Hydra - the Greek island without cars!

Our first Greek Island!  We sought out the closest port to the island of Hydra. It sounded idyllic. This island is completely free of privately-owned vehicles - no cars, mopeds, etc.! Goods are mostly hauled by donkey.  

Here's a link with more information and pictures.

The trip south from Lefka Beach towards the very small port of Metochi was only 1 1/2 hours and the boat trip there was only 25 minutes - very important as Dermot is prone to seasickness.  The night before we fretted as a very windy day was forecast for our crossing but Dermot had already booked the hotel room for two nights. The drive seemed longer as we traveled over and around the mountains but finally made it - having missed the 12:00 ferry by 10 minutes.  Part of our decision to go this route was made because we found a secure parking lot near the port so we could be (relatively) confident our campervan would be safe. We also worried the leisure battery which powers the refrigerator would run out of juice while we were gone.  Nonetheless, we buttoned it up and headed out, hoping for the best.

Dermot eyed the heaving boat with trepidation but, half-dosed with dramamine and with seasickness wristbands in place, he gamely boarded. Then he held on tight for the very rough ride. He made it without, uh, incident!

Once on the island, we headed for our hotel room, checked in and then went wandering around the island. The day was very windy and cold. We could tell that it was long past tourist season here as we were among the very few people strolling around. Quite a few of the restaurants and stores had already closed for the season. We walked through town and up each side before turning back and exploring through the back streets. Of course, as in the rest of Greece, cats were everywhere. It was so quiet and relaxing to be able to walk without having to worry about cars, mopeds, or bikes mowing us down! I assume the cats agree.

A few days earlier I had noticed that I would run out of one of my prescription drugs before the end of the trip and that Greece may offer an answer as some of their drugs are not regulated as they are in the rest of Europe. There was a pharmacy on the island and Dermot suggested I try there but I hadn’t even brought my pill bottle to prove I had a prescription from my Dr. The sign on the door said "No pictures inside" so, of course, I didn't take any but you've just got to see the inside of this place. It was like a museum!  I found this on the internet:

Pharmacy pictures here. 

After some gawking at the displays, I typed the name of the generic drug in my iphone (which then provided the premium drug name as well) and asked the pharmacist if the drug was available without prescription. He recognized the premium drug name and said "Well, you have a prescription from your doctor, right? You know the drug so you have it, right?" I said yes, but I didn’t have it with me. He said that was okay, went the shelves and returned in less than a minute with a box of 30.  He didn't bat an eye when I asked for a second box. The kicker? The charge was $3.75 per box for the premium drug. I usually pay a lot more than that for the generic version in the U.S. That pretty much made my whole day! No more worrying about running out and having to get a prescription from the states!

That night we went out for a dinner on the dock and then roamed the back streets of the town in the dark.  It has a very nice ambience and there were interesting passageways, doorways and buildings around every corner.

That night it was difficult to get used to having more than three feet of clearance over our heads as we slept but somehow we managed. The next morning we ate a big breakfast provided by the hotel. We usually just have cereal in the morning so it was a real treat! We went on a long walk on the streets paved with rocks from the main town to the towns west of the port along the sea with gorgeous views all along the way.

Photos here. Warning: island fever may be contagious. Proceed at your own risk!

We spent a second night on the island and took pictures of the sun slowly sinking below the mountains on the mainland's horizon.  Then we had a dinner sitting on the harbor and watched people coming in on ferries pulling their luggage - probably arriving from Athens to enjoy a weekend there. The next morning it was time to board the ferry once again and head for the mainland. 

Nafplio, Mycenae and Epidavros

Nafplio was once the capital of Greece and we enjoyed the city very much. Campsite Lefka Beach was right on the beach in a protected bay and the weather was very nice most of the time so we listened to the sounds of lapping water whenever we were in camp. We visited the National Archaeological Museum here and were amazed at the finds they had from prehistorical Greece and the Mycenaean civilization. The star was a 15th-century B.C. suit of bronze armor that was discovered in a Mycenaean chamber tomb which is the oldest such armor in Europe. My photos don't do it justice but the link below shows it much better.

Museum website with better info and pictures here.

We had good food at low prices - a lunch of gyros and bottled water for a total bill of 5.80 euros. I got a pretty good picture of those gyros! 

Photos here of varying quality.

Mycenae was the capital of the Mycenaeans who won the Trojan War and dominated Greece 1,000 years before the Acropolis. Later Greeks were shocked at the huge stones of the Mycenaean ruins. Many were far larger than the largest stones in Egypt’s pyramids.  

This link will give you much better info and pictures on Mycenae.

Epidavros was a town built for healing but it has the best preserved ancient theater in all of Greece. The picture above was shot there. The acoustics were wonderful as you could hear someone rip a piece of paper on stage all the way at the topmost seats.  

Link to more info and pictures of Epidavros/Epidaurus

Yeah, I know, I'm getting lazy with the descriptions but the links are so much better than what I'm able to remember and/or how much time I'm willing to devote to writing it!!

Monemvasia

What an incredible place!  We decided to go here as a two hour detour (sort of) on our way to another city.  I’m going to let you read the very interesting history at this link. Take a look at it first as I wasn’t able to get a good picture of what the island looks like as a whole on the approach.  

Wikipedia link on Monemvasia

I’m going to let the pictures do most of rest of the talking as each is worth 1,000 words. The first pictures are of the lower town where there are shops, businesses and hotels that have retained much of their original medieval character with winding streets, houses build at interesting angles and with influences from the many different periods of habitation (e.g., during Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman rule). Note that many pictures show the upper (now mostly ruins) perched on the cliffs high above. It's a very steep climb and when I checked my step counter later that day it said I had climbed the equivalent of 27 floors that day! All that being said, what’s hard to convey through either of these is the sense of wonder and fun of climbing all around the ruins imagining the lives of the people who lived in this fortress island. Many houses in the lower town are also being renovated. It looks like a cool place to live and I’m again staying far away from the real estate offices.  

Click here for photos

Pelopponese - The Mani peninsula

We wanted to stay in Kardamyli, Greece since Rick Steves (RS) suggests it, but there are no campgrounds there so we headed to Camping Kalogria which is nearby and close to the beach. Though the area is full of twisting roads that overlook cliffs with few guardrails, the driving here is much more relaxed as there are very, very few people driving the roads. Actually, everything seems so much more laid back here.  I suppose it's more crowded in the season but we enjoyed that. The downside is that many establishments are closed. 

Sitting in camp finishing Sunday breakfast we saw a big fruit and veggie truck start driving by slowly. I was enchanted - it was like the ice cream man, except with produce! How could you resist? I over-bought because I forgot Europeans count their thumb first so everything I asked for two of, I got three. Hilariously, Dermot said "I hope the butcher comes before dinner."

We relaxed in this area for three nights then set out south along the coast and went to the Caves of Diros. We took lots of pictures but since the lighting was low, they aren’t great. I included a few but this link has both better pictures and all the fascinating information I’d write if I were less lazy: 

Diros Caves

We then went to Camping Meltemi along the Eastern Mani coast and our campsite was through an olive grove and right on the beach (if you ignored the fence and short line of cactus - which we did). We enjoyed the sound of the surf and the nearly completely deserted beach. We rode our bikes on the compacted sand/roadway on the beach and walked to a nearby restaurant three days in a row.

One day, we followed RS' suggestions for a loop trip around the Mani peninsula and many of the gorgeous photos in the album are from that trip (see explanations on most photos).  

Click here for photos

Random observation:

There are stray cats everywhere and its hard to imagine what they’ll all do when the tourists are gone. The first night we arrived, two fluffy kittens turned up at our campsite seemingly ravenous. Lacking anything like cat food, Dermot suggested we feed them Proscuitto ham we’d brought from Italy! On a subsequent night, the cats arrived as soon as Dermot brought out the grill.  When we ate out at restaurants there was always a plethora of cats around looking for handouts. 

Pompeii

Pompeii is an incredible place. It’s the third time I’ve been here and it’s different every time. There are still digs and preservation efforts and will be for many years.  Though many of the approximately 20,000 residents had fled before the tragic event, the fourth pyroclastic surge killed about 2,000 residents.  What’s left behind is the closest we’ll ever be to understanding what life was like for these people two thousand years ago. There’s really nothing else like it. 

I’d like to be able to convey the enormity of the city and what it’s like to walk through what amounts to an immersive open air museum. Rather than telling you all about it, I’m putting pictures here:

Click here for photo album

 and providing a link for better pictures and better information:  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii

If you've never been, we highly recommend it!

Sorrento & Capri

Beach-side selfie

Sorrento and Capri (alternate title: OMG - why did I drive here!?!)

I’m sitting in the camper writing this post after leaving Sorrento behind. Usually I start with the writing, then add pictures to the google photo album and then go back and forth between the two parts until I’m happy enough to post. This time I started with the pictures because, well, it's just gorgeous and I needed to be reminded of that before writing. I can look back at the pictures and appreciate it now only because we survived driving there and out again. I’m serious. It's sort of like childbirth. The lovely baby puts the pain in perspective - if you live through it. 

Check out the pictures here. Seriously, I'll wait.

The drive from Rome to Sorrento was going well until we somehow got side-tracked and had to drive through the small coastal town of Castellammare di Stabia. Living at the foot of a volcano that has wiped out entire towns and could do so again at any time must have an extreme effect on the people here. The mayhem I described in the last post as experienced by a pedestrian was now ramped up a notch as I was driving a six meter van through it. Cars and scooters were parked on two lane roads so you had to wait for a break in on-coming traffic to go around them. Cars and scooters would blow past the stop sign into the main road from a side street if there wasn’t a vehicle going fast enough in that lane at that very moment to avoid hitting them. It was like they were holding the place. Forced to stop or run them over, I then had to wait until there was a break in traffic to allow them to complete their LEFT turn! Each time I thought I had witnessed the highest level of insane driving, I was surprised by the next.  

Eventually we cleared that area, but now we started up the zig-zag road that clung to the side of the cliff and overlooked the beautiful sea. I was glad Dermot was getting the chance to enjoy the view because I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. I’ve traveled in this area before as the passenger on a bus and I was constantly thankful I wasn’t driving. Now facing those same self-assured drivers as they swung their busses far into my lane to negotiate a curve, I was petrified. There was horn honking. Some came from the drivers ahead to let you know they were about to plow around this bend and obliterate you, and some came from those behind because you are obviously going FAR too slowly. This drive is hard enough in a car but did I mention that I’m driving a CAMPERVAN?! It turns out Dermot wasn’t enjoying the experience either. He was trying to be helpful by warning me of just how close I was coming to things on his side both verbally and with spastic body movements. As a self-soothing measure, I reminded myself that thousands of people survive this drive everyday and was immediately shocked back into fatalism by the next driver! Days later were riding a bus on the island of Capri and the bus driver was negotiating the streets which made me both happy and nauseous at the same time.  All along the way he was blessing himself as he drove. Amen brother!

When we drove into the campground I was so relieved.  I allowed myself a brief happy dance before remembering that there was no easy way out again. I would have to drive back the same way.  It cast a pall over the days we would spend there.

The campground was huge and it took us multiple walks around to get our bearings because maps are usually of relatively flat ground but this place was a set of terraces of olive trees carved into the side of a cliff so you had more neighbors above and below you than on your little strip of ground. There were some lovely views and a long walk very far down to the "beach." No sand, just rocks but with great views. This late in the season we had it nearly to ourselves. As we arrived, a Japanese couple in wedding clothes were just leaving. We have no idea how far down it is but when I checked my step counter that night it said we had climbed 23 floors!

Italian market haul for rainy days!

I had hoped to go to Capri Island and visit the famed blue grotto but rain and lightning was in the weather forecast and the grotto was closed due to rough conditions. Instead, I wrote the Rome post and we visited the lovely town of Sorrento and caught up on necessities.  Unimpressed with the restaurant we found in Sorrento the first night, we shopped and cooked meals in the campervan. You can eat very well from the semi-prepared foods in the markets here! 

Limoncello is the norm but we found Viagroncello!

When the weather cleared, we arranged a day trip to Capri Island.  We took a boat from Sorrento to Capri's Marina Grande which is tourist-packed even now. We were glad we had a few days of R&R so we were better able to handle it. No, we didn't see any celebrities but we saw enough high-end shopping establishments to keep them coming. The blue grotto was open part of the day but our time was limited so we decided to ride the chair lift up Monte Solaro and the views were stunning. 

That meant Dermot faced both seasickness and his fear of heights in one day.  What a trouper! At the end of the day we reboarded the boat to have a tour around the island of Capri and headed back to Sorrento just as the sun was setting.  Ahhhhhh! 

Rome!

Blue skies over Rome

The history of Rome has fascinated me for many years. My first walk through the Roman Forum was moving. Since many of the stones that pave the streets there were covered with silt and later excavated, there’s a possibility that you could step on the same stone Julius Caesar walked on thousands of years ago! Honestly, the thought of writing a blogpost on Rome is overwhelming. The only way I can get my arms around it is to say that I’ll put some information on the photos (you'll need to open them to see it) and am writing random observations in no logical order below. So here goes:

Irish Pubs

There's an Irish pub in pretty much every city we’ve visited. Rome was no exception.

History

Rome is just layer after layer of history. Literally. You can be walking along a street and suddenly there’s a fenced-in area around an archeological dig.  We visited The Museum of Roman History where there were so many marble statues and sarcophagus I began to wonder if all of Italy was a massive marble quarry. This museum also had the interior frescoes of several ancient roman villas. The Colosseum always makes me wonder what it would have been like to be a gladiator looking up at the blood-thirsty crowds. The Roman Forum is vast and its incredible to imagine the machinations of all the politicians here. The Vatican Museums are awe-inspiring and include ancient as well as more modern treasures.  This picture is of a sarcophagus made of Imperial Porphyry which is so hard to carve that the technology to carve it was lost for 1000 years after this was made. 

Click here to read about Imperial Porphyry

Saint Peter’s Bascilica is massive and full of huge statues and other ornamentation.  Like so many masterpieces that have been threatened, The Pieta is behind glass now but is still moving. Thankfully, the crowds here are generally respectful. 

Speaking of layers. 

Rome seems to generate far more trash than it can deal with.  There are overflowing trash receptacles from small to large everywhere.  Lucky we weren’t here during the heat of summer!  

Influential renaissance men who were contemporaries of each other:

Leonardo da Vinci - his influence is everywhere.  

Michelangelo - completed the Pieta at age 24 and completed David at 25. Wow! He was a sculptor but was convinced to paint the Sistine chapel ceiling - a huge undertaking with breath-taking results. It was hard on my neck just looking up at it for 20 minutes. He painted it standing up and it nearly killed him. Years later he was convinced to paint/fresco the wall behind the alter and “The Last Judgement” is a masterpiece. 

Raphael 

Painted the papal apartments (for example) - immensely talented.

Click here for more photos and info.

Priests and Nuns 

We saw many groups of priests and nuns here - not unexpected since we’re near Vatican City.  The priests were always with other priests and the nuns with other nuns - no mixed groups. Many of the priests were from America as we heard their conversations - they seemed to have a lot of travel experiences. One of the reasons we heard them is they would meet in restaurants. They seemed to eat well and there were bottles of wine on the table even at lunch. We can’t say where the nuns were from as we didn’t hear them speaking and we never saw nuns eating out or drinking wine. 

Camping near Rome

Our campsite is about an hour by public transportation outside the heart of Rome so we had multiple trips to get it right using Google Maps. We learned that the busses are not very reliable. After learning how to interpret the signs on the stops we learned that the signs aren't entirely right either. We experienced busses that never seemed to come and busses that Google Maps said were due but there was no corresponding signage yet they arrived. There were also busses so crammed we couldn't get on even though we had waited longer than anyone else. Some people just seemed to push on and disappear into the crush of bodies. We decided that we would have to stop being so polite if we stayed here much longer.

This campsite and many we’ve visited also had lots of other kinds of accommodations such as chalets, bungalows, small pre-fab type homes, house tents and even a two-story house tent. All were much more reasonably priced than a room in Rome would be and many of these even had kitchen facilities. So if you’re tempted to go on a long trip but think you can’t afford it, this might be a lower cost way to go.

In this particular campsite, we were pretty close to a relatively major road so there was traffic noise but there are many that are farther outside and there’s little road noise.  

Speaking of Traffic:

Driving in Italy we’ve noticed a lot fewer RV’s and the highway drivers are less considerate. Roman drivers don’t spare the horn to express their opinions of other drivers’ actions. The average horn blast length increased exponentially here. There were also more sirens than we've heard anywhere else.

We drove the ring road around Rome, parked in the campsite and never attempted to drive into the city so the rest of our impressions were from the pedestrian perspective. Sidewalks were crowded when they existed.  There was no sense of safety in using a cross-walk - even when you are clearly granted right-of-way according to the lighted signs. Of course, lots of pedestrians also ignore the cross-walk lights. Somehow Rome seemed to wear us out faster than other cities and we think it may have been the stress of walking in those streets.

  

The moped drivers seemed particularly insane and there are lots of them! They wove through traffic, darted between cars, and drove in the lane meant for on-coming traffic if it suited them. Both moped and car drivers would drive two across in a single lane if they were able to squeeze through. Our last night there we saw a moped driver lying still on the ground in a pool of blood.  There was a person tending him and an ambulance arrived quickly but we were really shaken. I hate to end this post on such a somber note but everything I put afterwards seemed wrong too.

Rome is intense. After Rome, we needed some rest and relaxation. Next stop: Sorrento!