t get to see much of the small villages tucked on high cliffs (I should have realized that the Saracens raided much of this area in the 16^th century), it did get us to Sorrento with our bellies still full (one of the hazards of a cruise is food!), and in time to sightsee in Sorrento, one of the larger cities on the Bay of Naples. Sorrento’s other claim to fame is in the Odyssey; it was where the Sirens lived.  Fortunately, we did not hear them, since they lured sailors to their death.

We had about three free hours after a brief walking tour of the city, known for its lemoncello, a liquor made from the ubiquitous lemon. The city sits on a cliff above the Bay, reached by a road through a fissure (or an elevator), its fort (damaged when Napoleon took the city) replaced with a plaza named for a famous local poet Tasso. Carolyn and I took the “city train,” which gave us a tour of the historic district, and then I was able to return to a few museums.  The local cathedral was built in the 14^th century, with some artifacts from its predecessor, and an interior redone mostly in the baroque period. The church has several inlaid wood pieces that represent one of the crafts of the area (there’s a woodworking museum).  It also has a bell tower that likely dates from the 8^th century.  The Saracen sack of the city in the 1550s required rebuilding of a lot of it.

A little farther on the main street was the Villa Fiorentino, built in the early 20^th century by a couple who made their fortune in handkerchiefs—and brought in an American architect to build a house later donated to the city.  I went to the current Chagall exhibit, which filled six rooms.

We then were whisked to homes for lunch with local people.  If farm to food is “in” in the United States, I suspect it never went “out” here.  Our host families (an extended family of mom, daughter and son and families) gave us a tour of their farm (we were, I think in the city!) where they had two pigs, three cows, tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, corn, and peppers (broccoli comes later); they were bottling tomato sauce, making wines (they bought the grapes), and served us a fresh meal.  I should have known that the pasta was an appetizer, for what followed was another main dish with meatballs, salad, peppers, and wonderful bread, all prepared from fresh items for us. Not to mention homemade wines and lemoncello.

When we came back to the boat, we learned that Greek god Aeoli’s failure to keep the winds in check meant a revision of the schedule, and so, instead of sailing up and back to Sorrento, we were going to detour to our next port by way of Capri (hence the pun for the title).

Capri is a photogenic island, rocky but distinctive, with homes of many wealthy people, including, at one time, the famous ballet star, Rudolph Nureyev. We sat on deck for about an hour and learned about the island (one of many in the Gulf of Naples, a huge caldera in sight of Vesuvius).

Our guide told us that Jackie Kennedy was responsible for “Capri” pants.  It’s said she liked Capri sandals so much that she had pants made that would let her show off the shoes.  Hence was born a fashion trend that, from the tourists we saw in Sorrento, is still very much in vogue.

One other item: many Italian immigrants to the United States came from Naples, and so a lot of the music we think of as Italian is from here.  Such as funiculi, funicula.  The origins of that song, however, bring tears to my eyes as a marketer.  It was an advertisement for a funicular company in Naples, urging people to ride to the top.  Sounds better in Italian when you don’t know the meaning of the words!

The ultimate melting pot—Pompeii

August 13, 2017

We’ve spent the three days in the shadow of Papa Vesuvius, along the Amalfi Coast, one of the most scenic parts of Italy.  Two days were in Salerno, where the highlights were the Greco-Roman ruins discovered in the 18^th century when Carlos VII, a Bourbon, was King of the Two Sicilies and interested in antiquities.

I’ve already written about Paestum, but the next day we went to a more spectacular discovery—Pompeii, literally a “melting pot.”  The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD created one of the most well-known archaeological sites—Pompeii.  Over two days, a city that once housed 26,000 people got buried, to be rediscovered almost 1600 years later.  In two hours, we barely scratched the surface, but we did see the major public buildings including the forum, the center of any Roman city, the market (with a stand that measured weights), the local happy house (there were six in the city), the walls that enclosed it, and so forth.  I was a little disappointed to realize

that much of the artwork got taken to the museum in Naples that we are not visiting, but there was enough to help the 2.5 million tourists who visit the site get a real feel for Roman civilization.  I was interested in the temples devoted to Augustus (as well as Jupiter and the other traditional gods), because he was recently declared emperor, and began the tradition of emperor king.  We also saw the kind of “Home Depot” store, which housed amphoras and other items of everyday life, and had several casts of the dead, including a dog, that died in the “melting pot.”

We had enough time when we got back for me to take Carolyn to the St. Matthews Cathedral, which is another site not to be missed.  She noted it was bright inside, but that’s due in part to its origins in the 11^th century, with a huge iron gate cast in Constantinople; I was also impressed with the Arab-Norman cloister, as I mentioned.  In addition, one of the chapels in the church is called the “chapel of the Crusaders,” who stopped there to have their weapons blessed before embarking on the Crusades.

We’ve not been too worried about Vesuvius (though with 2 million people living in Naples, its next explosion could certainly make Pompeii seem small), but our captain has been sensitive to the winds that escaped from the Aeolian islands.  Rough seas postponed our departure from Salerno, and we took a short bus ride to Vietri, the entrance to the Amalfi Coast.  A small town, it’s best known for its ceramics, which cover the dome of the parish church, and call out from half the shops in town for a stop and look.  I found a trivet that copies the famous Pompeii sign “Beware of Dog” (Cave Canem) that greatly delighted Carolyn.  It will certainly find a place in our kitchen!

A cheesy day in Salerno

August 11, 2017

We’ve moved another hundred miles up the coast to Salerno, scene of one of the major landings in World War II and one of the farthest north remnants of Manga Graciae, that set of Greek colonies that marked the Ancient Western world and defined Greek civilization around the Mediterranean.

Of course, that meant our main visit today was to the ruins of the three- temple city of Paestrum (also named for Poseidon) one of the best-preserved ruins in the world. Certainly, it has wondrous Doric temples for Athena, Hera, and Poseidon (or possibly Zeus), constructed in the 5^th and 6^th centuries B.C. There’s also an agora and an amphitheater, where Greek democracy once flourished.

Another tribe replaced the Greeks in the 4^th century, and in turn, the Romans conquered Paestrum in 279 BC, and rearranged some of the features of the city, renaming the temples, for example.  About a quarter of the old city has been excavated (one of the features I’d not seen before was the tomb of the founder of the city), with the artwork, including the striking tomb of a diver in the archeological museum.

The temples, rediscovered in the 18^th century, as part of the “grand tour,” had also been converted to Churches, naturally, but archaeologists have restored the Greco-Roman ruins on the main part of the site, which is government owned. Our guide said we should say goodbye to the Greek ruins that we’ve seen since the start of the trip.  That will begin today when we visit Pompeii, smaller than Paestum, but thanks to the explosion of Vesuvius, much better preserved.

The area, Campania, is one of the main agricultural producers in the country, and we passed many large farms along the way.  We stopped at one for lunch, Tempio (temple), whose claim to fame was its production of buffalo mozzarella cheese.  They gave us a tour of the 2,000 head of water buffalo, originally imported from North Africa, that produce the cheese.  Lunch was cheesy, and I don’t think I’ll ever think of mozzarella cheese in the states as “real” cheese again.  It came in kind of a bubble, with milk—but I resisted the temptation to put it in my suitcase and take it home. We had eight varieties of cheese!

The other highlight was a walk from the boat to the old city.  Our program director took us through what had once been palaces up on the hill (now subdivided into apartments), with clothes drying on the balconies (“you can tell who lives there”), people working out on their balconies—in short, real people doing real things.  Paolo spoke to a number, and coaxed a singer to do a resounding Ave Maria.

That was in front of what purports to be (and I have no doubt is) the most beautiful medieval church in Italy, the church of St. Matthew. It houses relics of the Apostle Matthew in a crypt in the basement.  The entrance to the church has a cloister with arches that have touches of the Arab influence in the area, and if we have time, I’ll try to go back with Carolyn.  It is worth a second look!

I need to get ready to go to Pompeii and say, in the local dialect, something like “yummy, yummy,” which means “let’s go.”

The great Italian caper
August 10, 2017
We sailed through the Straits of Messina last night, from the protected channel between Sicily and the rest of Italy, into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Straits, the closest land distance (about 2 ½ miles) between the mainland and the island, have been of historic importance for at least a part of this trip; the reinforcements for the Knights at Malta gathered at Messina, where the Spanish governor had his headquarters.

The area has also given rise to (not unexpectedly) Greek and Roman mythology. The Scylla who lured sailors for example, was located near the Straits. Apparently, too, Cyclops lives near here, the result of Greeks finding an elephant skull with a hole (where the trunk was), or so the story goes.

We were heading to the Aeolian islands, seven volcanic topped islands north of Sicily, where in Greek mythology Aeolis trapped the winds in a cave.
Aeolis is not there, and the winds were arriving later today (which led to a hasty departure from Lipari, the largest of the islands, to give us a smoother trip to Salerno and the Amalfi Coast, where we’ll be the next few days).

The islands are known as resort havens, which was pretty obvious from the yachts in the harbor, some of which were the size of our ship, but there’s no real port, so we had to take a small tender to Lipari. I was hoping to see the archaeology museum (naturally, there were Greek and Roman relics in it), but we were on that island long enough to board another ferry for our destination, the island of Salina. Lipari is a UNESCO heritage site, and in applying to become one, had to close its major employer—a factory that quarried pumice, one of the possible products of volcanic activity.
Salina was important in the ancient world because it had a salt pan (no more), which was important in preserving food, and its scarcity led the Romans to pay soldiers in salt (“salary” comes from it). Today it’s a vacation spot, with some interesting agriculture, the purpose of our visit. I was really envious when we stopped at an overlook and I was as close to scuba diving—900 feet below me, in pristine waters, I could see the flags of the divers.

The purpose of our visit, though, was to learn about capers, by going to a caper farm. Something like a million tons of the product come from the Aeolian islands, so it’s something of a local treat. Capers, we learned, come in four varieties, depending partly on size (small, medium, and large), and on maturity; the previous ones are buds, but you can also eat the fruit. What surprised me was the production process. Those fresh from the plant are inedible, but must be put in salt water for at least 40 days, but the farmer said the best ones are soaked for at least a year. They’re hand-picked in many small farms by the women, soaked, and then sorted (by a machine that has holes to separate small, medium, and large). There’s also a mechanized bottling set up. We sampled a variety, and were offered the chance to buy capers for different uses, including pesto, which I’m eager to try.

As I said, the winds have been unleashed, so we cut short our visit and set sail for Salerno, where guess what—there are Greek/Roman ruins (think Pompeii) and volcanoes (think Vesuvius). It was awesome to travel around the Aeolian Islands and circle Stromboli, a volcanic island that seems fuming, with a face that is all lava. And so our caper ends.

Smoking hot at Etna

August 9, 2017

Heat has followed us this whole trip; it’s been in the upper 90s every day.  Rome, after all, has been hotter than New Delhi.

But I awoke to a new “heat” this morning—we’re docked off Mount Etna, the largest and most active volcano in Europe.

Some of the most famous volcanos are in Italy, part of the “belt of fire” that extends east from here into Turkey.  Etna is probably the best known certainly since Vesuvius, which in 79 AD buried Pompeii.  We’ll see that in a few days, too. There’s also a potentially devastating explosion waiting to happen in Naples from a “young volcano”.

The trip took us to 6000 of the 11,000 feet (and to temperate temperatures, thankfully). The mountain is obviously the highest thing around, and rises from sea level.

We stopped at the site of an explosion in the mid 19^th century, I believe, which left a variety of cones (big cones are caldera, usually where the explosion collapsed the area).  Our guide told us that the cone explodes gas and ash, and the lava flows come from fissures; usually the fissures are a one-time phenomenon. Sometimes the cone will throw larger stones, called bombs. He showed us a variety of the rocks, from the dust and ash to the lava.

We drove later to a lava flow, dating from the early 1990s.  He explained how the lava flow perpetuates itself; as the upper layer cools and solidifies the lower layers stay warm (over 2500 degrees) and flow underneath, eventually breaking through and resuming their flow until eventually cooling and generally stopping.  In the case of this particular lava flow, the nearby US Air Force base sent in helicopters with bombs to alter the path (kind of like setting counter fires).  It’s on youtube, and I do have to say that seeing the explosions and flows (we had a talk afterwards on the boat with visuals) are pretty spectacular.  We’ll have other chances—the island of Stromboli, and later, Vesuvius and the Pompeii ruins.

The boat talk was by a government agent who’s part of the monitoring of “momma Etna”, which once had the traditional cone shape I associate with volcanoes (Fujiyama anyone?), but in the 20^th century has gotten new craters—including “big mouth” (a more colorful name than South East) and the eruption of new craters has continued in 20^th century—even in the past year, new craters have emerged,  a phenomenon never observed this quickly anywhere else in the world.  He said explosions can be violent, with fragments of ash and gas which are blown downwind and ash covers everything.  I remember when St. Helens blew in the 80s, we had to wipe off ash from our cars.  Here in Italy, he said, cleanup is slow. Dust can spread and make visibility difficult, roads slippery, and air bad to breathe.  Lots of “hills” we saw were baby craters at lower elevations.  A 1669 eruption reached 10 km, down to the sea.

When we asked him about living in a volcanic area, he noted that only one of the modern explosions threatened a city on the slope, and the slow progress of lava took 5 weeks to reach the village, allowing everyone to move anything they wanted—except their houses.  Interestingly, there’s no volcano insurance available in Italy, though there are some government funds.

He said the “heat of pyroclastic (look that up in your dictionary) flows killed people in Pompeii.” Not the explosion, which is a product of the water vapor buildup from the intense heat.  Other gases include carbon dioxide and sulphur oxide, which can leave a residue of yellow on the top of the mountain, looking at first glance like snow.

In all, it might have been smoking hot, but it was a pretty cool experience!