Vesuvio Pictures

View on the hike up - do you see the Bay of Naples & city in the background?


Crater - up close and personal.


View on the hike down - you can see for miles and miles and miles and . . .


Cold child - do you see the smoke coming from the volcano in the background?

Chapter 4 - Volcano Vesuvio

Have you ever climbed up to the top of the crater of a live volcano? I have! I have! After the previous day spent exploring and climbing all over the ruins of Pompeii and looking at Vesuvius looming large in the horizon, we had to go have an up-close look at the perpetrator. While the day was bright and sunny, it was still quite chilly and we all had on our sweatshirts and jackets. It was about a 10 minute drive to the mountain and about a 30 minute drive up many steep, sharp-turned switchbacks on a very narrow road – it felt like about 100 of these hairpin turns, but it was probably only about 20. It was early in the morning so there was very little traffic (especially coming from the other direction, thank god!). The temperature got lower and lower as we headed up the side of the volcano. We were all looking forward to earning our “vulcanologist” bragging rights. When we got up to the top and parked, it was very cold. We didn’t have gloves, but we bought baseball hats that say “Vesuvio” on them and headed up the steep winding trail. Unfortunately, one member of our party decided to quit about halfway up unless she was carried because she was cold and “I never wanted to come here anyway – take me back to the hotel - NNNNNOOOOWWWWW.” And no, the “she” in question is not me. Father reaction to this behavior – keep on walking and let her scream. Mother reaction to this behavior – stop and wait on the side of the trail with said screaming 5 year old until the father returns and piggy backs errant member of the group. Isabelle should have been born in Victorian times when the ladies where carried up into the mountains by the local guides (or whatever Italian sherpas are called) in their comfy chairs. Near the top was a little gift shack which also had snacks, an espresso machine (of course) and an Italian nonna who invited the boys in and steamed them a couple of fresh hot chocolates. Unfortunately, our little principessa (pronounced princh-a-pessa in Italian) doesn’t like hot chocolate and was provided with additional time to complain and harangue us for “torturing” her by making her walk up the side of a mountain. It is also the place where everyone stops to have a smoke and behold the beautiful vista of the Bay of Naples and the city.

There were all kinds of climbers on the path; serious 20-something Germans with walking sticks and hulking climbing boots, various Italian seniors in light jackets & nice shoes, a high school field trip from the U.K., a couple of families, a cute little 18 month old Italian bambina toddling up the path in her puffy pink snowsuit and lots of weather-beaten guides waiting to take you on a grand tour of the crater if you’d like to do that. After the hot chocolate break, we only had another two minute walk up to the crater. Standing on the edge of a volcano crater with smoke pouring out of the sides of it is really quite a sight. Unfortunately, once we got up to the top, one of our most imaginative children had a panic – we were standing on top of a live volcano! It could blow at any minute! Scientists don’t know everything! WE HAVE TO GET OFF THIS THING! (By the way, the panicked 8 year old, like all 8 year old boys, is also developing the beginnings of his little boy machismo – ergo, it would be best if you don’t ask us about this part of the story.) And of course, after a momentarily lapse of complaining, while being photographed of course, Volcano Isabelle started to erupt, yet again. Through all this, the three of us who were really enjoying ourselves were having a fantastic time. Bill told all the kids that we would come back again when they are older and hire a guide and spent more time hiking down into and around more of the crater. (Hopefully, Bill and I won’t be too old when that time arrives.)

As we were the early bird hikers, by the time we left the place was actually starting to get crowded. And much to our amazement, the big tour buses that we see all over Italy (picture a BIG bus about twice as tall and a third longer than a regular city bus) were coming up the mountain. Therefore, on our ride down the gazillion little switchback hairpin turns, we met up with tour buses that just cruise up the mountain and sound their horns as they approach turns. At one point we had to stop and back up to let a bus get around a curve. Yikes! Fortunately, most of the panicked terror scenes playing in my head only involved our little Fiat gently rolling down the hillside versus crashing down a sheer cliff because of the way the road is constructed. We made it down and headed down the back streets through a grungy part of Naples to look for Herculaneum, the last and final chapter in our volcanic vacation.

Hopefully there is a cub scout badge for vulcanologist because we all deserve one for climbing up Vesuvius on a cold, windy day in November.

Pompeii Pictures

"Beware of dog" mosaic in entryway of some homes in Pompeii.



Building with intact pictures.



Sam & Isabelle on stones used to cross streets in ancient Pompeii.



Nick in front of some ancient marble/bakery I think.


The kids on the ledge of the pool at the ancient Pompeii version of the Detroit Athletic Club.

Chapter 3 - Pompeii

Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to visit Pompeii. I have no idea why. Maybe it was some imaginative elementary school teacher who painted a visual picture I just had to see, maybe I read a book, maybe it was just the universal human fascination with both the beauty and destruction of volcanoes? And of course, my travel companions here in Italy thought it was a great idea!

Well, the next morning after the longest car ride of our lives, not really scary, just creepy and terrible enough that no one was mad, just happy to have slept in a nice hotel that had a great breakfast buffet. We had freshly baked brioche con cioccolato, ham, eggs, coffee, hot chocolate, cheese, fruit, cereal . . . We then headed across the street to ancient Pompeii/the ruins which are separate from the actual modern day city of Pompeii. Ancient Pompeii is a magical and wonderful place to visit. While not all of it has been recovered through excavations, etc. a large part of it is revealed. There are streets, houses, bakeries, governmental buildings, bathhouses, cemetery, gardens, temples, a few plaster molds of bodies that have been found, etc. – and you see all this with Vesuvius looming large over the city. The Pompeii ruins are 164 acres with a little more than half uncovered. All of the artwork and other precious items have been removed to the big archeological museum in Naples, but there are still a few tile mosaics, marble structures and wall paintings in place. It was a great place to visit with kids because they could run around, climb, explore and see the remnants of an ancient world. We read Pliny the Younger’s famous letters describing the eruption and its aftermath before we embarked on our trip and again that morning. All of our imaginations ran wild with the idea of Pompeii as a live city, the volcano erupting and what it must have been like. Pompeii was actually destroyed by the ash a couple of days after a big eruption, so only 2000 of the 20,000 inhabitants actually died. We spent many hours just wandering through the ancient ruins and glancing up at Vesuvius every so often. We bought a small tour guide which shows a photograph of the ruins and then a transparency which you fold on top that recreates what the building/area would have looked like before the city was buried. We have lots of video which I’m sure we will bore many of you with it when we get home next year (or if you are lucky we will send you one now and you can just pretend to watch it, thereby saving yourself the pretense of interest in the future.)

The weather was chilly but the bright sun was out. Even in November, I’m sure there were a couple of thousand visitors that day. I can’t imagine what it is like in the heat of the summer and the hordes of people on vacation! The only not-so-pleasant aspect of Pompeii is that there are feral dogs everywhere and I really mean everywhere, when you are outdoors. They aren’t threatening because they obviously have learned that to survive you must be nice to the things on two legs who might give you food, but they can be a little too friendly. For the most part, they all looked kinda healthy and not that many of them were too mangy looking and/or dirty – but it was still off-putting when they followed you or tried to make friends with you. (They were really much more of a problem in the actual city where we stayed because it appears that they wander in from the ruins at night begging for food. One of our children was a little afraid of them because they are much more assertive with you at night in the city – especially when you walk out of a restaurant smelling like food. It appears that the locals just ignore them, they aren’t mean to them, but they certainly don’t treat them as pets of any sort. I told the kids they were like the pigeons in Venice, squirrels in the park or bunnies in our backyard in Grosse Pointe – they are just there.) So we all just ignored the dogs and they mostly left us alone except for the one white dog who just wanted to be in our video standing right next to a child who did not want to stand next to the white dog (or any other dog in Pompeii).

I have to imagine that this certainly will be one of our most memorable sight-seeing trips this year. We were all awed and amazed by Pompeii. Bill couldn't get over the sheer size of it and I was fascinated by seeing the ingenuity of this large city that was built and functioned without a tenth of the technology we have today. The kids loved the stepping stones to cross the street so you wouldn't have to step in the water that was used to funnel out horse poop and other waste being washed out of the city, the dog mosaics that were common at the entryway of many homes to warn "beware of the dog" and the thought of the whole thing being dug up from under all the dirt and ash so many years later. What an awesome place!

Our Felliniesque Vacation

The story of our trip to Pompeii must be told in multiple parts and blog entries for a number of reasons, both weird and wonderful. Here are the first two installments in our story.

Chapter 1 – The Plan
The Feast of All Saints is a major holiday in Italy on November 2 where the Italians primarily remember the lives of all the saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church. Everything is closed – schools, banks, government, etc. Therefore, the kids had a 5 day break from school. It seemed like a good time to go south and visit Pompeii and Vesuvius because the weather would be mild versus the suffering heat of the summer and the crowds would be smaller. I had an idea that it might be fun to stay on a farm as I have seen many “agriturismo” places on various drives out into the country and they looked like quiet, bucolic places to stay and relax. I knew I didn’t want to stay in Naples and thought it might be more fun than your basic hotel. I found a farm, Vivinatura , very close to Pompei that had a 16 room hotel, cows, horses, fields, a “play area,” restaurant, etc. I made a reservation, with some reservations of my own about what I was getting us into, but the kids were excited at the prospect of a farm vacation and Bill was mildly agreeable to the idea. I planned our route using mapquest; approximately 400 miles and an estimated time of 6 hours. (I’m not sure how a travel time of 6 hours was calculated, they must think that you will drive 130 km the entire trip.) We planned on 7 or 8 hours and left about 9 am in our little Fiat Stilo which is comfortable enough but has the kids all sitting much closer to each other than three young siblings should be for such a long drive. I bought a little personal size DVD player to counteract the expected touching, poking and squabbling. We began the drive with our movies, maps of the autostrade and rest areas, lunches to eat in the car and the excitement of GOING TO POMPEII!

Chapter 2 – The Drive
The day was drizzly and foggy and after an hour we driving through the Apennines which is accomplished with a really impressive span of bridges and tunnels, one right after another, right through the mountains all the way to Florence. This slowed us down just a little, but then the sun came out, the countryside was beautifully dotted with picturesque churches, houses and little villages and we easily made it to Rome. So far, so good. The autostrade in Italy is a very nice highway, the rest stops (area servizi) are clean, well stocked with all kinds of food and good coffee (of course), plentiful and easy to get on and off. We ate our tuna sandwiches (peanut butter for Nick) and continued on a good pace. Once we were south of Rome, the sky darkened early as the rain and fog returned, the scenery abruptly changed to large, hulking factories, abandoned ancestral homes and a feeling of general disrepair and geographical ennui. Also, we were approaching . . . (insert spooky sounding minor chord here) . . . Naples. We had been warned about Naples from Aunt Karen, “your car and/or everything in it will be stolen if you park in Naples;” from Federica, our favorite and beautiful Italian biochemist, “before you go on your trip, you must first listen to my one hour lecture on traveling to Naples;” from Andrea, another colleague of Bill’s, “I have been to Naples five times and have seen people robbed twice – one time I saw a woman’s necklace yanked right off her neck;” and ubiquitous warnings about Naples from all the travel books and pamphlets we have ever read. Plus, have you ever read any stories about southern Italy or seen a Fellini movie? When we approached Naples we took the wrong exit to by-pass the city and drove right through it on the eve of the biggest fall holiday complete with lots of construction and confusing signs. However, we found our way back to the correct highway and continued south to Pompeii. It was only about 5:30 pm, but dark and rainy. We exited and while the signs on the highway are great and generally easy to decipher, the street signs in Italy are terrible – well not really terrible, as much as non-existent. We had our mapquest directions but no detail map of the area – that would have required much more planning than either Bill or I are capable of, although we always wish that we were better at it! The kids at this point started to melt down after 8 hours in the car, predictable, but still incredibly unpleasant. We were now on a very busy downtown street in a gritty suburb of Naples, Castellammare, between Pompeii and the famous Amalfi coast. We could not find any street signs to help us navigate our lame directions and could not have imagined that the beautiful (on the website) Vivinatura was anywhere near where we were. There really was no where to ask for help either as the street was crowded only with dark-haired, seedy looking guys, between the ages of 16 and 60 just standing around in front of dingy looking bars, cafés, shops and hotels – there was not a woman, child or family in sight. Finally, we pulled over in front of a closed little café, away from the crowds, to look for the phone number of Vivinatura in our bags in the trunk (because of course we didn’t have it in the car with us and never did find it). However, there was a lone, but nattily dressed gentleman, who was for some reason standing in front of the closed café in the dark and we asked him for directions out of pure desperation. He said something like, “Oh sure, Vivinatura, I know it but I’m not exactly sure where it is” and he sent us in search of a “place” that could help us with the directions. We started driving away and ended up on the beginning of the mountainous highway which spans the coastline. We turned around, the children clattered and complained and we were stumped on what to do next. We decided to drive into Pompeii and look from there and at about this time we actually found the road we were supposed to be on, but to no avail could we find our turn to Vivinatura after driving over the same stretch of under-construction, traffic-filled, dark and rainy 2-lane highway/street for about an hour. During all this, we did stumble upon the Pompeii ruins and the tourist district. The kids were also freaked out enough by this time that they decided to be quiet and only piped up with a helpful or thoughtful comment every once in a while. What to do? At about the same time, all five of us (well, maybe not Isabelle) decided to just blow off Vivinatura and go into Pompeii and find a hotel. We pulled into a place right next door to the entrance to the ruins, Hotel Vittoria, and Bill sent me in to get a room (normally his job because his Italian is so much better than mine). He should be sorry that he didn’t go in, because I walked right into my childhood imagination of what the game Clue would be like, come to life. I had to be buzzed in, the lobby was lit but all the hallways were dark (was there really anyone staying there?) and the man behind the desk was a mole that had been magically transformed into a human being. He looked like a character out of the Little Bear books and cartoons. He was also wearing the thickest glasses I have ever seen which made his eyes look enormous behind his fashionable Italian frames. However, he was a nice enough mole, albeit in a creepy kind of way and did speak enough English to help me. He sincerely tried to find out how to get to Vivinatura – “It is out in the country,” he said. He tried to call them from a phone number in a brochure but it was the wrong number – that was surely a good omen. He then made another call, but no luck. At this point, I knew we didn’t want to stay there and just continued the pretense of asking for directions versus a room, so he told me to turn right, make two lefts and then stop and ask someone else for directions. He also told me it was near the Auchan (Italian version of a Wal-Mart/Costco-ish kind of place) which we had passed a couple of times in the middle of an industrial neighborhood right off the highway. At this point we decided to give it one last try and finally found a sign for Vivinatura and their parking. It was less than half a mile away from where the “nattily dressed gentlemen” had sent us in the other direction about 90 minutes earlier! It was also in the middle of a bunch of buildings with graffiti all over them and the parking lot was sandwiched in between a factory looking building and a dumpy apartment house; we honestly couldn’t even figure out which building it was. Where were the cows? The horse barn? The swimming pool? The little vineyard? There was really nothing to do but laugh and head back into town. We by-passed the Clue game hotel, stopped at another but it was too dumpy and then looked in a brochure I got from the mole for the closest 4-star which had a room. It was 8 pm (11 hours after we had left) and we were all starving at this point and headed out for some well deserved pasta, sodas and wine. We didn’t even mind that the five of us had to sleep in three beds which required Nick to sleep sandwiched in between me and Bill. I’m pretty sure this experience will turn our children into the kind of travelers that have six maps, a GPS with them at all times and a compulsion for planning and organization. Or, nature will win over nurture (at least for Nick and Isabelle) and they will repeat these same shenanigans with their own families. Of course, this would never happen to Sam and we should probably just delegate all future vacation travel plans to our precocious 8 year old.

We did go back and look at it in the daytime a couple of days later and it didn’t look quite as bad as in the dark – while the neighborhood was still very dumpy, you could see a little patch of green and garden behind the walls. We were still glad of our collective decision to stay in a hotel in downtown Pompeii. Here is a picture of the outside of the “farm.” Is there anything else to say? I think not.



What a LONG, strange trip it was . . To come in later installments – Pompeii, Vesuvius and Herculaneum.

Halloween - Not

As I think most of you know, Halloween is not celebrated in Italy (or anywhere else in the world I think) in the same way as Americans. (Although, our housekeeper knew all about it, "from watching television" she explained.) There were some Halloween decorations around and a small amount of Halloween-themed candy, but no costumes, etc. I was told that all the kids dress up for Carnavale in February. I did ask around a bit to some of my English speaking friends about it and got a variety of answers. The American kids who know someone with a pass to get on to a nearby American army base go trick-or-treating there - not an option for us. Some people throw little parties for kids - too lazy of a mother this year. But I did have a plan. I bought each child three large Halloween candies and they trick-or-treated our apartment - me, my mom and Bill. The advance planning took all of 2 minutes and Bill was a monster in our bedroom, I was in the laundry room and handed out candy from behind the curtain with my "bloody hand" and I think my mom just gave it to them with a friendly-grandma kind of "boo." I have to admit that it was a nice respite from the multitude of parties, parades, innumerable occasions when the kids have to wear their costumes and hundreds of pieces of candy. And the best part was, the kids didn't really even care - they got some candy, spent a couple of minutes being a little scared and didn't have to do all the usual work!

The only nod to Halloween was the previous week when they got to dress up as their favorite character in a book for "Book Week." Isabelle was Ruth Rose from the A-Z mystery series, Nick was Harry Potter and Sam was a "footballer" from the current Italian team "a la mode," Milan AC. I think the other reason that the kids didn't pay too much attention to the lack of Halloween was because the next day we went for a mini-vacation to see Pompei and Mount Vesuvius. It is not just one story, but many little stories which I will try to write in the next couple of days - just imagine this, Federico Fellini makes a Chevy Chase vacation movie and that about sums up our experience.