Naples Bay and the Amalfi coast
Alan's Log:
Joan's Log:
June 2008
Route from the Aeolian Islands to Naples Bay and onwards
Not to be used for navigation.
We left the Aeolean Islands and sailed to Naples bay. A passage of 135 Nautical Miles and about 20 hours. I didn't get much sleep duing the passage so we made a brief stop in Capri to sleep for a few hours before arriving at our planned destination, Torre del Greco harbour in the middle of Naples bay. Torre del Greco is just a stone's throw from Naples and within easy driving range of Sorrento where my parents will be staying during their visit to the Amalfi coast later in the week. Geographically it was a perfect base - but all is not well. Torre del Greco - or at least the area around the harbour - is a slum. Worse, our harbour wants €90 a night and the electricity is not working. After a walk around we saw no hope of renting a car here, nor a place where we could park one, nor anywhere we would have felt safe walking after dark, so after a night's sleep we are off again on a tour of Naples Marinas and Harbours
looking for a suitable place to leave Moonstruck for
a week or more while we spend time with my family and explore on
land. 
None of the marinas answered the phone, so we motored around the bay calling at marina after marina. Most were obviously full and those with a few spaces were holding them for prior reservations. After 7 such stops we found a marina in Pozzuoli with a place for a few nights (but no more than 3) at the rate of €120 a night! We motored on, heading further from Naples and eventually finding safe harbour in Baia, close to the island of Ischia on the extreme north-west end of Naples bay - about as far from Sorrento as it is possible to be while still being in Naples bay. But the Ormeggiatori (marina staff) are friendly and the price is bearable. We rented a car in Italian - another first, dropped the laundry off, and went exploring.
Fun Times in Italy!
Before we could go exploring however Alan had to deal with our broken aft head woes (the blame for which seems to point at me!) , I hauled our 3 weeks worth of laundry to the only laundry in the town of Baia, which turned out to be not self-service, but they-do-it-for-you, which I don't like because it is usually so expensive, but I had no choice this time. I had my phrase book with me and had steeled myself for a communication failure. "When will it be ready? Domani? (tomorrow?) " I asked, innocently, in my best caveman Italian. The woman behind the counter gave me and my pile of laundry a wide-eyed stare, she then called her 3 colleagues over, at which point a heated exchange ensued as they all started yelling at each other, gesturing wildly. "Domani, si, double the money!" was the answer. I frantically replied, "no, no, not domani!" realizing my failure to communicate. Then I thought they would charge me by the kilo, but no it was by the piece. That's a lot of pieces! I stood by as they ceremoniously counted each piece, waving them across the counter, as the aroma of well...3 week old dirty laundry filled the air, while I kicked myself for the 50th time for not having a washing machine installed on the boat from the beginning. Then came the final blow, €106.00!!! When the laundry came back a few days later, it was all pristinely ironed and folded (even Alan's old scruffy t-shirts) and individually packaged in plastic bags. Oh well...I guess you get what you pay for.Naples
Naples is where pizza began, and is taken very seriously, it's a way of life here. Every other restaurant is a pizzeria, and at lunchtime everyone is eating it, carrying boxes of it, standing in line for it. We reached the pinnacle of pizza perfection at da Michele, the legendary Naples pizzeria, open since 1870 and praised as the best pizza in Italy by every major food blog and food critic from the New York Times to Food and Wine Magazine, and more recently made famous by the book "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elisabeth Gilbert. Like she wrote in her book, if the best pizza in the world comes from Naples and this is the best pizza restaurant in Naples...then it must be the best pizza in the entire world! It's a little, unassuming, hole-in-the-wall sort of place. They only make two kinds of pizza, period! Marinara and Margherita.
They are both simple, simple pizzas.
Marinara= Tomato, Garlic, Oregano & Olive Oil,
Margherita = Tomato, Mozzarella, Olive Oil & Basil
We both ordered the Margherita with double cheese like Elisabeth... I may never eat pizza again, there is no point, nothing will ever compare to the thinnest, yeastiest, puffiest, chewiest, beautifully charred crust, to the freshly made, perfectly seasoned, tomato sauce; to the highest quality, mozzarella di buffalo Compana; all flash cooked at about 10,000 degrees in the Dante's inferno they call a pizza oven. I'm done! And then there is the gelato! Oh Lord, I thought it was great in Rome, then we thought it was amazing in Sicily, but the Neopolitans have brought it to a whole other level. Pizza and gelato, two reasons good enough to brave the traffic and wade through the garbage!
Naples is a rough place to put it mildly; Mafia controlled; Desperately poor, the unemployment rate is 40%. Palermo in Sicily was a good training ground to prepare us for Naples. Palermo is the bratty little sister to bad boy, big brother Napoli. The trash is what you notice first, enormous piles of decomposing household garbage all along every street. The trash situation is not limited to just Naples either, all the surrounding towns have the same problem. Then the traffic! It's a turned-over hornets nest of scooters and motorcycles in a Mad-Max race of anything goes, no rules apply. 2 lanes means 4 cars abreast, amber light means accelerate, red light means only 5 more cars, Speed limit...what speed limit? Streets with no sidewalks made (preserving) life interesting. Pedestrians cross at their own risk, except for old women who seem to have an invisible forcefield that protects them as they inch across the frantic streets. We rented a car and Alan needed an espresso or two to get his driving game on but he learned to co-exist. We folded in the mirrors and took on the Naples traffic. Later in the week he (safely) passed 5 cars and a bus on a twisty mountain road near Ravello with no-passing signs and that was just a rookie test!
In Naples and the surrounding suburbs Graffiti seems to be everywhere, even in the historic areas, I saw one monument in front of a major building with spray paint completely covering the marble on the base. Adding to the volatile atmosphere, everyone seemed to be yelling at each other, men and women yelling on cell phones, out of car windows, people in over-sized, white framed aviator sunglasses riding scooters and gesturing wildly, with a "whatsamatterwithyou, stupido?" attitude going on.
I also got the impression the people here are not big dog lovers like the Spanish and the French, you don't see dogs on leashes, but I kept seeing the saddest looking little, ragamuffin dogs wondering around like lost souls. Pompei has a whole colony of homeless dogs living in the excavations off the kindness of the tourists.
The Naples Museo Archeologico Nazional was a disappointment. The building is in serious need of a complete remodel, It was severely damaged in 1980 and I know they are trying to improve some areas of it, but I was surprised. It houses the definitive collection of artifacts and relics removed from Pompei and Herculaneum in a really mediocre setting. The signage was horrible, mostly only in Italian, with some yellowed type-written labels that must have dated back to the 70's, and a few random English explanations here and there. We normally rent audio guides, but they were all taken. We tried to hire a guide but none were around or available, so we bought a guide book from the gift shop, which turned out to be too general. We traipsed around trying to fit the exhibits to what little we knew from visiting Herculaneum & Pompei. In every room sat a guard. Not a source of information and instead of watching the treasures, every guard we saw was engrossed in reading a newspaper or talking on a cell phone. And the building wasn't air conditioned, which I thought was imperative to preserving the integrity of the art! I noticed a layer of dust covering many of the sculptures.
On the other hand the artifacts, frescos, mosaics, and sculptures were fantastic and totally worth visiting the museum, despite it's limitations.
So...enough bitchin'! I have a love/hate thing going, I guess you could say Naples isn't on my top 10 list, it does have tons of potential and could be an amazing place, if the city's leaders could just get their act together.
My take on Naples..... Think of a hot summer day and a wonderful cold multi-flavoured ice-cream topped with a little whipped cream and a cherry, served in a chilled crystal glass on a linen tablecloth. Now imagine that same delicious ice-cream served to you crawling with egg-laden flies.....The closest analogy I can find for Naples. Parts of it are very attractive but it is hard; very, very hard; to enjoy those parts with the presence and the ever-pervasive stink of the piles and piles of garbage spilling into the streets and leaking noxious fluids on the pavement. Cars are parked and double-parked everywhere. Every flat surface seems to be covered with graffiti. This is a tough, no-rules kind of place and it wants you to know it.
The Napolitans take it all in their stride. They pour lime on the garbage hills occasionally or set fire to them, and sometimes they try and park on them - parking spaces are at a premium in Naples!
There is something ugly going on under the surface of Naples. It is the reason perhaps that the garbage is not picked up; Cars are routinely broken into (our rental car did not even lock); Plaster falls off the buildings within a few years of construction (yet in Herculaneum the plaster is still on the walls after 2000 years!). The reason is the Mafia. This is the stronghold; Ground-zero. This is where a minor official in the anti-corruption office was murdered just last week. If you want anything done here, it gets done the Mafia way or it doesn't get done. Perhaps this explains why the citizens do not take matters into their own hands and clean up their own town. The garbage crisis has been going on for at least 8 years! Countless 'Trash Tsars' have been appointed to solve the problem, then later fired for incompetence. Hundreds of millions of Euros have been spent under emergency legislation and the situation continues. Why? Because it suits the Mafia for the situation to continue. As long as there is an emergency, funds for contracts to clean it up are approved without going through the anti-corruption department. The Mafia get the contracts and clean-up one site - only to move the garbage somewhere else, while some restaurateur elsewhere is paying protection money not to have the garbage set down in front of his restaurant. It's a sad racket that hurts everyone involved.
This profoundly affected my time here. We did the sights, but we did not linger. I found it impossible to enjoy hanging out in a place where so much is so wrong.
Herculaneum (Ercolana) & Pompei
Pompei is a compulsory visit and is well worth the entrance fee.
The unexpected jewel however was Herculaneum. I had never heard of it before Dad suggested we all drive over and check it out. Herculaneum was a Roman holiday town on the coast in A.D. 79 when Vesuvius blew its top. The wealthy had their summer homes here, close to the coast. It was consumed by a river of mud, unlike Pompei and Castellemare di Stabia which were in the path of the wind and had lava fall on them. The residents here had time to escape by sea in Herculaneum and so unlike Pompei only a very few human remains have been found. The town was buried to a depth of about 100' in mud and the coast moved half a mile seaward.
Our guide was only half-joking when he told us that the stepping stones in the streets were not so pedestrians could avoid walking in the sewer ridden road (they had underground sewers in Herculaneum) but were an early example of the Mafia in action! The stones were carved to fit the track of the Herculaneum carts only. They would not fit "normal" regional carts. So any tradesmen had to leave their carts on the outskirts of town and hire a local cart driver to move their produce through the town!
The mud settled and subsequent generations built on top of it - eventually forgetting that Herculaneum had ever existed. It was rediscovered in the 1700's by a farmer digging a well and today about 40% of it has been unearthed. The rest will probably never be excavated because it lies below modern Herculaneum (now called Ercolana). Although the excavated area is much smaller than Pompei, it was far less damaged by the eruption and consequently is in a better state of preservation with some two-storey buildings standing and roofs and timbers intact.
There are even some paneled wooden doors which survived and are now encased in glass. Just think, wooden doors from 2,000 years ago! The design appears identical to the mass produced wood paneled doors of today! We saw several beds that survived and a number of wall paintings in situ.
Better yet, it is relatively quiet and unvisited. No hordes of tourists here and only a dozen cars in the brand new underground parking lot.
Sorrento and Amalfi
While we were in the Naples area we took time to visit the Amalfi coastline, by car and by boat.
Alan's parents and Aunt Rosemary, were staying in Sorrento.
A lovely town draped over the side of a cliff and tumbling down to the sea. Rosemary treated us to dinner with them on their last night at a great little trattoria just off the beach, with a fantastic view of Mt. Vesuvius. All the towns we visited were completely charming; Sorrento, Amalfi, Ravello and Positano. Ravello was a standout and offered beautiful views of the Med and surrounding countryside. The hillsides were terraced with layers and layers of trellised lemon groves, which were thick with lemons. These towns are a lemon-lovers paradise, all of them selling their special version of Lemoncello.
Positano was my favorite town, just the perfect size and hugging the cliff from top to bottom.
Looking up from the water, it's a jumble of white buildings liberally sprinkled with bright fuscia bourganvilla. It was almost too pretty, which explained why it was loaded with tourists. Mostly Americans, which surprised me, I have heard that it is the same way in the Cinque Terre villages, further north. It felt a little surreal, sort of like an Epcot Center experience at Disneyworld.
Adventurers or Tourists?
Over the past month or so a transformation has gradually been taking effect. We started off the year feeling like explorers. Leaving Barcelona in March we were one of the first boats out in the Mediterranean. We had Corsica and Sardinia pretty much to ourselves. We enjoyed quiet anchorages and hiked pristine trails. But here in the bay of Naples we are surrounded by strange beings bearing cameras, backpacks and water bottles - and they are us! Tourists! Gone are the unique experiences and small discoveries; gone the quiet cafes and moonlit anchorages. In their place there is the pay kiosk and the line (queue) to enter the attraction. Despite our best intentions we have morphed into tourists in Italy in the summer! The American accents in Pompei outnumbered all others. In Sorrento we sat at dinner next to a table of kids from Mississippi. A cell phone rang. "Hey Girrrl, Weer in Saw-rhen-toe... Ahh know it! How crazy is they-yat?". At Positano and Amalfi the beaches are crowded wall to wall with rental beach umbrellas. There are weddings going on every day and everywhere there are groups: Groups of cruise ship passengers; Wedding groups; Japanese tour groups and even my family's group from the UK taking the ferry to Capri and the bus to Positano etc. It was so good to spend a few days with Mum & Dad & Rosemary. They were on a tour of Amalfi and we were able to join them for several of their visits as well as enjoy several memorable meals together.Once they left we upped anchor and felt the need to exorcise the tourists in us and get back to a quieter place. We planned to put 650 Nautical Miles of deep water between us and Naples and we headed south around the foot of Italy aiming for the Ionian coast of Greece.
NEXT....Moonstruck makes the long passage to Greece.