We had been looking forward to this holiday for a long time. I was quite fond of Rome when I visited there last year, and heard Amalfi coast is beautiful and there were some great walks. It is in south Italy, where it is sunny and warm – well, could be a bit too hot sometimes!
It was busy in Heathrow on a Saturday morning, there was a long queue for the Alitalia counter, I guess there are a lot of people who want to get away for a real hot summer.
I was reading Graham Greene’s “Quiet American” on the plane. I saw the film a few years ago and like it very much since it unveils both good and bad sides of human beings and it makes you ponder and think. Reading and travelling are the two things I enjoy a lot in life.
The landscape gradually changed from dry plains to green hills on the route from Rome to Naples, when the plane started to descend, we caught a glimpse of blue ocean, shimmering spectacularly in the bright afternoon sun.
Coming out of Naples airport, the air was hot but quite pleasant; we got on the coach taking us to a village in Sorrento. After about half hour, we were driven into a mountainous area with narrow and winding roads built along the mountain ridge. The sun started going down, painting the mountains in orange and red, giving them a bit mysterious appeal. Then I heard someone pointed out to a hill and said in an excited voice, “that is volcano Vesuvius.” There, not far away from us, there is a rocky mountain and its top is rather flat, looks like part of it has fallen off. The sunset casted a warm glow on its greyish rocky face, making it look like a burnt ancient monument. This famous volcano is well recorded in history book for its eruption in AD79 which buried the whole Pompei city.
When we came out for dinner in the evening, the air felt cooler, maybe because we stayed at the hotel in the village Bomerano about six hundred metres above sea level. The hotel treated us with a wonderful Italian dinner, all made from fresh local produce, in fact most of the vegetables are just from their small field behind the hotel. We had a stroll to the village centre, which is just a small square with a few shops around. People were sitting around and having a chat, kids riding their bicycles around.
We did some walks around the coast to Amalfi and Pacitano in the following few days. In our day 5, we walked through the Valle de Ferriero National park, which is a dense woodland up in the mountain range just above Amalfi coast. The walk was very pleasant, going through the woods, savouring the tranquillity and beauty of the nature. We actually spot a snake on a tree, but obviously he was more scared than us, crawling away from the scene as fast as he could. And it is certainly a very rewarding walk. At the end of walk, we started to hear the sound of stream running down, we looked up, there are several stream flowing down from the green hills down to a small pond. We followed the leader, who led us into the upstream of the pond, after a few turns around the rocks, a big water fall came right in front of us. Then we looked around we saw multiple streams dripping through the grass from different directions, all feeding into a big pond. The water is clear but rather chilly, we can see small frogs clinging onto the pebbles. We decided to stay around the rock pond area for a while. We put our feet in the water, it was freezing cold. We sat by the pond, feeling the hotness of sunlight on our back. It was nice to be in a secluded spot away from the crowd for a while. When we carried on, the afternoon heat started to kick in, we passed the old roman channel systems, it was built to divert the streams from mountains to irrigate the fields on the terraces around. Quite an achievement for ancient Romans.
On the way down following the stream, we saw a family doing barbecue, they waved to us and said something in Italian, judging from the body language, we knew they were inviting us to join them. The smell of barbecue chicken was quite tempting, but we had plans for the afternoon in Amalfi, so we thanked them and moved on. We passed by a lot of lemon fields down the hill, obviously benefiting from the streams flowing down from the hill. Most of the fields have water pipes on the side. There are green curtains covering some lemon trees in the heat.
The Amafi coast has a very unique picturesque scenery, with steep cliffs dropping to the oceans from very high up, and the narrow roads winding up and down the mountain ridge to connect the dotted towns around the coast. Most of the days it was hazy along the coast, making it like a true beauty unwilling to unveil her lovely body curves. On a day with good visibility, we could see Capri which is an island within a short ferry ride distance. The last walk was called “the walk of the gods”, it was a lovely trekking through the bushes and exposed rugged trails along the coast. It was an extremely hot day, we arrived at Pacitano feeling a bit too hot. It was certainly baking on the beach. Mark went for a swim in the sea when I was wondering in the shops absent-mindedly. As if we thought the day had not been a good challenge for us, we made a decision to walk back to the village we were staying. It is a walk about three and half hours each way. But we were motivated by the idea that this is our last day walking here so we had to make the best out of it. It turned out to be a rather difficult walk. The first fifteen minutes were steep stairs that look almost vertical, we were a bit out of breath when we got on the top. We carried on for a while, drinking lots of water to keep off the heat. It was only thirty minutes after we started we realized our bottled water was running low. The next shop along the way was still about thirty minutes, I began to get quite worried. Then following a pavement in the narrow alley, I saw a sign in front of a house that looks like a small restaurant/bar. I went in only to find out it is a farmer’s house, well quite a big one actually. An old couple sitting by a table in the courtyard. The man was cutting some vegetables on the cutting board. I gathered my courage and asked them if they have any drinking. The man looked at me, confused first, then said “ah, Aqua, si.” And then turned to the woman and said something in Italian. The woman went into the kitchen and started some work. I waited there, rather nervously looking around. It is a big house with a nice view of the ocean. It must have been 10 minutes also the woman came out with a big jar of fresh lemon juice. I was delightfully surprised as I was only expecting some water. We thanked them and left a few euros and moved on with our journey.
The fresh cold lemon juice did give us a magic boost that we need. We carried on with the walks in the heat for another three hours, when we were finally descending to the village we were staying, the sun started to go down behind the hills, and there was little breeze coming from the ocean as well. It was definitely cooling down quite a bit. When we walked in the hotel, a group of guests sitting in the terrace greeted us and one of them said to us “you guys are mad, do you know it was 42 degree this afternoon?!” well, we didn’t know that, we would not have done it if we knew. But we made it, that is a victory and worth celebrating. Later on in the evening, our guide told us that we were the very few people who ever walked back the trail on the same day.
The hotel kitchen did a pizza making show on one night, Naples is the hometown of pizza, one of the great Italian inventions still loved by millions around the world. To this day, they still use the traditional stone oven invented by the ancient Napleans, and the temperature in the oven is around 400 to 500 degree, so the pizza gets cooked in a mere three to four minutes.
The evenings in the village were generally quite uneventful, we sometimes had a stroll down to the square and had a Gelado (Italian ice cream) treat. We found a place to play table tennis at a local bar, that was a good past time in the early evening. On our last day, we went to the town centre, while having a cold beer at the table outside the shop, an Italian guy came to our table, he is a short man with sun tanned skin and hard wrinkles on his face. We looked up at him, he was smiling, and then he tried to say something but hesitated from a second, then it seemed that he gathered his courage and said to me, “Are you from Japan or China?” I was confused but then understood, I said “China”. Then he was trying to say something about his house I thought, which I could not quite understand, I looked Mark, half confused half embarrassed. After the man was gone, we looked at each other and laughed. That was a strange encounter, “I guess he think I look very unusual, since they don’t see many oriental people here.”, I said to Mark.
It was busy in Heathrow on a Saturday morning, there was a long queue for the Alitalia counter, I guess there are a lot of people who want to get away for a real hot summer.
I was reading Graham Greene’s “Quiet American” on the plane. I saw the film a few years ago and like it very much since it unveils both good and bad sides of human beings and it makes you ponder and think. Reading and travelling are the two things I enjoy a lot in life.
The landscape gradually changed from dry plains to green hills on the route from Rome to Naples, when the plane started to descend, we caught a glimpse of blue ocean, shimmering spectacularly in the bright afternoon sun.
Coming out of Naples airport, the air was hot but quite pleasant; we got on the coach taking us to a village in Sorrento. After about half hour, we were driven into a mountainous area with narrow and winding roads built along the mountain ridge. The sun started going down, painting the mountains in orange and red, giving them a bit mysterious appeal. Then I heard someone pointed out to a hill and said in an excited voice, “that is volcano Vesuvius.” There, not far away from us, there is a rocky mountain and its top is rather flat, looks like part of it has fallen off. The sunset casted a warm glow on its greyish rocky face, making it look like a burnt ancient monument. This famous volcano is well recorded in history book for its eruption in AD79 which buried the whole Pompei city.
When we came out for dinner in the evening, the air felt cooler, maybe because we stayed at the hotel in the village Bomerano about six hundred metres above sea level. The hotel treated us with a wonderful Italian dinner, all made from fresh local produce, in fact most of the vegetables are just from their small field behind the hotel. We had a stroll to the village centre, which is just a small square with a few shops around. People were sitting around and having a chat, kids riding their bicycles around.
We did some walks around the coast to Amalfi and Pacitano in the following few days. In our day 5, we walked through the Valle de Ferriero National park, which is a dense woodland up in the mountain range just above Amalfi coast. The walk was very pleasant, going through the woods, savouring the tranquillity and beauty of the nature. We actually spot a snake on a tree, but obviously he was more scared than us, crawling away from the scene as fast as he could. And it is certainly a very rewarding walk. At the end of walk, we started to hear the sound of stream running down, we looked up, there are several stream flowing down from the green hills down to a small pond. We followed the leader, who led us into the upstream of the pond, after a few turns around the rocks, a big water fall came right in front of us. Then we looked around we saw multiple streams dripping through the grass from different directions, all feeding into a big pond. The water is clear but rather chilly, we can see small frogs clinging onto the pebbles. We decided to stay around the rock pond area for a while. We put our feet in the water, it was freezing cold. We sat by the pond, feeling the hotness of sunlight on our back. It was nice to be in a secluded spot away from the crowd for a while. When we carried on, the afternoon heat started to kick in, we passed the old roman channel systems, it was built to divert the streams from mountains to irrigate the fields on the terraces around. Quite an achievement for ancient Romans.
On the way down following the stream, we saw a family doing barbecue, they waved to us and said something in Italian, judging from the body language, we knew they were inviting us to join them. The smell of barbecue chicken was quite tempting, but we had plans for the afternoon in Amalfi, so we thanked them and moved on. We passed by a lot of lemon fields down the hill, obviously benefiting from the streams flowing down from the hill. Most of the fields have water pipes on the side. There are green curtains covering some lemon trees in the heat.
The Amafi coast has a very unique picturesque scenery, with steep cliffs dropping to the oceans from very high up, and the narrow roads winding up and down the mountain ridge to connect the dotted towns around the coast. Most of the days it was hazy along the coast, making it like a true beauty unwilling to unveil her lovely body curves. On a day with good visibility, we could see Capri which is an island within a short ferry ride distance. The last walk was called “the walk of the gods”, it was a lovely trekking through the bushes and exposed rugged trails along the coast. It was an extremely hot day, we arrived at Pacitano feeling a bit too hot. It was certainly baking on the beach. Mark went for a swim in the sea when I was wondering in the shops absent-mindedly. As if we thought the day had not been a good challenge for us, we made a decision to walk back to the village we were staying. It is a walk about three and half hours each way. But we were motivated by the idea that this is our last day walking here so we had to make the best out of it. It turned out to be a rather difficult walk. The first fifteen minutes were steep stairs that look almost vertical, we were a bit out of breath when we got on the top. We carried on for a while, drinking lots of water to keep off the heat. It was only thirty minutes after we started we realized our bottled water was running low. The next shop along the way was still about thirty minutes, I began to get quite worried. Then following a pavement in the narrow alley, I saw a sign in front of a house that looks like a small restaurant/bar. I went in only to find out it is a farmer’s house, well quite a big one actually. An old couple sitting by a table in the courtyard. The man was cutting some vegetables on the cutting board. I gathered my courage and asked them if they have any drinking. The man looked at me, confused first, then said “ah, Aqua, si.” And then turned to the woman and said something in Italian. The woman went into the kitchen and started some work. I waited there, rather nervously looking around. It is a big house with a nice view of the ocean. It must have been 10 minutes also the woman came out with a big jar of fresh lemon juice. I was delightfully surprised as I was only expecting some water. We thanked them and left a few euros and moved on with our journey.
The fresh cold lemon juice did give us a magic boost that we need. We carried on with the walks in the heat for another three hours, when we were finally descending to the village we were staying, the sun started to go down behind the hills, and there was little breeze coming from the ocean as well. It was definitely cooling down quite a bit. When we walked in the hotel, a group of guests sitting in the terrace greeted us and one of them said to us “you guys are mad, do you know it was 42 degree this afternoon?!” well, we didn’t know that, we would not have done it if we knew. But we made it, that is a victory and worth celebrating. Later on in the evening, our guide told us that we were the very few people who ever walked back the trail on the same day.
The hotel kitchen did a pizza making show on one night, Naples is the hometown of pizza, one of the great Italian inventions still loved by millions around the world. To this day, they still use the traditional stone oven invented by the ancient Napleans, and the temperature in the oven is around 400 to 500 degree, so the pizza gets cooked in a mere three to four minutes.
The evenings in the village were generally quite uneventful, we sometimes had a stroll down to the square and had a Gelado (Italian ice cream) treat. We found a place to play table tennis at a local bar, that was a good past time in the early evening. On our last day, we went to the town centre, while having a cold beer at the table outside the shop, an Italian guy came to our table, he is a short man with sun tanned skin and hard wrinkles on his face. We looked up at him, he was smiling, and then he tried to say something but hesitated from a second, then it seemed that he gathered his courage and said to me, “Are you from Japan or China?” I was confused but then understood, I said “China”. Then he was trying to say something about his house I thought, which I could not quite understand, I looked Mark, half confused half embarrassed. After the man was gone, we looked at each other and laughed. That was a strange encounter, “I guess he think I look very unusual, since they don’t see many oriental people here.”, I said to Mark.
It was certainly a memorable trip, when we came back in London, English summer seemed to be in its last leg. I start to miss the sun baked tomato fields, the breath taking coastal line in the mist, the orange tiled houses dotted in the hills and terraced lemon and grape fields. South Italy is certainly an enchanting place that makes beautiful dreams.
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