Italy: puglia 2 of 2
SATURDAY, 3/31/12:
Pee at 3:17AM, trying but failing to remember dreams, the first of which left me with my FIRST, VERY TINY, sexy feeling of the trip on briefly waking from it. 5:43AM: Remember initial dream and wake to pee and transcribe two dreams in DREAMS:3/31/12 by 5:50AM, still rather tired from yesterday. Phone rings at 7:04AM and Ken's been in the bathroom already, saying "Oy" at least 75 times before he puts both our bags outside the door at 7:16AM. I dress in the same old stuff, putting dop kit and pills in shoulder bag with my bottle of wine, and get down to breakfast at 7:25, before Ken. There's a lineup because it doesn't open until 7:28, when everyone piles in. It turns out Ken's "Les Six" describes only five people. A German woman, from Volkswagen, engages Art and Manny in conversation for at least five minutes. Ken starts telling a story about me, and I leave to get outside to smoky-fresh air, pick up the map of Alberobello that I missed getting yesterday, and am reading it when Ken comes in to claim his bag to get with "the swarm" waiting for the bus to open to claim a seat! I type this at 8:15 and decide to try to shit. It actually works for me. I'm really very content, so far, with my intestinal workings---even to the puzzle of why, with all the wine I've been drinking with dinner, I've had NO sign of anything LIKE a hangover. Hope I'm not sorry carrying my bottle of wine around in my shoulder bag. Toilet rumbles for the first time this morning, and the maid dismisses it as "the flow of water." Ken can't quite adequately describe the typical figure-motif of the area: two arms upraised in thanks, perhaps, but what explains the FOUR appendages pointing in the other direction. Also, the Alberobello (ending meaning WAR, not beautiful) map doesn't give what I would have hoped to have been a glossary of the signs ON the trulli. Type this at 8:32AM and prepare to pack and go downstairs for the bus. It leaves ten minutes late, waiting for Elaine to get some stomach relief from her room. About half an hour later we have to stop at a gas station for about ten minutes so that Jenny can attend to HER sickness. I remain stuck at the window, Ken's enormous bag taking most of the room under my seat, his knee and elbow muscling into my space, my hat and camera coming out for use when needed. Take a photo of the Basilicata map at 11:12, one of my last Italian provinces aside from Molise and Abruzzi, as far as I can tell. Great walking tour of Matera to 12:54, lots of pictures and lots of steps, plus a very old church with frescoes, then up to the square and down MORE steps for lunch in a basement at a table at which I make up the sixth of "Les Six," and have good starters, but not much of the pasta, and eat the dessert fully, taking some last pictures to 2:18. Pee on the tracks of a vacant metro station when the johns there are closed, and then back on the bus to ride to 5PM, with a stop to 5:30 where I'm GREATLY tempted to buy 600 g of chocolate bars for 5€, but resist. Back in bus past INCREDIBLE Lucanian Dolomites at the southern end of the Apennines, beautifully perched hill towns, crags unbelievable, and at last to coast at 6:39 to attempts at pictures of the Sorrento Peninsula, getting through traffic-jammed Sorrento town to Grand Hotel Cesare Augusto at 7:13PM; get handed evaluation slips and our key to room 504 by 7:30, where I'm drawn to the balcony and the bright light of Venus and the cloud-girdled Vesuvius. Take a quick shower 7:48-8:06, bag not in yet, but it arrives in time for me to get out clean shorts and go down to dinner at 8:15, at a table at which I'm seated next to Linda, who talks to everyone with a level of enthusiasm that rather wears me out. Leave about 9:40 after very little pasta, about half the chicken breast, and all the dessert cake except the whipped-cream topping. Back to sit on the balcony, looking over the twinkling lights of Naples and what actually turns out to be the length of Procida, until at last the moon appears over our eaves. 10:46PM: MARVELOUS hour looking out from our 5th-floor balcony over the Bay of Naples, seeing TWO red lights FLARING up from the extreme left and centering, pausing, and then seemingly turning away from us and disappearing, and AS WE LOOK, a shooting star appears thirty degrees above the horizon and falls toward it! BRILLIANT!! Type to 10:48PM, with wake-up call at 6:45---so ALREADY eight hours' sleep is impossible! Bed at 10:55PM.
SUNDAY, 4/1/12: 12:10AM: Pee. THINK I hear the phone ring, but it's only something like 1:35AM. Pee again at 2:50AM. 5:50AM: Pee and type DREAMS:4/1/12. Finish typing 5:58AM. Manage a hard, fairly complete, shit to 6:12AM. Ken turns on light at 6:45AM. I ask if the phone's rung yet, and he says no. Then the phone rings. He gets ready to 8AM, I wash my face and get pills and get down to breakfast---forgetting to put in my BRIDGE---with Eugene and his Chinese wife, who's been to the Stone Forest twice, in the 70s and in 2008, and the villages around have totally changed into commercial ventures that have almost spoiled the natural wonder of the sites: "They have so much, they don't bother to maintain; paintings are falling off the walls; people touching masterpieces; everything commercial." Very sad---so she's interested in India because she doesn't know what's there, and hopes it isn't as degraded as China. Keep looking for Jay or Elaine, but they're not down yet. Ken leaves, saying he'll wait for me to knock to be let into the room for five minutes before he goes into the toilet and can't answer the door. By luck I see Jay coming out of the elevator and check out his great-looking walking tour of the city. He says Elaine is feeling OK, but has to check if the Furniture Museum is open, since the brochure only gives hours starting May 1. I say I'll meet him at their breakfast downstairs at 8:30. Back to room as Ken gets ready to leave at 8:15AM for Capri, and I skim through TV to find CNN and BBC and two sports channels. Hear them next door and knock to find Jay moisturizing his face; he says the museum IS open, costs 6€, and he'll knock on my door when they're ready to leave. I return to typing at 8:30AM. Jay knocks on my door about 8:40 when they're going down to breakfast, and he says they'll knock on my door again when they're ready to leave for their walking tour, which looks complete. I finish this at 8:53AM, ready to brush my teeth, dress, and wait for the knock for the walk. DAMN! Left my WATER BOTTLE somewhere! 9:07AM: Totally ready to leave. Finish survey of tour satisfaction by 9:20AM. Not much on TV. They knock on my door, we go downstairs, she suggests I must have a jacket, I return for it and thank her MUCH for it later. We go walking to the museum, which is closed 1/9-3/31, but is still closed 4/1 at 10:20AM. Lots of people gather in a nearby park with olive branches in their hands, and these are their "palms" for Palm Sunday. Video events, talk to people, and drop into the church. Walk down to observation points, but Jay has to find a john, which he does in a gelateria. Then we're to the central square to Fauno Bar in Piazza Tassi, where I have a vegetable salad in soy sauce for 8€ and a 40 cl glass of beer for 5€ and they have 28€ worth of food, for which I give them 22€ for their 50€ note, which may be all I need for the rest of the trip. Go to the 7.5€ 50-minute tour to find they don't have their minimum of four by 2:35, so I tell them to phone room 504 at Cesare Augusto if they get enough for the 3:45 tour---and at 3:07 they CALL!!! Downstairs to find Mary-Beth returning to the hotel and show her the brochure and ask if she wants to come along, and she considers briefly and agrees. Down to the Piazza to find another couple from the tour [without an e-mail address, but his name was Barney] and about a DOZEN other people---maybe six from one family with two screaming kids---waiting to board the bus! And the tickets are only 5€! Giuseppe, the driver, introduces himself and promptly hands out tambourines and starts clapping his hands WHILE HE'S DRIVING, at some points even STANDING UP and FACING US while driving up and down this curving road with traffic filling the opposing lane! The recorded music sings at the top of its voice, and Mary-Beth expresses her total amazement at the entire experience. We get to the Villa Antonella at the top of the road, and spend about 15 minutes in the shop, and then pile back onto the bus and sing and clap and tambourine our way back WAY east in town to let the family off in front of the Hotel Michelangelo. We get off laughing, and Mary-Beth even pays 5€ for the DVD of the music. Back to the hotel at 4:18PM, by coincidence running into Ken returning from Capri at the same moment! Up to talk about our days---they didn't go into the Blue Grotto either---and Ken wasn't that impressed by sailing past rocks with fancy houses built on them, though he did express admiration for the Krupp Gardens, now open to the public---[at this point, about 9:50, I stop to read my old Naples notes---unlocated churches, minimal details on Archaeological Museum and Capodimonte, and reasonable amounts on Ischia and Capri, and start typing again at 10:16PM] and liked his lunch there, though it was expensive. I try reading New Yorker for a bit, but my eyes can't take it in, so I lie down about 5:15 until 6:15, when I put on my shirt and slippers (to Ken's disgust) and go down to get an Alberobello magnet-gift from Linda, hand in our evaluations and Tour Director money ($70, roughly $8 for 9 days, $8 being on the high side between $6-9 recommended). Back to room to get to restaurant Zi'Antonio at 7:30 and have a GREAT touristic menu for 15€ of GOOD vegetable soup that I can't finish because I want to eat the salad, veal in white wine, and dessert, fabulous with fraises de bois. Ken likes his, too, but it's TWICE what I paid. Back to hotel at 9:25, looking at moon and the changing lights on the incredible six-story ruin, the top of which is four stories below current street level, AGAIN running into "Les Five." Say goodbye again and get to room to take off shoes and catch up with this by 10:20. Very tired; Ken starting to snore? He sets wake-up call at 8:45AM for our move out at 9:30 to Plaza Hotel. Add a few notes to 10:23, ready to wash face, brush teeth, and undress for bed. Bed at 10:35PM.
MONDAY, 4/2/12: 5:30AM: Pee and type DREAMS:4/2/12 at 5:39AM, nose dripping constantly. Also manage, with drinking water, a rudimentary shit, which starts the day off nicely, already seven hours after I got to sleep, and still more than three hours to the wake-up call at 8:45AM. May doze a bit, but the main event is my first Actualism session in a very long time. Keep checking to see if Ken's getting up, and at 8:09AM he looks at me, sees that I'm up, and says, "I just don't need any more sleep." "I agree," I agree. Up to type this, opening the curtains to another bright cool day, and leave my earplugs in to eliminate the sound of his shaver. How CAN anyone do that EVERY DAY!? Look forward to a lazy day after our move to the Plaza Hotel. Ken's out of bathroom at 8:18 and I'm out at 8:32, ready for breakfast. Lovely complete breakfast: eggs, a wiener, fruit, croissant with butter, juice, hot chocolate, and an orange as a take-away. Up to room at 9:07, Ken saying Plaza might ask for passports. I wouldn't have thought it, but it seems barely possible. And it's RIGHT at my fingertips! Again marvel at my suitcase's ease of closing. Ken suggests at 9:18AM we could even leave before 10AM, so I take my suitcase out to the hall. I spend some last moments on the balcony, taking one last picture of Vesuvius from our view, and go down at 9:30 to find they've changed their minds again: we'll go down from the lobby in the service elevator with the porter and the bags to the garage entrance. Through kitchens and messes, help still saying "Bon giorno" as we pass, and out to street, where Ken gives him 2€, which he expects me to chip in on. Easy walk to the Plaza, which DOES ask for our passports, and we're up to room 508 at 9:40. Stuffy, but one window opens with a great view of our old balcony in the Cesare Augusto and that's about it. Ken reminds me that this is one of our dress-up nights, so I hang up my jacket, pants, and two other shirts for the first time in MANY days. He also insists he has to use the OTHER side of the closet, so we'll be shifting the doors back and forth forever. I even move my laptop from the desk to the almost-divan (two people could sit on it if they were EXTREMELY close), so he can have access to his stuff and his closet, between which the desk is situated. He's going down to check on the museums, and he insists that the computer, showing "real-time" information, will give correct opening information WITHOUT the precaution of phoning the museum ITSELF to verify that it's open. He glares at me and insists, "I think I know what I'm doing," and I can only reflect to myself, "We'll see." He goes down (ahem) at 10:01AM, using my key, since my plastic card doesn't work in this "gold-seal"-activated key-light slot. HIS left knee is hurting, so much so that he says he may take a pain pill for it (he takes pills for EVERYTHING: I was astounded to hear him telling Elaine that he takes a half-Imodium on days with long bus trips so that he won't "incommode" other passengers by demanding possibly additional stops). (He had said to "Be kind to me" if we had had to negotiate the triple flight of stairs from the back entrance to the street, but the elevator descending to -2 had obviated ANY stairs on our way to the Plaza.) Now 10:04AM, bright sun pouring in the window, cool breeze as I sit in my pants-only, having given up on the long-sleeved North Face shirt because it's just so HUMID here that no matter how COOL the breeze is, my shirt still ends up totally WET with sweat. [Do I tend to use LOTS of capital-letter words?] Can barely recognize myself in the mirror across the way: half-apparent beard, hair-wisps sticking out below both ears, saggy tits and belly---it will be SO nice when my North Face shirt doesn't stretch open between buttons any time I sit down, when I sometimes look to find that a button's popped open over my belly, and when I know that my 79€ jacket doesn't QUITE close in front without my REALLY sucking in my gut, which I, in general, refuse to do. The quantity of food at breakfast, and the likelihood of SOMETHING for lunch before our 7:15PM one-star restaurant this evening, bodes ill for my weight. Ken comes up to say that CINZIA, the sweetie at the desk, not only looked online to see that the museum was open, but PHONED them (on HER behalf, Ken insists, not on HIS instigation at all) to find that it's open NOW until 6PM, the 8€ admission fee the only negative. "Gee," Ken says, "it's twice as far as the restaurant was from our hotel last night." He returns my passport, and I finish with this at 10:11AM, the beginning of a s-l-o-w day. [But slow it wasn't!] Leave hotel 10:20 and to Intarsia Museum 10:40, great stuff scattered over four floors, and entirely worth the 5€ for seniors. Ken even buys the 40€ English guide as we leave at 12:20! I don't want to pay 5€ for an eight-page introductory guide. No photos, but I take a few later, as Ken finds, off the Cloister, a sign for intarsia on the third floor, and there are some quite credible modern examples, with absolutely no one to oversee our visit. Go to the Easter exhibit of all-colors [red, black, white] hooded processions at the Villa Fiorentino, since I notice the sign that they close at 1PM. Ken grumbles about going in, but gets enough out of it. Then Ken guides us, erratically, to Davide Augusto, Frommer's "best gelato in the world." I get a Veneziana (chocolate with rum) and a Caramel Ripple, in an edible cone, for 2.5€, which comes to 1.25€/dip, PLUS a cone. Ken gets two scoops of kiwi and two scoops of chocolate with orange, for 6€, which means 1.5€/dip, that he eats out of a glass cup (which he didn't eat). That takes us to 1:20PM, when I persuade him to pay 1.8€ (which, actually, I pay) for the lift down to the port, most of the docks of which are closed for construction, as I find when I walk out on one and am shouted off by two workmen. But the Marina Grande is a-bustle with tourists going on and off Peter and Shark Volavaremare boats; great pictures of the overtowering hotels, some of which even have dining rooms BELOW the level of the cliffs (Hotel Tramontana, for one, which has been there forever and hosted every royal personage in Europe and Russia). I walk partway up the stairs behind the Hotel Port, or whatever, to get a shot up the canyon that eventually, I guess, includes the Vallone dei Mulini [and now I see on the map that I took all my pictures at the Marina Piccola, which is significantly LARGER than the Marina Grande; as Ken says, go figure]. Back to hotel at 2:40, NO one at the desk, and catch up with this at 3:09PM, bantering back and forth with Ken, with nothing to do before the 7:15PM reservation at Il Buco---which Ken informs me means "hole." As in "We're eating in the hole." Figure to rest for a bit now. Read and do puzzles to 4:45, when Ken insists we go out for more sights. Leave at 4:58, go to St. Nicolino, which is more interesting for the worshippers than for the church itself; and then St. Francis, not much more interesting, maybe---but maybe not---finding the "hidden" frescoes from 1776; and finally the Cathedral, where I at last take a picture of the whole thing, though it's not really worth it. Steal a card showing the choir marquetry, however. Back to hotel, tired, at 5:50, SURE not to go out except for dinner. 7PM: Finish a New Yorker, and start on New York magazine---not understanding or appreciating most of it---is something going wrong with me? In putting on my new jacket, I take off the price tag and see that it was 179€, marked down to 79€! Leave at 7:05 and get there as only the third party at 7:20. Amuse bouche of eggplant puree and cream, and a pastry of eggplant OK; Ken has the eight-course dinner for 85€; I have five courses with three empty placeholding plates in front of me, but none of the dishes are extraordinary, and I leave lots of pork behind from my main course. Four Armagnac balls (of which Ken eats only one) included in the five-part dessert that we share, and then I finish his "pregnant" glass of limoncello. Total bill of 237€, which ends up with my billing 246€ for my sum of 123€, which would be about $150. Back to hotel at 10:26, full, and finish this at 10:40, deciding NOT to leave a wake-up call, planning to leave for the next hotel about 1PM tomorrow. Read New York magazine until about 11:05PM, when Ken goes to bed, so I brush teeth and drink water and fill pills and type this to 11:12PM. Read another article while Ken snores, and I go to bed at 11:37PM---latest on trip?
TUESDAY, 4/3/12: 5:49AM: Pee and type two DREAMS:4/3/12 to 5:55AM, nose still dripping. Try to start Actualism a few times, but I keep dozing off. At one point I check the time on my watch and at first think it's nine-something, but turn on the bed lamp and find it's still seven-something. Doze again and wake at 8:09AM, and Ken's also awake and willing to start the day, saying I can use the bathroom first, so I pee a bit, wash my face, put in my bridge, get out at 8:18AM, and type this to 8:25AM, ready to dress for breakfast. 9:19AM: Down to a good breakfast: few scrambled-egg spoonfuls, ham, salami, roll and butter---and pick up an egg to put in my pocket. Get up a bit later for some fruit, and feel a strange wetness on my upper right thigh; put my hand into my pocket and find I'd taken a SOFT-BOILED egg, which had now broken and was messing up my pocket and wetting the outside of my jeans in a plum-sized circle! "I'll be back in a few minutes," I tell a puzzled Ken. Upstairs and napkin most of the egg remains out of my pocket, then invert it and rinse it off with my hand towel, getting most of the egg out, and then wiping it with my larger towel, hoping there's nothing left to smell of rotten eggs later. Back to laugh with Ken at the story, and have fruit, bettered with honey, pick up a non-leaking ORANGE for lunch, and type this to 9:23AM, ready for Ken to take his walk to the east and me to lounge until, as Ken says, we check out about 12:45PM. 9:35AM: Ken leaves, and I invert my jeans to find edges of DRIED YELLOW around the wet: the YOLK! I stain a towel BLUE with jean-color as I try to scrub out the yolk, leaving an orange-sized wet splotch that I hope will dry "colorless." Or else I'll have to go after remaining yolk AGAIN. Settle in to read New York magazine. Finally finish their "Best of New York" double issue, clipping MANY pages, at 10:11AM, and start on my shower. [10:21AM: The movie I saw on the plane with The Descendants and Tin-Tin was J. Edgar!] Finish shower at 10:44AM, unconscionably TIRED! Some danger of slippage, annoying, even on the perfectly flat tub bottom. Interesting how the strangely uncomfortable (to the hand) W-shaped soap fits into the grid in the soap dish in the shower. 11:18AM: Find ANOTHER New Yorker (3/19/12) to read! Just STUFF things into the suitcase 11:38-11:55AM, and it CLOSES! ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE! 12:27AM: Finish dressing and packing, just to calm Ken, who's already reminded me twice that we're leaving soon. 2:50PM: Down for Ken to PAY THE BILL at 12:43, hearing that our car has arrived already. Pack stuff into the car, I get the death seat, and we take off at 1:03PM with a sign saying Amalfi 22, later 25. He goes first the wrong way down a one-way street, and then we're seemingly mostly along the SHORE to Proiana and other small towns, I taking photos furiously all along the way, some good, some not. Into the parking of the hotel at 2:05, and I go up in the elevator to say who we are, and they send a porter down on one elevator as Ken comes up on the other. Shown a room with the beds undivided first, then room 22 at 2:20PM, and Ken's not feeling well. Out at 2:54. Incredible walk to the very extreme of accessibility of the street, lane, path, track into the depths of Amalfi to 4:50, taking pictures all the way. Back to the hotel at 5:30, chat with Ken until 5:53, then read New Yorker to 7:15, when we dress, and go to dinner at the dot of 7:30. Dinner to 8:45 is quite dismal: the Prosecco is good, but the grissini are too thin, the butter comes too late, the spinach is inedible, Ken gets twice the tagliatelle he wanted, and most of my veal is just stringy and tough. Thank goodness the final fruit is quite good: banana, pineapple, apple, pear, oranges, and melons. Ken puts in a wake-up call for 8:30, knowing we won't need it. Moon is bright, stars are many, and the evening fog seems to have gone. Ken appears to be getting ready for bed now at 8:57. Sudoku to 9:47, feeling very tired, and finally NOT cold. Bed 10:05PM.
WEDNESDAY, 4/4/12: 6:05AM---exactly eight hours later! Small mympth display earlier. Take a Fisherman's Friend. Pee and type DREAMS 4/4/12 to 6:13AM. Do an absolutely complete Actualism and debate getting up a few times, but finally Ken turns on the light and I look at my watch at 8:05AM, now just TEN hours after getting to bed. Lie flat on my back when Ken opens the blinds (actually a pair of metal plates) and the light streams in to reveal---my floaters! The perfect angle and lighting in which to see them, even better than tiredly staring out at the featureless Atlantic Ocean after six hours of exhausting jet-time from Europe to America. They're all over, but all filamentous, none of the blobs like the one after dinner with Mary Vilaboa in that Italian restaurant on the West Side. Ken finishes in the bathroom at 8:18AM and I go in to wash my face. Good breakfast to 9:10AM: eggs, four slices of perfect bacon, dark thick hot chocolate that needs neither sugar nor milk, pieces of pineapple and melon, and half a dry pithy tangerine, and a large bowl of Rice Krispies---and a glass of dull rose-colored juice. Lots of people breakfasting that we hadn't seen before, including an old pair of Indian men who eat outside, prompting the conversation Ken reports to me between the waiter and an older Italian woman: "Would you like to eat outside?" "Are you joking?" Ken leers after the Australian husband, and reports that after working seven years they're given six months' paid vacation for trips around the world if they wish. He's feeling better, thank goodness, but reminds me back in the room that we have a two-hour guided tour starting at 10AM. Ken reports success from the bathroom. Only now, at 9:17AM, comes the first blat-blat of a traffic horn from below. The village looks quite deserted at this early hour, a pictorial contrast from the jeweled lights of last night to the browns and tans of daylight Amalfi. Read a strange Rivka Galchen "Appreciation" in New Yorker and get ready for departure at 9:47AM, Ken not knowing how we get to tour except that "We'll get a phone call." It comes at 10:05, just as we're about to go down to desk, and Michelangelo is resting in the sun on a bench in the cloister. He talks with us inside, then lectures for a long time in front of a "historical fresco," then walks us down to the first entrance to inner tunnels, telling stories of history and boiling oil poured onto Arabs, and the burning of the city by Pisa, one of the four "harbor kingdoms" along with Naples and Venice. We end up in the 6th Century church-become-museum, then in the crypt where St. Anthony's bones are buried FIVE METERS DEEP to keep thieves away, and then up to the Duomo for more tales, and somewhere in here I lose my HAT! He's a good talker, waiting while I take pictures, and we cover maybe FIVE FEET of what I covered yesterday, leaving us at the waterfront at 12:05PM, when Ken rushes us to the Tourist Office to get us GREAT maps of Amalfi and the whole area in interconnected towns along here. Then we stop in Gelateria Porto Salvo, moved from their previous location, to get his 3€ medium strawberry and another, and my 2€ small strawberry and Bacio Porto Salvo---chocolate and rum and nut, which, with his 2€ tip to Michelangelo, and my elaborate billing algorithm to equalize our unequal bills, makes my recording of his bill at 6€ for the two transactions. Then up to the Museum of Paper, panting after the ascent of the street, and a good English tour of the basement presses---one of the tourists actually MAKING a sheet of paper, all the stages of which I miss photographing clearly. That's over at 1:40PM, we're both tiring, and Ken shops for a sign while I sit, and then I find a white Amalfi baseball cap with adjustable strap for 5€, which I figure is 1€/day for our remaining five days of the trip. Stop at Eolo restaurant to find it closed tonight, open tomorrow, and we go to the desk to argue about where to make reservations for tonight: Ken insists on Frommer's Trattoria Giuseppe, way in the depths of the town, at 7:30PM, when they open. Back to room at 2:30 to take everything but shorts off and type this to 2:45PM, Ken reading his International Herald Tribune, which I really only (re)learned yesterday is owned by the New York Times. Sadly the restaurant tonight doesn't take credit cards, so I'll be worried about running out of cash again. Finish the 3/19 New Yorker by 4:50PM, wondering how I'm going to pass the time to 7:30 dinner. I COULD start proofing THIS! I'm cold, so I put on clothes and look through stuff to 5:08, then settle into sudoku. This goes to 7:20PM, remarkably, eyes almost closing at some points, but the interest remains. Then out to argue about how to get to Trattoria Giuseppe, I pointing the way past the stoplight, and up and up to the waiting waiter as I ask to be seated in the back, away from the three (two teenage, one aged 9-10) kids in the front, and then three URCHINS start running past, obviously kids of the owners, who want the table next to ours, and finally Ken asks if I'd mind if he asked for our table to be changed, and we're moved to the front. Long wait, until about 8:25PM, for my Specialite di Pizzaiolo with onions and ham, and Ken has the Genovese with tuna (!, he expected it to be FRESH tuna) and olives, of which I share. Three-quarter carafe of poor red wine, and a liter of minimally sparkling water, and we can BARELY put up with the kids, and Ken likes my pizza much more than his, and I actually give him a quarter of mine. Then he tries identifying the speech provenances of a quartet a few tables away, which turns out to be a pair of German sisters who married a Brit from Sussex and an American from Kentucky, and we make one another's evenings. Not to mention my relief that they take credit cards; I was really concerned about having 16€ LESS in my wallet, but Ken pays 31.5€ with his credit card [which I have to remember to add to list]. Back to hotel under haloed moon by 9:25, and talk about it until I type this at 9:44PM. Start the Achatz book then, stopping at 11:04PM. Bed 11:18PM.
THURSDAY, 4/5/12: 1:13AM: Pee and type DREAMS:4/5/12 to 1:24AM. 4:31AM: Pee and type another dream to 4:37. 6:56AM: Jolt awake at phantom phone-ring. Pee at 7AM. Ken is TOTALLY mummified in bed: ONLY WHITE LINEN visible: no blanket, no skin, no color of any kind. Did HUGE Actualism to try to counter vague fears and anxieties from last dream, but it doesn't do much good. Will try again as I get back to bed at 7:05AM. Ken up 8:30AM. Breakfast 8:58-9:18AM: cheesed eggs, roll and butter, cherry-yogurted hot chocolate, and juice. Up to dress for my walk to Atrani, which Ken refuses to join me on. "You'll be doing more walking, going to Amalfi, than I'll be doing." He says he doesn't like walking on the highway. Leave 9:30. Nice, confused, walk to Duomo in Atrani, coming back a second way by 10:30AM to find Ken's bag packed and Ken's body gone. Out to try for the Cemetery at 10:34AM. Back at 11:05AM to chew out the woman at the desk for not TELLING people the Cemetery is CLOSED. "Oh, the hours are changed?" she says unconvincingly. Meet Ken in the hall on the way to pay the bill, and I take off my shirt and loosen my belt while he pees to 11:14AM; the only thing I have to do to 1PM is pack. We chat about the past and present, I read the Tribune and do all but the puzzle, and pack until noon. [Typed at 3:15PM:] Driver calls to say he'll be late, arriving about 1:10, getting to Ravello-center at 1:34, and we wait for the little car for the luggage to come down to us until 1:42, when we follow it up to the Giordano parking lot at 1:46 and are told to continue up and turn to the right "about five minutes." Ken chugs ahead, and I'm tired and puffing behind, saying, "This can't POSSIBLY be it," mainly because there are NO signs to Giordano, only to Villa Maria and Villa Eva. People pass us, and Ken HAD argued in the car about what the driver MEANT by saying that "Giordano is allied with Villa Maria," and finally it's explained to us that Giordano has a problem and isn't even OPEN, so everything is transferred to Villa Maria, which even has a restaurant. We're shown through a MAZE to our room, at about 2PM, to which, she says, we've been upgraded for the view, which it certainly has, though it's a small room, and at 2:30 the lunch will stop, so I say I'll follow her to the restaurant, because I can't hope to find it on my own. Back from lunch 3:03, I ask to rest, and Ken returns at 3:20. He phones them again to ask for TOILET PAPER, rather than TOWELS. [Times to be gotten from slides:] Ken wants to start with the Cimbrano Gardens, since they have to be seen in daylight, and Saturday may be even cloudier than today. [Start file 3 6:23PM 4/5/12] I hate the thought of going AWAY from the Duomo, but I follow him up the road, trying the door to the Monastery on the way, but it's locked. Up to the VERY crowded gardens (there must be a hundred people here!) and pay our 6€ to get in, and Ken almost REFUSES to follow the order of the map and go to the Crypt first, saying that we should stay in the SUN and leave the Crypt for LAST. But I'm down, and it turns out to be an open-air crypt, which may be self-contradictory. Then follow each of the directions, changing batteries with VERY little warning on the Prospect of Infinity (or something like that: the one with all the busts at the end, where I can't HOPE to wait for a tourist-free picture), going down a long way and up a VERY long way, but at least, at the end, we're away from crowds of tourists, which we weren't on our first time through the Alley of Immortality, or whatever it was. End with a pee, and then he insists there were things to the right that we didn't see, but he doesn't find them. Some TRULY fabulous views down over Amalfi, Atrani, and the entire coast. And some cliffs looking STRAIGHT down. Many statues, too. Ken buys a book and I photo a pig hanging by its trotters from a facade. Start back at 5PM and get to the Cathedral at 5:20 to find that the door is closed! Going to the Museum reveals that the door will be open at 5:30, which it is. Good ambo, not much else. I insist on resting a bit. Back on my feet and he INSISTS on returning the way the car led us, up 36 steps, while I think the other way is MUCH smoother without the Giordano parking-lot detour. Back exhausted to sit in the shade and look out over the valley, then in at 6:02PM to lie until 6:15. Type this to 6:30 and start back on Achatz, already up to page 116 of 405 pages. Dinner 8:05-9:30, and to balcony to hear MALE VOICES CHANTING in the distance. We listen, rapt, until they stop; and then some torches appear to come toward us from what may be Cimbrone Gardens. I race to get my camera and we try to follow them, but there's no more choral music. Back to the room and hear it AGAIN, and AGAIN race to the street, Ken saying, "Oh, there's no one here," and suddenly, out of the darkness, appear three white-hooded men bearing brass lamps, followed by a man carrying a cardboard cross festooned with symbols, followed by a man carrying a REAL black cross---and then a crowd of white-hooded men, and then a LARGE crowd of TOWNSPEOPLE, following the parade. Ken and I joyfully join them as they round the corner, sing again, and then go down to the San Francisco Church, BRIGHTLY lit, where I can go to the side of the altar and take GREAT pictures when the men remove their masks to sing---making me at one point wonder whether I'm compromising their anonymity. They continue THROUGH the Duomo Square, when Ken returns to the hotel, and they go down a road that turns out to be toward Minori, where I note the road sign, wait for one more song production, take a picture that includes the maybe-full moon, and then turn back, to pee on the Amalfi road, and get back to the hotel at 11:05, chat with Ken, take my clothes off, and type this to 11:23PM, absolutely ecstatic about the day's events---helped by the evening wine at dinner and the Grand Marnier soufflé. Bed quickly. Forget to take my BRIDGE out!
FRIDAY, 4/6/12: 1:56AM: Pee; can't remember the dream I had. 6:05AM: Ditto. 6:15AM: Start Actualism. 8:25AM: After going through a DETAILED Actualism, maybe napping between, I look at my watch by turning on the bed light, and find that Ken's in the bathroom, so I open the blinds to find a BEAUTIFUL day outside: NO fog, NO obscuring clouds, wonderful for Paestum. Type at 8:26AM as Ken shaves, and I answer the wake-up phone call, and muse that today, Friday, is Paestum and the only 2-star dinner; tomorrow, Saturday, is the end of our time in Ravello; the day after tomorrow, Sunday, is the final move to Naples; and the day after that, Monday, is the trip back to NYC. Four days, twelve meals, about ninety hours. Ken comes out at 8:30AM to shut off his ringing alarm. The trip is coming to the end, and I'm REALLY looking forward to it! The lump UNDER the scab on my left knee implies that there will be YET ANOTHER scab after this one falls off! It'll last MORE than FOUR MONTHS!!! To bathroom 8:39, and out at 8:48AM, Ken opening window to say, "It's chilly." To breakfast 8:52, and Ken shows me the menu that enables me to order an ENORMOUS ham and cheese omelet that I finish about 80% of before pushing it aside with a bit of the croissant, butter, and "cherry marmalade." Good hot chocolate, and a big bowl of corn flakes with a glass of orange juice, taking an orange (NOT a tangerine) for lunch. Type at 9:30, before brushing teeth. 9:38: decide to try to soap out the spot on my new shirt, because it clearly isn't going to "dry out," but I probably make a mistake because now a white-haloed spot ten times as big surrounds a STILL-visible original spot. 9:47AM: Really overdo it by putting into my shoulder bag not only a jacket in case of rain or cold, but a short-sleeved shirt in case of undue HEAT: my long-sleeved gift from the Caverzasis just gets too SWEATY if it's humid. I'm right at the point of suggesting we make our way to the desk when our phone rings to say that our car is waiting in the Giordano parking lot. We get down to an older, plump-faced man in a black suit jacket and jeans, with weighty black eyebrows and hooded eyes. He greets us, Ken climbs into the back, and we leave at 10:02AM. "Two hours," he says. Seeing as the mileage is something like 30 kilometers, we wonder about it, but it takes a long time, with the traffic, even to get through Ravello. THEN we're stopped in the next town, maybe Maiori, by crowds on the sidewalk and police on both sides of the street, and I take a picture of a pickup truck with an arch of flowers as cargo: could this be some kind of Good Friday religious procession? No, the driver says when we finally join the slow cortege along the Amalfi coast, it's a funeral. I try to take pictures of the, now, two trucks bearing flowers ahead of the medium-length hearse, and I joke to myself they're going to Paestum to be buried. But they turn off after two or three towns and the traffic eases. I take lots of pictures, and at one point the driver even stops and opens the door so I can get out and take a picture of an isolated deep-blue bay DIRECTLY below the highway. Then we get snarled in traffic in Salerno, going through decaying waterfront sections to parts of the Bay of Salerno that HAD been built with wall-to-wall lidos that are now 90% closed, and I want to ask if ALL the beaches along here are privately owned and out-of-bounds to the casual bather, but don't think Ken can muster the words to ask the question, or even that the driver will know the answer. Seven kilometers from Paestum he continues straight and I say to myself, "Well, with THAT arrow, I would have turned left." The signs for Paestum disappear, and he makes a series of turns that indicate he indeed MISSED the first one. We eventually get to the entry-barrier at Paestum at 11:58AM, and he waves to indicate that the site is somewhat more compact than Ken's guidebook shows, and says that we should be back at 2PM. Into an office we mistake for the Museum because nothing's clearly marked, and then to the Museum to pee and buy a 7€ entry ticket to the ruins. My first view of the---call it southernmost---temple is disappointing: many temples in Segesta, Selinunte, and Agrigento were in much better condition than this. But larger, more beautiful structures loom on the horizon. The ride in, under the sun on my front seat, was almost too hot for my long-sleeved shirt, but the temperature outside is perfect for it. We wander past many ruins, some ill-marked signage, and lots of tourists. Take pictures, then off to the side for some mosaicked rooms, and Ken goes ahead down the road to sit and read his guidebook while I catch up with him at the Temple of Neptune, impressively complete, and read the various attributions through the ages, hoping that a guide that I eventually purchase will fill in the details [which it does]. Both major temples are impressive, one from 500BC, the other from 400BC, and then just after 1PM we hurry down to the Museum, which is included in the ticket, to an eye-boggling gathering of both the inner and outer metopes of both temples, some in great states in preservation, some only rubble. The Tomb of the Diver on the ground floor is simply sensational, as are many of the other pieces---most of which I had no idea existed---in terms of primitiveness, age, and unusual subject matter, such as the medieval-looking horseman from something like 200BC. Only a few nice erections, but the sweetness of the man-man interactions in the Tomb of the Diver is captivating. The second floor is FILLED with academic descriptions and LOADS of prehistoric and early-historic stuff, and I wish I had more time, but I take some hasty pictures and rush through to 1:45 in order to get to the shop to find what books will satisfy my having seen such marvelous sights in under two hours. First drawn to an Italian magazine with a marvelous compendium of all the heroic male statues of antiquity, from many sites, currently in dozens of far-flung museums. And only 5.9€ for what looks like the last copy. On the cashier's desk is an English version of the Museum's collection for 10€, which I mark as wanted. We both search for an English guide to the site, but the only one available is a hardcover "transparent-overlay-of-how-it-was version" that's more appropriate for a teenager than for an obsessive-compulsive adult, but it's the best available, and at 15€ vaguely reasonably priced. So my total is 30.9€, and I get out to pee just as Ken presents his more costly purchases for check-out. To the car at 2:03PM to wake the driver and start back to Ravello. Traffic is much less this time; Ken sits in the front and shrugs when I point to the most isolated-looking dwelling (just under the crest of a mountain-wave) on the entire coast, and we somehow miss the mosaic Ravello sign that I wanted a photo of, probably based at the Amalfi entrance rather than at the Salerno-side entry. Up to the Piazza Duomo at 3:36PM, letting the driver off easy, whom Ken suggests had charged $125/hour, and he decides he DOESN'T have to cart his books back to the hotel before sitting in the piazza. I order a limonata from the Cafe Panino, which turns out to be 4€, and Ken learns that the Trib has been sold out. He gets a coffee for 2.5€ and we sit and look at the people in the piazza, and the dogs---particularly a perky, slender, alert dachshund---chasing pigeons. Leave the piazza at 4:15, stagger into hotel room at 4:26, TOTALLY worn out! Lie down to rest, then get up to keep reading the Achatz book, totally engrossing, until Ken says we should start dressing for our 7:30PM dinner reservation. He actually puts on a TOPCOAT---and he has TWO jackets with him---just an INCREDIBLE "pack rat." We go down the still-lit stairs to the square to see crowds before the Duomo steps, with adults and children at the tops of the steps with lit candles in their hands, preparing for some sort of procession, and we wend our way through the crowd to the stairs on the other side, and pant up the dozens of them to what Ken calls the "street of the palaces," and the first hotel sign we encounter boasts FIVE stars. Pass a few more elegant entrances, then a lovely garden with a sweeping view over the Minori (I think) Bay, and next door is the Palazzo Sasso, whose tables extend their similar umbrellas THREE levels down the hillside, and then comes the lobby, which we enter to find we descend two flights to the restaurant, where Ken's coat is taken, and we're led to a table next to two children and their mingily dressed parents, and Ken requests seating farther from them. We sit, get lovely Rossini special drinks in the Rossillini Michelin two-star restaurant, strawberry with champagne, which I make last through the meal. I'd thought I'd "treat" Ken to whatever bottle he wants to share, but don't have to do it, since there IS a wine pairing, for 60€, for three wines with his four-course choice of a tasting menu for 75€, which is good, because (as I say to Ken after I notice that EVERY dish, even the most paltry appetizer, starts at an a la carte price of 30€) if they HADN'T had a tasting menu special, I would have just walked out. The tasting menu is essentially HALF the price of the a la carte prices. Ken takes a fishy smaller one, I took the one-course-larger one, substituting a cannelloni course for the John Dory. We start with a very fishy appetizer that I think has lobster but Ken says has oyster, which even HE doesn't like, so THAT is the slimy thing I choke down, and chase by sips of the cold, delicious Rossini. My spaghetti is wrapped with shark carpaccio, with squid ink on the side, and Ken even tastes a black ROLL made with squid ink. The butter is beautifully shaped into roses (awkward to handle), of which I order two more, to make three that I consume with olive bread, pepper roll, a lovely fragile breadstick contrasting with the almost-wooden batons served wrapped in a napkin at the start, a delicate something-Baba roll, and another kind. Another course features a small chunk of raw beef coated in green, with more pasta. The cannelloni comes, presented with four or five thick curls from a large black truffle, which comprises the best dish of the meal. Then Ken is served a place plate, meaning he isn't eating while I get my fifth course, but they DO give him a knife and fork so he can share what I may choose to give him from my suckling pig plate, which he says he doesn't like because it's too fatty: a pity, since I immediately pass him some ground-up stuff surrounded by what may be a piece of pig tripe, very fatty, which he doesn't eat. I DO scrape the fat off the VERY tender and juicy meal and share it with him, but I mostly eat all the fatty deliciousness, including the popcorn-like, truly crackling crackling. He loves HIS last course, which has some central seafood surrounded by spires of what he calls a deconstructed salad: fennel, lettuce, turnip, baby carrot, other greens and yellows, which HE likes best of the meal. His wines are served with great formality by the sommelier at a table from which he lowers the label so Ken can read the name of the producer, the wine, and the region, mostly local. He even gives me some to drink, and suggests I might like a glass of his dessert wine, a tasty Muscat-based amber-pink liquid. My dessert is a lemon soufflé, and I remark about having two soufflés in two days! Though the much larger one last night was superior in taste (being Grand Marnier) and superior in size (being Grander). And tonight adds a lovely porcelain spoon filled with a dollop of strawberry sorbet that Ken has a taste of. I ask for the check, Ken leaves for the john, the waiter places a folded napkin that I think might enclose the check, but it comes in a box, for a total of 274€, to which Ken says I should add 10%, and I make it an even 300€ with a 26€ tip, probably excessive. Leave Rossillini's at 10:05 (after dropping 300€ for a really-only-worth-one-star meal, but the 17€ Rossini was good), and walk slowly back to look at twinkling Venus to 10:35, when I wash a SECOND splotch off my shirt---this time the striped one. Tired of walking up the hill after only the FIRST night here: TWO more to GO! Ken goes to bed almost immediately. I settle in to finish Achatz: Life, on the Line at 11:58PM.
SATURDAY, 4/7/12: Type this at 12:02AM. Now OFFICIALLY I'm HOME THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW! Bed at 12:11AM. 5:50AM: Pee, thinking I might inquire about either a boat-sightseeing along the coast or the open-top bus tour. Get the Achatz book and record that on July 13, 2007 [we dined at Alinea 11/12/06], he found he had cancer; on December 13, 2007, he had his operation---Alinea was essentially without him during that period. In May 2010 Gourmet named his the best restaurant in North America, and his taste was coming back, and he had already dropped the idea of an NYC or Vegas branch, but began working on Next and the Aviary. Bed 6:03AM. 8:30AM: Wake, after Actualism, and Ken is in bathroom. I open curtain to fog outside, dress, and type this to 8:40AM, hoping to shit when Ken gets out of bathroom. Do so, but only marginally, and I leave the Achatz book on Ken's bed for him to carry back for himself. We get to breakfast about 8:55, finding the slight rain making the tiles outside VERY slippery for my slippers---but what else are slippers for? Ask for a half omelet, and I remark to Ken that all of touristic Italy must be trained to give a 2/3-portion whenever anyone asks for a half-portion! But I do finish my ham, cheese, and (thanks to Ken) onion omelet, with a roll and two pats of butter and good homemade orange marmalade, and somehow don't notice that the juice on the orange juice tray is GRAPEFRUIT, but I drink my pills with it anyway. Continues cloudy outside, and then it even starts to rain, with shadows of clouds moving visibly in and out under the white wisteria in which one busy bee has his lifework. The woman at the next table, to spite her husband who's slow in leaving, stands next to Ken and talks and talks about Washington DC, and where we've been, and where they're going, and I just continue to eat to about 9:40. I tell Ken I have questions for the desk: she says the boat trip along the coast leaves only from Amalfi. The red bus leaves Ravello from the parking lot on the other side of the tunnel, and she'll phone me with the cost and the schedule. I get back to the room on the VERY slippery tiles---skid dangerously two or three times---and Ken says he's going down to the square to pick up an Inquirer while they have them, and to look at the Coral Museum and the Duomo Museum, and maybe the Street of Palaces. I say that I'm staying here, hoping it'll get clearer, and will go out only later if it's clear it's NOT going to clear. He leaves, and I start typing this, and get a call from the desk at 10:38AM, saying that the Red Bus leaves hourly between 10:30AM-4:30PM, lasts about two hours, goes to Amalfi and Positano and Maiori and maybe other towns, and costs only 3€. What a bargain! Now if only it'll clear up, despite the desk's report that it'll be raining all day today and most of the day tomorrow. I catch up with this at last at 10:50AM, thinking that I have the last Sunday Times puzzles somewhere in my luggage still to do. The fog outside is thicker than ever. Do Carolina crossword 10:56-11:18AM. Ken's back, absolutely drenched by the rain, not saying much good about the Coral Museum, "Which they opened for me," or the Duomo Museum. 3/11 crossword to 12:25PM. Ken says he's starving. He insists we go to lunch at 12:50PM, where we open my wine, I drink a minimal glass, he has a meal, and we're back at 1:53. Sunday 4/8 puzzle a DOOZY to 3:30. Shower 4:15-4:45. It starts really blowing and the waiters have a hard time rolling up the vinyl outside "awnings" as we watch. We can hear the rain falling, glad to be inside, hoping it's not the same tomorrow when we move to Naples. He says the car comes at 12:30PM and may take hours to get there. Puzzles to 5:45, some not finished yet, but I'm tired of them and go to sudoku, and then dress and get to dinner at 7:35, to be immediately joined by two families of four, each with two little girls, two of which at least have the pacifiers of iPads. Dinner to 9PM: another veal, this time with lemon, and a lemon soufflé; and back for more sudoku to 9:48, when I finish this. Ken's naked in bed already, soon to go off to sleep, I'm sure. He's begun packing, and repacking, and I'm leaving it for as late as possible. Back to sudoku at 9:49-10:20PM, tired enough to go to bed without Valium. Do end up hunting for my Valium bottle in my dop kit and am sorry not to find it there. Bed 10:35PM.
SUNDAY, 4/8/12: 3:51AM: Pee and type DREAMS:4/8/12 to 3:58AM. Nose dripping slightly less; take another Fisherman's Friend for a not-quite-perfect throat. 5:45AM: Wake, mildly aroused, from erotic dream and find room totally dark: Ken's in john. Put on bed light and prepare to type when Ken exits bathroom. I go in and type more of dream, happy that TOMORROW I'LL BE HOME, though not this early in the morning. Back to bed 5:54AM. 7:53AM: Just can't lie in bed, thinking, anymore. Search my shoulder bag, and somehow my Valium isn't in there either. Can't bring myself to search my suitcase, with all those plastic bags, while Ken is still in bed. Remember another dream fragment to add to the list. Actualism doesn't seem to work anymore: I tried starting it a few times during the past few days, and it just seemed ineffectual. Get tired of counting the hours and the meals and the trips and the packings left, and trying to think---more accurately, trying NOT to think---about repacking in some kind of ORDER, and then leaping ahead to all that's waiting for me in New York: unpacking, mail, newspapers, phone calls: Charles about Bill, Mildred about herself, Marj about me, Spartacus about himself, others about others. Reworking my one-dial callers. Handling money matters. Getting prescription refills. Worrying about what seems to be resurrected folliculitis at the back of my neck. That strange bite or pimple just below the line of my right groin [still a small remnant when I proofread this at 8:50PM Monday, 4/16]. What may be increasing constipation. Ken's progressive weakness. Should I throw away my shoe pads now or later? Will I get a window seat on the flight from Naples to Frankfurt? When will Ken decide to get out of bed? Which puzzles have I finished and which haven't I finished? When will I proofread all these Neo files? When will I stop typing here? Isn't ten hours' sleep enough for Ken? When will my mind next attain a blissful blank? And not at death, but in my apartment? Well, it just DID it, for moments, here in the bathroom of the Villa Maria in Ravello. Fill my pills for this morning, take out my earplugs, and start my day! Now it's 8:13AM. BUGS! Ken stepped on a centipede outside our door last night. A small spider crawled up the wall as I sat in the chair yesterday. A small, fleet bug raced across the bottom of my two-week pill container as I reached for it to fill my morning pills. Unpack all at 8:30 to find my Valium, which I take at 8:35AM, putting my passport and my house keys and the Valium into the front pocket of my shoulder bag. Start repacking, then wash my face and put on my socks and shoes for breakfast over the wet tiles after the thunder-and-lightning storm last night that Ken and CNN reported. Type this at 8:52AM, ready for shirt and hair-comb before breakfast. There to only one other couple, and displays of tiny foil-covered Easter-chocolate eggs, and I wish our sweet-faced waitress "Buon Pasque," which she corrects, with a smile, to something like "Buona Pascua." She also smiles when she presents me with an entire omelet, saying she DID ask for a half, but this is what she got. Corn flakes, hot chocolate, enormous croissant with cherry marmalade and butter, and the side greens with the omelet fill me up, and while Ken pays the nicely itemized bill of 190.6€, I pick up a half-dozen chocolate eggs and an apple for lunch. Back to room to type this at 9:53. We're told our car will arrive at 12:30, but our bags should be ready by noon. I guess I can do it in two hours. Pack clothes wonderfully compactly in bottom of suitcase to 10:15, and then do miscellaneous nothings until I actually get, at 10:30AM, to sorting "past papers" into bills, notes, and souvenirs BY SIZE for efficient packing. 11:12AM: The packing goes wonderfully well: the booklets just fit into a nice bag from Capella San Severa, and when it doesn't fit into the top paper-slot of my suitcase with all the large papers, brochures, bills, and small bits, it goes into a corner of the suitcase so nicely there's room for my pillbox after I put my North Face shirt on top for ease of accessibility, since I'll probably take it on the plane as an easy front-opening long-sleeved garment, as opposed to the pullover the Caverzasis bought me. Amazing the amount of space in the suitcase after all the clothes get packed efficiently into the bottom, and all extraneous bills, papers, and souvenirs are removed from the interstices. Close everything up at 11:10, including three tissues for the apple, and other stuff into the shoulder bag except for this, and a large amount of still-to-be-used items like duplicate passport pages, Naples maps, and a small cross-country map for the trip between Ravello and Naples. Now, sadly, it's raining quite hard, with a steadiness of flow and darkness and evenness of clouds above that imply it could just keep on like this all day. Think of getting out my beret for the rain, but then I DO have my umbrella to protect my head, and my jacket for my torso, although the shoes, which blessedly have survived so far, are going to get VERY wet through the increasingly large holes on both sides. Finish this at 11:18, Ken fussing about various things concerning the rain. There was even the shadow of a rumble of thunder a few moments ago, the first I recall hearing in the entire trip. But who remembers? Ken observes that I didn't leave the hotel AT ALL yesterday, and, as I think back, that might not really be unusual on the penultimate day of a trip that has tired me out, filled up my camera, my suitcase, and my memory banks for a long time to come. Now to think about how to pass the time from 11:20 to final departure from the Villa Maria. At 11:25AM I bag the Neo and return to two puzzles, making progress in both of them. Ken says the lady at the desk said our bags should be ready by noon, but by 12:20 we haven't been contacted, so Ken says I can call the desk. Do so, say our bags are ready, and she replies, as if she hadn't said anything about noon before, "I'll send the porters to pick them up." But they still don't show up, so at 12:27PM I say to Ken that I'm going to the desk, and when I get there she casually mentions that the car is waiting for us at the tunnel. "Uh, will you please call my friend to tell him the car is here?" And she does, and he asks her to call the driver and tell him to meet us at the Giordano parking lot---but she can't get in touch with him. Ken finally arrives to say the porters came to pick up the bags, and so we say goodbye and start down the hill at 12:37, to be quickly passed by the little motor bearing our luggage. Get down to the car, the same driver as before, dressed the same way, and we leave at 12:47 for Naples, via a totally different route: really into the countryside, with few buildings other than the outbuildings of farms, and the driver talks of the spaces devoted to "mucca" (I joke that kids who say "moo cow" are actually speaking Italian), which give good milk for the production of mozzarella. Antennas dot the tops of some hills. We pass bold rock faces and lots of chestnut trees being harvested for lumber---not being burnt, as they look. Tied up in traffic for a bit in San Egidio, picturesque in the hills above Battalamenti, one of Salerno's suburbs by the sea, and then at 1:07 we join the highway, where we start tooling along, Naples San Martino in the distance, Vesuvius to the right, and get to the barriers across all the roads along Parthenope because of the America's Cup race coming on 4/11, but he names our hotel and they let us through at 1:47. Get to room 527 at 2:08. They say we can go to the roof---they even call for reservations, though they know we don't want the 70€ buffet---and we arrive there at 2:27, great views, screaming baby among the lunchers. Back to the room to look through the four luxury magazines on the table after eating about half the Easter cake given free to everyone today, using my spoon and Ken's knife to cut it up, and also use its plastic bag, the soap dish, my bidet towel, and the balcony furniture. Then Ken suggests we go to the bar for drinks, which we do 3:03-4:03: he gets a "Puccini" (which is tangerine and champagne, rather ratty in taste) and I have a "Princess" (which has wild strawberries floating in champagne, quite good); and then the obliging bargirl brings out three plates: tough twisted tori of cookies, good large nuts, and lots of different sizes of olives, which she follows by a dish of HONEYED nuts, and then a plate of potato chips. I tell Ken I could sit here for a couple of hours and not need dinner! Solitary guy eats at the bar, and then an old fart comes in to make life difficult for her. All that food totally tires me out, so I lie down to 5:03, look at another magazine, and roll over at 5:21PM to hear Ken say he heard my watch alarm for the second time today! I didn't hear it! Look at my watch and, indeed, the alarm sign is on, and it's set at 5:20PM, so clearly he heard it! I shut it off. Type a bit to 5:30 and then he suggests a walk. I take the momentous step of throwing away the now ineffectual anti-odorant shoe inserts. We're out at 5:35 to walk along the waterfront to watch the citizenry walking their dogs and pedaling 2-, 3-, 4-, and 6-passenger bicycles. We pass the Zoo and Aquarium (in which I spent so much time on my first day here in 1982---so I take a picture of it). Then to the end near the Oracle tent to find we can't get into it! The sky is darkening, Ken needs to pee, and he's afraid of the rain, so I look a bit at the posters outlining the history of the America's Cup, and take some more pictures trying to capture the rainbow off the right side of the Castel del'Ovo, but I fear I didn't get it. Back to the hotel at 6:30, we both pee, and I get out the Neo and my notes to type to date at 7:01PM, not really feeling like going to the dinner that Ken is insisting he MUST have---aside from the remaining cake and his two and my one apple. I go back to two still-undone puzzles. Finish the Cryptic about 8PM, when Ken insists on going to dinner without me. I progress with "Rear-End Collisions" to the last bits in the middle bottom by 8:30, starting to eat. 9:16: Have as much cake as I can stand, with pills and water, putting rest of omega-3 into the pillbox and throwing away THAT bottle. The middle lower part of the puzzle still stymies. 10PM: I just give up! [Turns out it wasn't the LAST row that had the doubled letters, but the row ABOVE it!] 10:25: Ken wants lights off; "medium" sudoku is too hard. Will take Ambien and Valium and go to bed at 10:40PM----LAST DAY!!! Sleep almost instantly.
MONDAY, 4/9/12: 6:09AM: Wake cleanly, dreamlessly, at 6AM, after 7:20 sleep, and pee, taking a Fisherman's Friend for sore throat. AND pee on floor for first (and last) time on trip. Only about 20 hours to home, over HALF on a PLANE! 8:03AM: Wake to think Ken is in the bathroom, but he isn't. Last sunrise has already occurred. I take Neo to john to try to shit. Do, a bit, to 8:09. Up at 8:21AM for a photo of the room, and then decide to change batteries, since they lost power yesterday at the end of our walk along the waterfront. Raise the shade to find a cold, clear, blue sky---praise the Lord! Nose still dripping, and folliculitis back in force. Scab on leg STILL looks like it could fall off and leave yet ANOTHER one. Lazy, flight-oriented day toward HOME! Up to breakfast at 8:50, lovely room with lovely food, and we're assigned a table for four where six are forced to sit at a table for three. I had forgotten my bridge and have to go back down to get it. On the way to the room at 9:30, Ken says he's going to pay the hotel bill in cash. I say that if he's going to spend the last of his SPARE euros, I'd rather buy some from him so that I'd have something like 50-60 euros available the next time I come to Europe. He immediately launches into a tirade about how close I always skate to the edge with my cash, and I protest, "This has nothing to DO with that: why are you being so MEAN about this???" He goes into the john before answering. Take 1/2 melatonin at 9:40AM, also putting evening pills into my shoulder bag for dinner on the plane tonight. Mostly pack by 9:55: brush teeth, pack jacket and front-buttoned long-sleeved shirt for coolth or warmth on plane and in NYC, and all Naples maps now into suitcase, except for some of the south for the flight north to Frankfurt. Ken, having just said, "I'd like to leave soon after ten," packs up his bags and says, "See you downstairs; I'll be paying the bill," taking everything with him at 9:57PM. I leave room at 10:03, stopping to take a photo of the luxury flights of blue-and-gold-carpeted stairs descending to T---which I just learn means "terra," or ground, floor. Ken's checked out when I arrive, of course handing me the receipt as my hands are full with my shoulder bag and my room key. Out to find taxi already loading bags, and we leave at 10:10, to stop immediately for my photo of an INCREDIBLY clear view of the snow-covered summit of Vesuvius, for the very first time of this trip---and hopefully from the plane, as I'm sitting at a rear right window. Quick ride to modern airport by 10:30, and onto check-in line at 10:35, after Ken barks at me three times and I offer to give him a Valium. She verifies I have two window seats, and Ken actually asks her where to dump his water before getting to security, and THEN empties his bottle into a plastic bag meant for refuse! Onto security line at 10:42, first to get our boarding passes checked, then to take off our belts, not our shoes; and take out my Neo and later find that I've put my sunscreen---not in a plastic bag---under my dop kit in the center section of my shoulder bag, which goes through unstopped. Finished with that at 10:55, though Ken takes a while to get put back together again. We pass through a TOTALLY COMMERCIAL aisle to get to a sign for gate A which directs us to double back to an escalator down to an array of gates WITHOUT SIGNS before which people sit. Ken searches and finds only yesterday's Tribune, gets water, and says that a greater selection of English-language books are available upstairs---he hopes not on the other side of security. Shuffle papers and type this to 11:22, theoretically less than two hours before takeoff. Board at 12:55PM for a 1:55 flight. Off at 1:35. Have a rectangular pizza, red wine, and apple juice lunch. ALL of flight is over land! Dolomites? Some cloudiness, yet it clears quickly. Some bumps. Clouds are back at 2:58PM; I return to puzzles. Land at 3:25 after 1:50 flight. Finish another puzzle at 3:48, still sitting. Off plane at 3:48. Long walk to gate Z25; shit at 4:03PM. Board at 4:40PM, back out at 4:57 for a 7:50 flight. Astounded to find there's NO TELEVISION at each seat: only over aisles! Take off at 5:10, even earlier than printed 5:15 departure; we should be in by 1AM, or 7PM NYC time. Take Valium at 5:53. Earplugs in, also. Mostly cloudy below. Decent chicken dinner at 6:47 with two glasses of red wine. Pee at 8:15, only 3:08 into 7:50 flight, not yet half through. Puzzle-book page 51 puzzle done at 8:22. They play Hugo and New Year's Eve to 11:17PM. Pee at 11:30PM, over St. Lawrence Bay, at 95 minutes to NYC. Change watch to 5:35PM, feeling almost like it might be the right time. Start proofing file 1. Get a bit of ham wrapped in pumpernickel for a snack at 5:55PM. Have to stop proofing at 6:50 to put up tray table. Sun off wing as we lower over eastern New Jersey with twelve minutes to go: the TV screen finally just shows the map. ROUGH bumpy landing at 7:14PM, after tracing LARGE circle south over the Atlantic, making trip longer at 8:04. Sun will be setting in 10-12 minutes. It does about 7:25; plane docks at 7:30. Off at 7:38, to shortest immigration line I've ever seen, stamped at 7:45. BOTH get bags rather late at 8:03. Through customs at 8:05, into cab 8:09, out of cab at 8:55 with $33 on meter. 9PM into 20K. Partly unpack to 10PM. Listen to twelve phone messages to 10:08.
ITAPUGLI SUMMARY PAGE
SUN,3/18: Fly from JFK at 9PM. Watch The Descendants.
MON,3/19: Watch J. Edgar and Adventures of Tintin." Land in Frankfurt 4:06AM. Fly Frankfurt-Naples 12:07-1:44PM. To Hotel Costantinopoli; buy Arte card; visit Duomo and San Domenico Maggiore; dine at Sorbilla; Piazza Bellini.
TUE,3/20: Palais Royale, Castel Nuovo, Funicular, Certosa di San Martino, Metro to Piazza Dante. Dine at Leon d'Oro.
WED,3/21: Herculaneum tour 9:44AM-12:02PM. Archaeological Museum 1:23-4:05PM. Dine at Matteo Pizza. G. Scaturchio in Piazza Domenico Maggiore for gelati.
THU,3/22: Drive to Cuma Castle, Cuma ruins, Cave of Sibyl, Anfitheatro Flavio di Pozzuoli, Solfitara, and Capodimonte. Bus to hotel. Canzuncella dinner BAD.
FRI,3/23: San Severo Chapel, San Lorenzo. Cab to Renaissance Hotel. Walk waterfront, Galleria Umberto, and St. Brigid's. Meet group for champagne, walk to Sofi Restaurante and Pizzeria; back to hotel for puzzle and sudoku.
SAT,3/24: Coffee with Marina and Edgardo; we buy my jacket. Boat to Procida. Hotel Crescenzo Restaurant lunch; island-taxi. Dine at La Cantinella/Felix.
SUN,3/25: Bus to Benevento for Trajan's Arch. Lunch at Maxim's Bar. Bus to Nicotel Barletta, walk to castle and museum and basements, then shower and dress for a great group dinner at il Brigantino, meeting Allan and Arthur.
MON,3/26: Tours of Castel del Monte and Monte Sant'Angelo, almost getting lost. Dinner at il Brigantino on our own.
TUE,3/27: Bus to Bari: Cathedral, Basilica St. Nicholas. Lunch at Locanda di Federico. On to Lecce and Hotel President for great dinner with Mary-Beth.
WED,3/28: Lecce: Porta Napoli, Natale gelati, Ceramics Museum, Cathedral, get laundry back. Dine at Osteria degli Spiriti.
THU,3/29: Bus to tour Ostuni, walk nothing town, bus to Chiusa di Chietri, for trulli used as hotel rooms. Sudoku. Great dinner: wine and Rosemary and Manny.
FRI,3/30: Bus sings "Happy Birthday." To Alberobello transfer and walking tour and birthday gelato. Wine from Linda. Walk Grotte di Castellana, not so hot. Bus to fabulous Massaria Papaperta for dinner with LOADS of wine and laughs.
SAT,3/31: To Basilicata for Matera walking tour and church. Great lunch in basement restaurant. To Sorrento's Grand Hotel Cesare Augusto for dinner.
SUN,4/1: Sorrento walk with Jay and Elaine to olive branches for Palm Sunday. Good vegetable lunch at Fauno Bar in Piazza Tassi. Rousing bus trip to Villa Antonella and back with Mary-Beth. Ken and I dine at Zi'Antonio.
MON,4/2: Walk to Plaza Hotel. Great Intarsia Museum, Easter exhibit at Villa Fiorentino, and Davide Augusto for Frommer's "best gelato in world." Elevator down to Marina Piccola and lots of photos. Walk churches and Cathedral. Dinner at Michelin one-star Il Buco, not great. Reading lots in room these days.
TUE,4/3: Car drives us to Luna Convento in Amalfi. I walk town to upper limit. Ken not feeling well. Dinner in hotel not the greatest; final fruit is best.
WED,4/4: Walking tour of Amalfi; Tourist Office for GREAT maps; Gelateria Porto Salvo, Museum of Paper. Hotel read and sudoku. Trattoria Giuseppe dinner.
THU,4/5: Walk to and from Atrani, but Cemetery is closed. Driven to Ravello and Villa Maria: Giordano not open. Lunch in hotel; walk to Cimbrano Gardens. Good Cathedral ambo. Hotel dinner; PROCESSION, SINGING through hill streets!
FRI,4/6: Wonderful hotel breakfast. Two-hour drive for two hours in remarkable Paestum; shorter drive back. Read before two-star dinner at Palazzo Sasso. Finish reading Achatz: Life, on the Line, a great book Ken kept.
SAT,4/7: Another good breakfast. Puzzles in hotel during rainstorm. Sudoku after good meal with a third soufflé in three days. Bliss and relaxation!
SUN,4/8: Drive through back country to Naples's Hotel Excelsior in one hour. We have drinks in bar. Walk waterfront. Rest of Easter cake for dinner. Lots of puzzles done.
MON,4/9: Taxi to airport by 10:30; fly Naples-Frankfurt 1:35-3:25PM. Fly Frankfurt-JFK 5:10PM-7:14PM [8:04 flight]. Taxi 8:09-8:55; 12 phone messages.