More boating. Naples Underground. Paestum

This past weekend was pretty action packed. We had originally planned to head up to como, but because we have no internet at our apartment it was difficult to book a room in time. We decided that because we had liked the boat from Sorrento that we would do it again, but this time for the whole day. Unfortunately Rob gets sea sick, so he went to Ischia, which is to the west of Capri.

We took the boat much further down the coast this time, and ended up in Positano, which was one of the towns on the Amalfi coast. In comparison to the Cinque Terre towns it is hard to say which is nicer. The regions are pretty different and the landscape on the Amalfi coast allows for slightly larger and more accessible towns. I think I liked the Cinque Terre a little better. We had lunch on some rocky beach and built a little pile of rocks to leave our mark. Karl wasn't happy that Jon and I would throw rocks at the tower and knock it over, but he got over it. We found some cool little artifacts that had washed ashore, but nothing too ancient.

After lunch I drove the boat down towards Capri. A half hour later we were passing through this natural archway around the Southern side of capri. Capri is sort of a big rock sticking out of the water. The southern side has huge white cliffs and overhangs that rise almost vertically out of the med. It was sort of humbling how big and raw the coastline was and made for some good photos. unfortunately, because I was driving, I couldn't get to my camera to take videos or photos, but when people post some of the ones they took I will try to link them.

Saturday we went to the Naples underground. It is an old aqueduct system that stretched about 400km (not willing to convert to miles for my readers). They found the aqueduct and an old Roman stage where Nero performed underneath this guys house and through a wall in his wine cellar. Pretty cool. We had to take candles to navigate some of the narrow channels that kept the water flowing from the cisterns to keep everything cold and clean. During WWII the aqueduct system was used as a bomb shelter.

I ate my first Italian Cannoli .

Sunday, while Rob and Jon went to go brave Rome, Karl and I went down to Salerno to check out this place Paestum. We got off the train in Salerno and everything was closed. No one seemed to know what number bus we needed to take or when it ran, but we were pointed in the general direction. After waiting an hour, and asking countless bus drivers if they went to Paestum we got on a bus and set out on our way.

It is a good thing that there are buses to this place because it is really far away. Looking at the map in the train station is looked close enough to walk in about a half hour. Italians do not believe in putting keys and legends on maps. The tradition dates back many years and is also the reason why there are no street signs, and that the train schedules are completely arbitrary on the local level.

The bus dropped us off in Paestum. There is really nothing around but fields, and suddenly in front of us there were these huge columns supported a Parthenonesque building. We walked to the gate (after downing and extra large Heineken (I am not a huge fan, but in a land that doesn't understand beer, it is amazing)) and bought our tickets. I got bamboozled into also getting a ticket to the museum section. At this point in my journey I absolutely hate museums.

Anyways, Paestum is the best preserved Greek ruin in Western europe. It is on acres of land whose boarders appear to be the areas that people decided not to go walking for the last 2000 years. There are three temples, a couple palaces, a toilet, and a stadium. Pretty cool. The best part was that we were pretty much the only people there. It was really relaxing.

The first temple

The expansive collection of rubble:

Karl on the Toilet:

Some photos: