- An amazing range of oddly worded t-shirts. Including several with a NZ theme. I particularly liked the rugby top emblazoned with 'North Island' and mockups of sponsor's logos. Turned it over and on the back it said New Zealand, North Island, Rugby League. I would have bought it but I knew I would never wear it.... It certainly wasn't any sort of 'official merchandise' that I've ever seen! I never knew the North Island had a rugby league team - had I known I would of course be a rabid supporter of them!
- Public toilets in Naples don't seem to have toilet seats. Ever.
- Italian men can carry off some extremely dodgy hairstyles and still look rather lovely while carrying by bag! Well actually it was just one in particular, on Stromboli...
- Pizzas really are better in Italy.
- You can lose the will to live queuing in an Italian post office. And then get back and find out that most of the postcards you queued to deliver still haven't arrived 3 weeks later!
- The Italians are obviously used to it, and queued patiently with no tutting, or frustrated 'haruumphs'
Showing posts with label Holidays - 2005. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holidays - 2005. Show all posts
Friday, October 14, 2005
Final odds and sods from my hols
Here are some of the things that I noticed while in Italia...
Fun volcano site...
Am I starting to sound obsessive?? Probably but this is about the last volcano thing - honestly! While researching facts (actually the correct spelling of Strombolicchio) I found this site and thought it was pretty cool. You can do the virtual ascent of Stromboli, but they don't use that route any more so it isn't actually the one that we did. But I was most impressed that they had a virtual 'Tongariro Crossing' - check it out!! Swiss Education - Volcanoes of the World
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Naples & Pompeii
So... back to the holiday. We left Stromboli at 5pm and got the evening ferry to Naples - 4 hours. We were pretty lucky as they stop the ferries to Naples at the end of September so it worked out well. Otherwise we would have had to go back to Messina and get a train up to Naples which would have taken the whole day so the 4 hour ferry was a much better option.
We stayed at Il Convento in Naples - it was alright. Very dark room which looked out onto a building being renovated. First hotel I've ever stayed at which supplied earplugs!! But it had been recently renovated and they had done a lot to block out the noise so we didn't actually need them. I've stayed in far noisier hotels!
After Palermo Naples was much nicer. Although everything we had read about it went on and on about the bag snatching being rife so we were completely paranoid everytime we left the hotel. But I felt much more unsafe in Palermo than I did in Naples. Consequently there are no photos from Naples as we were too worried about taking our cameras out! We only really had one day in the City - we wandered around, went up one of their cable cars, went up to a gallery next to the castle overlooking the city. That was pretty cool - had loads of nativity sets. I will come back and update this entry as I can't remember what it was called at the moment, and my google searches don't look right...
The next day we went to Pompeii. I have loads of photos from there to add to Flickr so will let you know when they are done. It was really quite incredible. Somewhat stupidly I hadn't really thought about how big it would be - the site is over 100 acres...
Us being us we duly got our Audio Guides and set off. Little bit of Megan stress at the start as I couldn't find the Baths which we had a timed ticket for (never did get to see them) but once I'd got over that it got better :-). Spent quite a while wandering around, listening to the guides until that got a bit boring so then we just wandered around and listened when we found interesting buildings. Probably the wrong way to do it - probably missed loads of interesting things but never mind! Halfway through it started to thunder and rain which was actually a blessing as the place emptied out. It went from a lovely sunny hot day to being dark and very wet - and not many people were prepared. Of course we were as I'm a weather obsessive so we just pulled out our walking jackets and we were sorted! As were most of the English people there (also weather obsessives - I must have got the gene from my Nana I think!).
I was somewhat morbidly fixated on seeing 'the dead people' as that is what I remember Pompeii being most famous for, but the only ones we saw were in a storage barn. Still very chilling. I read that a lot of the body casts are in the archaeological museum in Naples and we didn't get a chance to go there.
It was an incredible place however - and some of the frescoes that were still around were incredible. The fact that they have lasted so long is quite mindblowing - I've included a picture below, but there are plenty more on my Flickr site as well. Coming from Stromboli I really appreciated a bit more the power of the volcano... Interesting too that some people had the chance to leave but didn't. In fact at Herculaenum (nearby) they found a whole heap of bodies about 20 years ago - they had originally thought that only about 20 people died there, but they found around 150 I think down by the sea. Very sad really - they fled to the sea as they thought that would be safer... We didn't get a chance to get to Herculaneum but it is also meant to be really interesting.
The key thing for me at Pompeii was just the realisation that the site was so big, that so much of the town was affected, and that even now you can still wander around those streets. And Vesuvius still just sits there biding its time...
We stayed at Il Convento in Naples - it was alright. Very dark room which looked out onto a building being renovated. First hotel I've ever stayed at which supplied earplugs!! But it had been recently renovated and they had done a lot to block out the noise so we didn't actually need them. I've stayed in far noisier hotels!
After Palermo Naples was much nicer. Although everything we had read about it went on and on about the bag snatching being rife so we were completely paranoid everytime we left the hotel. But I felt much more unsafe in Palermo than I did in Naples. Consequently there are no photos from Naples as we were too worried about taking our cameras out! We only really had one day in the City - we wandered around, went up one of their cable cars, went up to a gallery next to the castle overlooking the city. That was pretty cool - had loads of nativity sets. I will come back and update this entry as I can't remember what it was called at the moment, and my google searches don't look right...
The next day we went to Pompeii. I have loads of photos from there to add to Flickr so will let you know when they are done. It was really quite incredible. Somewhat stupidly I hadn't really thought about how big it would be - the site is over 100 acres...
Us being us we duly got our Audio Guides and set off. Little bit of Megan stress at the start as I couldn't find the Baths which we had a timed ticket for (never did get to see them) but once I'd got over that it got better :-). Spent quite a while wandering around, listening to the guides until that got a bit boring so then we just wandered around and listened when we found interesting buildings. Probably the wrong way to do it - probably missed loads of interesting things but never mind! Halfway through it started to thunder and rain which was actually a blessing as the place emptied out. It went from a lovely sunny hot day to being dark and very wet - and not many people were prepared. Of course we were as I'm a weather obsessive so we just pulled out our walking jackets and we were sorted! As were most of the English people there (also weather obsessives - I must have got the gene from my Nana I think!).
I was somewhat morbidly fixated on seeing 'the dead people' as that is what I remember Pompeii being most famous for, but the only ones we saw were in a storage barn. Still very chilling. I read that a lot of the body casts are in the archaeological museum in Naples and we didn't get a chance to go there.
It was an incredible place however - and some of the frescoes that were still around were incredible. The fact that they have lasted so long is quite mindblowing - I've included a picture below, but there are plenty more on my Flickr site as well. Coming from Stromboli I really appreciated a bit more the power of the volcano... Interesting too that some people had the chance to leave but didn't. In fact at Herculaenum (nearby) they found a whole heap of bodies about 20 years ago - they had originally thought that only about 20 people died there, but they found around 150 I think down by the sea. Very sad really - they fled to the sea as they thought that would be safer... We didn't get a chance to get to Herculaneum but it is also meant to be really interesting.
The key thing for me at Pompeii was just the realisation that the site was so big, that so much of the town was affected, and that even now you can still wander around those streets. And Vesuvius still just sits there biding its time...
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
More photos uploaded
I've added a few more photos on Flickr from the holiday so make sure to check them out. Still more to come tho! Also some more of Chihuly at Kew as well. All organised into sets tho so it makes it easier for you!
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Climbing Stromboli - aka visiting dragons...
Well this post is out of order in terms of what we did on the holiday, but it was pretty much the highlight so I figured it was ok to talk about it first! I hope you've checked out the photos on Flickr - I've had some of mine back but they aren't as good as Kev's. I haven't uploaded them yet but will do so...
We had done a bit of research before going to Stromboli, so knew it was possible to climb the volcano. According to the guide book there was two options - a climb that left around late afternoon, or a climb that left around midnight, when you went up the mountain, sat there for about 3 hours watching the lava and waiting for the sun to come up before descending again. Before we got there we thought we would do that option but (thank god!) when we got there they said they no longer offered that tour as it was too dangerous to spend all night on the volcano. I don't know if I would have been able to stay up there that long anyhow, so I don't know what I would have done if we had done it! Stromboli last erupted in Dec 2002/2003 - luckily at Xmas time so there was hardly anyone on the island and so no one was killed. Caused a tsunami though that made it to Italy... Climbs to the summit have only been running again since March 2005 - so not very long...
We climbed with Magmatrek - check out their website here. Although it didn't really occur to me until afterwards, they had a very relaxed attitude to the whole deal. In terms of equipment we had to bring a torch (my head torch from Trailwalker came in very useful again!), a jacket, water, and a bandana or something to breathe through if it was dusty on the summit. No one checked our kit though... When we went to confirm our booking and pay the money we were also told that our guide didn't speak any English. They weren't telling us that from any safety angle - just to let us know! Luckily in our group (you climb in groups of about 10-15) we had a French guy who spoke some Italian and some English so he translated for all the English speakers in the group!! So when it came time to set off he just rounded us up and off we headed. No talk about the dangers of the volcano or what to do if anything went wrong - looking back afterwards it is hard to imagine any similar sort of expedition being run like that now in NZ!!
And so we headed off. It took about 2.5 hours to climb it - around 900metres high. There were a couple of school groups ahead of us (also being guided by Magmatrek) and another Magmatrek group behind us. I'd been a bit worried about the climb, but the guide took it really slowly and it was a very zig-zaggy path so wasn't too difficult. Incredibly hot tho - to say I was a sweatball would be pretty accurate! We set off about 4.30 and got to the summit at 7. Just before we got to the edge of the crater that we took the photos from there was an enormous boom (a bit like a sonic boom that radiated through your whole body), the ground shook, and in the distance you could see a red glow. And that was it for me - all of a sudden I realised where I was, and the penny dropped that the volcano might erupt with me on it! That wasn't helped by the fact that once we were all sat down on the crater edge one of the English speaking guides (Mario on the website) said we would be there for an hour. Then a couple of minutes later he was back saying "Actually its pretty active tonight (we'd just had another display of lava erupting) so we might not stay for the full hour...". I'm sure they say that to all of the groups but I was scared!!
Where you end up sitting is on a ridge that looks down to the vents which are where all the action is now happening. It is quite possible that if it spat out enough lava/rocks it could blow back on to the tourists, but you just have to trust that they are monitoring it enough so they know it isn't likely to happen. In the hour we were up there (which felt like a lifetime to me), we probably saw about 5 of the bigger eruptions, where the lava was shooting up into the air, accompanied by that booming sound that made me convinced I was about to die... And in between those there would be lots of other smaller eruptions - so I think it is safe to say that we really got our money's worth!!
It really was an incredible experience - even staying on the volcano was quite amazing as every now and then during the day you would hear a boom from the summit - its a pretty fiery one. I don't think I've really captured what it was like but it is hard to put it into words. I thought I was pretty au fait with the volcanic side of Mother Nature - growing up in Taupo with boiling mud pools and geysers and things you get some feel for it. But they have absolutely nothing on what I saw - we really do live on a ball of molten lava - and it was absolutely incredible, awesome and terrifying (to me) to see it at such close quarters.
Coming down was quite fun - I think we basically skiied down the side of the mountain, wading through the volcanic ash/sand that coats it. Fell over a couple of times but it was just like falling on a sand dune - also weird though cos you just couldn't see where you were - you just followed the torch in front! And I just felt better the closer I got to the bottom...
But I'd really recommend the trip! Even though it freaked me out, I would have been gutted to miss it due to bad weather or anything. And now that I'm back in nice non-volcanic England its getting easier to recommend it to other people!!
We had done a bit of research before going to Stromboli, so knew it was possible to climb the volcano. According to the guide book there was two options - a climb that left around late afternoon, or a climb that left around midnight, when you went up the mountain, sat there for about 3 hours watching the lava and waiting for the sun to come up before descending again. Before we got there we thought we would do that option but (thank god!) when we got there they said they no longer offered that tour as it was too dangerous to spend all night on the volcano. I don't know if I would have been able to stay up there that long anyhow, so I don't know what I would have done if we had done it! Stromboli last erupted in Dec 2002/2003 - luckily at Xmas time so there was hardly anyone on the island and so no one was killed. Caused a tsunami though that made it to Italy... Climbs to the summit have only been running again since March 2005 - so not very long...
We climbed with Magmatrek - check out their website here. Although it didn't really occur to me until afterwards, they had a very relaxed attitude to the whole deal. In terms of equipment we had to bring a torch (my head torch from Trailwalker came in very useful again!), a jacket, water, and a bandana or something to breathe through if it was dusty on the summit. No one checked our kit though... When we went to confirm our booking and pay the money we were also told that our guide didn't speak any English. They weren't telling us that from any safety angle - just to let us know! Luckily in our group (you climb in groups of about 10-15) we had a French guy who spoke some Italian and some English so he translated for all the English speakers in the group!! So when it came time to set off he just rounded us up and off we headed. No talk about the dangers of the volcano or what to do if anything went wrong - looking back afterwards it is hard to imagine any similar sort of expedition being run like that now in NZ!!
And so we headed off. It took about 2.5 hours to climb it - around 900metres high. There were a couple of school groups ahead of us (also being guided by Magmatrek) and another Magmatrek group behind us. I'd been a bit worried about the climb, but the guide took it really slowly and it was a very zig-zaggy path so wasn't too difficult. Incredibly hot tho - to say I was a sweatball would be pretty accurate! We set off about 4.30 and got to the summit at 7. Just before we got to the edge of the crater that we took the photos from there was an enormous boom (a bit like a sonic boom that radiated through your whole body), the ground shook, and in the distance you could see a red glow. And that was it for me - all of a sudden I realised where I was, and the penny dropped that the volcano might erupt with me on it! That wasn't helped by the fact that once we were all sat down on the crater edge one of the English speaking guides (Mario on the website) said we would be there for an hour. Then a couple of minutes later he was back saying "Actually its pretty active tonight (we'd just had another display of lava erupting) so we might not stay for the full hour...". I'm sure they say that to all of the groups but I was scared!!
Where you end up sitting is on a ridge that looks down to the vents which are where all the action is now happening. It is quite possible that if it spat out enough lava/rocks it could blow back on to the tourists, but you just have to trust that they are monitoring it enough so they know it isn't likely to happen. In the hour we were up there (which felt like a lifetime to me), we probably saw about 5 of the bigger eruptions, where the lava was shooting up into the air, accompanied by that booming sound that made me convinced I was about to die... And in between those there would be lots of other smaller eruptions - so I think it is safe to say that we really got our money's worth!!
It really was an incredible experience - even staying on the volcano was quite amazing as every now and then during the day you would hear a boom from the summit - its a pretty fiery one. I don't think I've really captured what it was like but it is hard to put it into words. I thought I was pretty au fait with the volcanic side of Mother Nature - growing up in Taupo with boiling mud pools and geysers and things you get some feel for it. But they have absolutely nothing on what I saw - we really do live on a ball of molten lava - and it was absolutely incredible, awesome and terrifying (to me) to see it at such close quarters.
Coming down was quite fun - I think we basically skiied down the side of the mountain, wading through the volcanic ash/sand that coats it. Fell over a couple of times but it was just like falling on a sand dune - also weird though cos you just couldn't see where you were - you just followed the torch in front! And I just felt better the closer I got to the bottom...
But I'd really recommend the trip! Even though it freaked me out, I would have been gutted to miss it due to bad weather or anything. And now that I'm back in nice non-volcanic England its getting easier to recommend it to other people!!
Friday, October 07, 2005
Palermo, Agrigento and Cefalu
Prior to conquering the beast that was Stromboli we visited some other pretty cool places...
We flew in to Palermo and spent a few days there. Which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Didn't like Palermo at all. It was just crowded and noisy and unpleasant. Narrow pavements so you were continually stepping off them to avoid people but then had to avoid being hit by the zillions of people on mopeds and the insane drivers they have there. I've had some hairy taxi rides in Europe before but the taxi trip from Palermo airport takes the cake. The way to overtake seems to be drive right up to the bumper of the car in front and flash your lights at it until it pulls over out of the way. Continually. All the way in. I was laughing by the time we got to the hotel but it may have been the relief at having survived the trip in!
Palermo is pretty much home to the Sicilian mafia which was quite interesting. Kevin is now reading Cosa Nostra, and we're rewatching the Godfather movies as well. We weren't that far from the town of Corleone (which is where Mario Puzo got the name from) but it didn't sound like there was much to see there - and I had a feeling we'd stand out like very obvious tourists looking for mafia people if we went there - didn't really appeal!
From Palermo we did a day trip to Agrigento though which was pretty cool. About two hours on the train, so we got to see a bit of Sicily - really sun burnt looking landscape. Very harsh. Apparently it is/was known as the bread basket of Italy and during the war Mussolini had it growing all the grain etc Italy needed. However they neglected the other crops and the soil lost all its nutrients. It doesn't seem to have recovered much from the bits that we saw.
Agrigento is a collection of Greek ruins which were pretty cool. Except the best ones were not only covered in scaffolding (occupational hazard of being a tourist at historical sites), but some of them were even wrapped in plastic - that was a new one on me... Also scattered throughout the Agrigento site were loads of olive trees which were pretty cool - not many olives on them though as I think the tourists had been helping themselves! There are some photos of the ruins on Flickr. I've got more to load on to Flickr as well - but it takes ages to do it at home over the dial up so it might take some time for them to appear.
We also did a day trip to Cefalu (also photos on Flickr, but more to come) which I really liked. Had a nice looking beach, loads of eating and drinking places overlooking the sea, and nice little lanes to wander around. Would be a good place to go back to for a Sept break I think. Of course by then we were desperate to get out of Palermo so maybe that made it look even better!
We flew in to Palermo and spent a few days there. Which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Didn't like Palermo at all. It was just crowded and noisy and unpleasant. Narrow pavements so you were continually stepping off them to avoid people but then had to avoid being hit by the zillions of people on mopeds and the insane drivers they have there. I've had some hairy taxi rides in Europe before but the taxi trip from Palermo airport takes the cake. The way to overtake seems to be drive right up to the bumper of the car in front and flash your lights at it until it pulls over out of the way. Continually. All the way in. I was laughing by the time we got to the hotel but it may have been the relief at having survived the trip in!
Palermo is pretty much home to the Sicilian mafia which was quite interesting. Kevin is now reading Cosa Nostra, and we're rewatching the Godfather movies as well. We weren't that far from the town of Corleone (which is where Mario Puzo got the name from) but it didn't sound like there was much to see there - and I had a feeling we'd stand out like very obvious tourists looking for mafia people if we went there - didn't really appeal!
From Palermo we did a day trip to Agrigento though which was pretty cool. About two hours on the train, so we got to see a bit of Sicily - really sun burnt looking landscape. Very harsh. Apparently it is/was known as the bread basket of Italy and during the war Mussolini had it growing all the grain etc Italy needed. However they neglected the other crops and the soil lost all its nutrients. It doesn't seem to have recovered much from the bits that we saw.
Agrigento is a collection of Greek ruins which were pretty cool. Except the best ones were not only covered in scaffolding (occupational hazard of being a tourist at historical sites), but some of them were even wrapped in plastic - that was a new one on me... Also scattered throughout the Agrigento site were loads of olive trees which were pretty cool - not many olives on them though as I think the tourists had been helping themselves! There are some photos of the ruins on Flickr. I've got more to load on to Flickr as well - but it takes ages to do it at home over the dial up so it might take some time for them to appear.
We also did a day trip to Cefalu (also photos on Flickr, but more to come) which I really liked. Had a nice looking beach, loads of eating and drinking places overlooking the sea, and nice little lanes to wander around. Would be a good place to go back to for a Sept break I think. Of course by then we were desperate to get out of Palermo so maybe that made it look even better!
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Here be dragons...
In the Rough Guide to Sicily it says about Stromboli that it is a volcano that deserves to have a sign stuck in the top saying 'Here be dragons' and they were not wrong...
We had a fab holiday - more of which later. But this post is just to let you know that I've uploaded a few photos on to Flickr from the hols, including some of our night climb of Stromboli. I will write more about it later, but I can honestly say that I have never been so scared by Mother Nature in my life. It was an incredibly humbling and awesome experience to watch and hear the lava eruptions from a very active volcano... We were up there for an hour, and all I could think was "I don't want to die. Please can we go now!". I will describe it in more detail - it deserves a lot more, but check out the photos below, and the others on Flickr. I'll be adding to these as well - Kevin took loads so until my films get developed I'll plunder his!
Quick timetable: Spent a few days in Palermo which we didn't like. Noisy, crowded and just generally not so fab. Did a lovely day trip to Cefalu however - looked like a great spot for an off season summer holiday, and Agrigento - very cool Greek ruins. Then we took the ferry to Salina, one of the Aeolian islands. Spent 4 days there chilling out, doing day trips to Stromboli and Vulcano (which named all the other volcanoes!), then went to Stromboli for 2 nights - including the infamous climb, then to Naples for 3 nights - including a day trip to Pompeii - of which more in a later post.
It was a great two weeks tho - sadly back to reality in London now :-(
We had a fab holiday - more of which later. But this post is just to let you know that I've uploaded a few photos on to Flickr from the hols, including some of our night climb of Stromboli. I will write more about it later, but I can honestly say that I have never been so scared by Mother Nature in my life. It was an incredibly humbling and awesome experience to watch and hear the lava eruptions from a very active volcano... We were up there for an hour, and all I could think was "I don't want to die. Please can we go now!". I will describe it in more detail - it deserves a lot more, but check out the photos below, and the others on Flickr. I'll be adding to these as well - Kevin took loads so until my films get developed I'll plunder his!
Quick timetable: Spent a few days in Palermo which we didn't like. Noisy, crowded and just generally not so fab. Did a lovely day trip to Cefalu however - looked like a great spot for an off season summer holiday, and Agrigento - very cool Greek ruins. Then we took the ferry to Salina, one of the Aeolian islands. Spent 4 days there chilling out, doing day trips to Stromboli and Vulcano (which named all the other volcanoes!), then went to Stromboli for 2 nights - including the infamous climb, then to Naples for 3 nights - including a day trip to Pompeii - of which more in a later post.
It was a great two weeks tho - sadly back to reality in London now :-(
Friday, September 16, 2005
Off to Sicily now... Back in two weeks
So we're off to Sicily and Naples for two weeks now so it is highly unlikely there will be any posts from me until Oct 1st at the earliest. But look out for great photos and stories (hopefully!) when we get back!
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