pocketlizard

So on saturday we got the train down to Reggio di Calabria, and then the ferry to Stromboli. It was quite an epic voyage, but Steve has written it up already, so I won’t repeat it.

Stomboli was really cool. The little town is all twisty little streets and classic Mediterranean architecture. It’s a very laid back place. Even without the volcano it’d be a great little holiday location. It’s main business is tourism, and the main street - wide enough for golf buggy - is full of shops selling souveniers. Their thing seems to be lizards/geckos, and everything that doesn’t have a volcano on it has a lizard. So, lizards being my thing, I bought a halter top covered in lizards, and a sarong covered in lizards. I also bought a cute little fridge magnet. It’s a volcano, with lava coming out the top in the form of red beads on wire. So cool! I also nearly bought some Five Fingers shoes, which they had at the mountain climbing shop, but they didn+t have my size. Woe.

We climbed the mountain on the second night. The weather wasn’t great, and they warned us that we might not get to see anything. When we got to the top it looked like that would be the case. A fog had come up about 10 minutes before we got to the top, and we could’t see very far at all. But after we’d waited around for about an hour, the fog started clearing. The mountain wasn’t doing much, but at least we could now see an occasional red glow. But soon the mountain got bored of toying with us and did some exploding. We got quite a few of the explosions on video. There was one in particular that was huge, with a long stream of lava going about 50m up in the air. Really impressive.

Last night we got the overnight ferry up to Naples. We had a cabin, with our own boathroom, complete with shower! Pretty nifty. Oooh, and how could I forget - on the way to Stromboli we went on a hydrofoil! Physics is awesome.

We’re going to be in Naples for 3 nights. We’re planning to take it easy today, and then spend a couple of days exploring Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the local archiology museum, which the brochures and the hostel guy both call “the best in the world”. I imagine they’ve got some pretty cool stuff. Then we’re off to sea again, by another overnight ferry. We’re going to spend about a third of our nights on boats this holiday. Hooray!

Btw: I’ve got the hang of saying “si” now. It clicked on our first day on Stromboli, as did “Gratzie”. I’m going to have all sorts of trouble stopping it when I get back