For whom the bells toll

(Yesterday's blog now contains great pictures of Herculaneum-check them out!)

We have been wondering why there are no clocks in our apartment. There isn’t a stove clock, no kitchen clock and no alarm clock. It didn’t take us long to figure out why! No matter what day of the week it is the church bells ring every morning at 7:30, 7:45 and 8:00. What we found so beautiful on Sunday might become a little annoying by Friday! I think someone should give the bell ringer a day or two off.

Also every night we are serenaded by someone out in the street singing to the restaurant customers. Serenade at night, bells in the morning. Sigh....................................................

We forgot to mention something we found very interesting yesterday. When we arrived in Ercolan (Herculaneum) and as we were walking through town to find the ruins, children were getting out of school and going to lunch. I started noticing that they were wearing school uniforms but not the usual kind we normally see. Every child, whether boy or girl, had what I would describe as an artist’s dress/coat on. At first I thought they were taking an art class but soon I realized that there were too many children for that. Underneath you could see that they had on pants and normal shoes. But the younger children wore this really cute dress-like painter’s coat in blue check with some embroidery on it. Then the next older group had on the same style but in a red check. I think I saw 3 different colors and each group was a different age. But the artist’s coats went past their knees and had long sleeves and looked like what we in the United States would call a dress. They had a snap front and a collar and little boys and girls wore the same thing. You could tell if a child was in Kindergarten, 1st grade and so on by the different colors they wore. Though I could see little Madalyn wearing one of these, I cannot imagine Hayden, Porter, Koben, Gage and Parker putting one on every morning!


We started out today on a trip to the island of Capri. Though we have seen it before, we only saw the touristy town of Capri. There are only 2 towns on the isle of Capri; Capri and Anacapri. It is a small island—just 4 miles by two miles. Today we were going to see both towns again and spend a little more time there.


We walked down the great gorge to get to the marina. It is always sooooo much easier walking down than walking up! Since a boat is the only way to get there, we have 2 choices, a slow boat or a fast boat. We wanted the slow boat as it is about half the cost of the fast boat. But you have to love these people. The slow boat left as soon as we got to the ticket stand and all that was left was the fast boat. So fast boat it is.

The wind was blowing and the water was white-capped but we made it just fine with no problems.


Upon arriving at Capri, we found the ticket booth for the bus up to Anacapri. Rick Steves calls this the “Mama Mia” ride. Now we know why. The town bus has a total of 9 seats; 4 on one side and 5 on the other. In this small bus they fit 30-35 people in! We are all crammed in and trying to hold on as the bus climbs up and up the mountain to the town. There are tight hairpin turns, narrow roads, and other buses going the opposite direction barely scraping by and still the bus forges ahead. All I could think of was I hadn’t ever heard of one of these buses going off the road and into the sea. Please don’t let ours be the first!

We finally made it to Anacapri and Anacapri’s fame is the chair lift up 1900 ft to the top of Mount Solaro. For those of you who know me well, you know that chair lifts are not my forte either (among other things I have experienced so far on this adventure!). But I had come this far and wanted to see the view from the top so off we went.

The chair lift is a one person seat. I got on first and Jim followed on the next seat. I think he was pretty amazed that I got on but once on, the view spoke volumes and it captivated me for the full 15 minutes to get to the top. The view from there was spectacular. We passed over rich vegetation; walnut trees, hazelnut trees, grapes, kiwi and fig trees.



We reached the top and couldn’t believe the view! We thought we had seen a lot riding up, but once to the top we had a 360 degree view of the area. We could see Mt. Vesuvius and Naples in one direction, the Sorrento Peninsula in another direction, the Amalfi coastline and the spectacular Faraglioni Rocks. It was all so beautiful and peaceful as not as many tourists take the time, nor brave the ride up, to see the view from the top.



We went down the same way we went up and found a bus to take us to the town of Capri. Upon arriving there and seeing all the tourists we decided to head on down to the marina and catch the next “fast” boat (as I am sure all the slow boats were gone) back to Sorrento.

After arriving back to Sorrento we caught a bus up the gorge (no walking uphill this time) and decided to try another one of Rick Steves’ recommendations: Davide’s Gelato. It was well worth the search for it and while sitting there a group of 14 year old students from England showed up too. I asked the teacher if this was a field trip. She replied yes that they were from London and they had a group of forty 14-year olds here for 6 days. They were study geography and seeing Pompeii, Capri, Sorrento, Herculaneum and Naples. Can you imagine taking a group of 14 year olds who don’t speak the language around this area? They asked where we were from and when we told them Arizona and they said they study Arizona in their geography course! They study Yuma (for its lettuce production?) and the migrant workers who pick in the fields. They also study the flood of the Salt River in 1980! I thought it was pretty funny that Londoners actually study our lettuce production and our flooding problems. What a small world! Print this post