Last night for the first time, we had rough seas. Not enough to bother we two seasoned sailors, but enough to leave many guests whining about how rough it was – which makes me wonder why they come on a ship in the first place.
The day was over-cast so people spent their day playing cards, reading, sitting by the pool or in all manner possible enjoying a relaxing day with no where to go. That evening we passed through the straits of Messina, a narrow two-mile wide area important because:
- · in the tales of Homer, Odysseus passed this site and the sirens tried to lure him to his death;
- · in WW II it was the site where the Allies let a German Army escape from Sicily
- · Bob had passed through this exact location 42 years ago, standing on the Bridge of his Carrier, during his sailor days in the Navy.
Soon after passing through the straits the pilot left our ship. This departure of the pilot is something we both love to observe. In every harbor a ship is required to take on a local pilot who is familiar with the water and surrounding landscape. It is that pilot’s job to get the ship safely in, or out of the harbor. Once he has completed this task, a small motor launch comes up along side of the moving ship, keeping pace with the ship’s speed, and at just the right moment, as the little launch and the very large ship are hugging each other and moving through the waves together, the pilot jumps from the ship to the launch. It is not a task for the faint of heart, and we watch it each time with our heart in our throat. If he misses he could be crushed between the two moving vehicles, or fall onto the deck of his pilot boat, or simply dangle between the two. We are told that these pilots are very well paid, and for our money they’re well worth it. We cheered and he waved once safely on his launch.
While we ate dinner the Captain (Mr. Squeaky, as Bob calls him) told us we were passing the island of Stromboli, and its active volcano. Everyone leaped up to take a look, and the captain promised that since it wasn’t quite dark, that we’d pass slowly to its north so that we might watch it spewing lava glowing in the evening sky. We learned later that it did exactly that, but we missed that opportunity choosing instead to go to a very bad piano concert given by a Russian woman. Between the microphone heightened acoustics, and her very sloppy playing, it was a painful experience … and we could have been watching Stromboli instead!!
May 12, 2008 – Sorrento/Pompeii
Once again we awoke without having heard the anchor being lowered (can we really be drinking that much at night) but we were definitely resting on our anchor outside the lovely harbor of Sorrento. We had eschewed the ship-provided tours which were very expensive and were meant for those who like to have their information ‘pre-chewed’ (or at least that’s my opinion). Instead we headed for the local Sorrento Statione to catch the train that runs every 30 minutes to Pompeii.
We bought our tickets for 3.80 Euro (round trip) and hopped on to the ‘Long Island ‘local’. And I mean local. The whole distance was less than 19 kilometers but it took us about 40 minutes, stopping at every little town along the way, standing in the middle of the train, hemmed in on all sides and crushed in amidst crowds of tourists, locals and gypsies. It was distinctly a local experience which those on the cruise bus tours had the misfortune of missing. But then, they might also have missed the fields of poppies, and the fruit trees which bordered both sides of the tracks, and the feeling of conviviality amongst all us tourists who de-trained en masse at the Pompeii-Scavi train stop.
The train left us less than 300 feet from the entrance to the historic precinct. We walked past the many vendors selling water, guides, personal tours and umbrellas. (The day still looked a bit threatening so that we had rain slickers at the ready). I was last here 20+ years ago with Connie and Lynne, but if you’d put a gun to my head I wouldn’t have recognized anything. (Then again, as Bob reminds me, many sites look new to me when I might have seen them just four months ago…not to mention twenty years).
There has been a significant amount of excavation going on through this period, and the site itself has a new entry way, audio walking tours and a very rich book store to enhance the tourists’ experience. Since we were early into the season the place was amazingly empty. The three cruise ships in port certainly added to the crowd effect, but we overheard one guide saying that lines to walk into one particular house could be one hour in length during the height of the season, and we just marched in and out with no problems.
Springtime, with poppies in season is the right time to visit ruins. Since there is little shade cover, and the heat can be intense, it was almost perfect to have a cool day with an overcast sky. Bob and I had downloaded an iPod walking tour from iJourneys, which was excellent! We were guided from spot to spot with very precise instructions, and told exactly what we were seeing and why it was important. The benefit of this kind of tour was that we were on our own and were not dependent on tour guides with their flags held high in the air in order to herd their chickens to the next spot. Instead of fighting for space to see some particular item, we were on our own and there were times when we were the only people standing in front of a particular home, or display.
Granted we missed the amusing stories which the guides tell to keep otherwise bored clients happy, or the interesting and odd statistics that they keep in their head (or make up) to astound the crowds. We are not always pleased with human guided tours, and are usually happier with the ability to visit sites on our own – either with a good guidebook, or as in this case, with our iPods. We were leisurely in our approach, stopping and watching people if we needed a rest, and probably were at the sight for 4+ hours. It is an astounding place. Not that it was so opulent in its time…after all it was just another Roman town…but rather by the sheer happenstance that it found itself in the direct path of an exploding volcano, thus allowing us to examine an entire town, almost as if it had been built yesterday.
In the year 79 a.d. within a thirty hour period, over thirty feet of fiery ash rained down on the town, burying everything and everyone in a cataclysm no one had foreseen. Locals had thought of Vesuvius as just another mountain and had never figured out just why the soil was so rich around their homes. And so, after 1700+ years of lying dormant, and with the writings of Pliny the Elder to guide them, the site began to be excavated and the digging continues to this day. For archaeologists this is pure gold to work at such a site where everything remains intact. It wais somewhat eerie to walk streets, poke into people’s homes, and look at frozen-in-time-objects… from a dog that had been chained to his home and died writhing in agony; to people cowering with their faces covered, only to be completely covered in ash. The number of human figures found in all manner of agonizing poses gives one pause. (Most of these are now in the Naples Museum) An explanation was provided to explain how archaeologists were able to preserve these figures: by taking the hardened lava that surrounded the original corpse and using it as a mold, they would pour a material into the mold which when extracted is able to show the exact detail of every person, animal or object:
- · The bakery where loaves of bread were found intact it all happened so quickly;
- · the large homes of the well-to-do, with walls covered in beautiful pastel illustrations and their inner grassed-in courtyard providing a cool oasis to the outer world;
- · the home in whose entryway a mosaic showed a fierce snarling dog, and the words “beware of the dog” (in Latin);
- · the taverna or restaurant with its places to keep food warm, and dispense ‘take-out’ orders.
Of course the house that all tour guides pointed out, and which we too examined, was the brothel - complete with very explicit illustrations above the doors. One guide was overheard saying “It’s kinda like McDonalds – place your order by looking at the various pictures”. And of course, the favorite stop for all tours: the house of the Vettii, owned by two bachelor brothers. In the entryway is an illustration of Priapus, holding a scale: on one side of the scale is a large sack of gold and the other side as a balance is his much enlarged penis. We were told by our iPod tour guide that it was a way to measure the brothers’ importance in the community. (Yeah, right!) Of course everyone had to stop to take that picture. And later as we walked past the tourist stands located outside the precinct, that picture, along with a lot of the brothel illustrations, was being sold in vivid color…not to mention the penis-bottle-openers and other assorted phallic paraphernalia to bring home to one’s grandmother.
After four hours we were brain and leg weary… so after a cooling beer, we once more boarded our train back to Sorrento, headed back to the ship for a brief rest and a beautiful sunset sail-a-way past Capri. Then off to dinner. Having spent in incredibly boring evening the night before, talking with a pair of sisters living in Chicago whose ‘tier one’ stories were painfully uninteresting, and a couple from Korea whose command of English was limited…we chose to go back to the buffet, and eat outdoors on the 9th deck aft, where Bob enjoyed sushi and I had a plate of pasta. (Some nights one finds the most interesting people at ones table with whom to strike up a conversation, and on other nights you wish you could just excuse yourself and move on – the nature of open seating on a cruise ship.) It makes me miss our octet from the Queen Mary, who we got to know so well after six nights of dining together.
One of the most delightful and extraordinary events of our day came as we stood on our balcony watching the town of Sorrento spread out before us. We looked up at the bridge wing which looms over our balcony. Normally this wing is devoid of humans since its purpose is to provide good sight lines of the port side of the ship when in the process of maneuvering an arrival or departure. We looked up and the captain waved. For a minute we weren’t sure he was waving at us, but we waved back at which point he asked us how we had spent our day. We chatted about our visit to Pompeii, a place he had yet to visit. He explained that it was difficult to go ashore for an excursion when at anchor, because were he not to be able to get back to the ship quickly, the entire sail away might be in jeopardy. The fact that he was so open to engaging in a conversation when he normally is sequestered and busy on the bridge before departure, was both a surprise and a delight for the both of us. (Though we continue to call him Mr. Squeaky based on his high pitched, very earnest, young voice).
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