Tomorrow we start back towards Rome. We’ve decided that we’re too tired of single-day stops with uncertain accomodation to do it in Florence too, so we’ll be leaving Florence for another trip. Instead we’re going to go straight back to Rome, to a hostel we know and which is very close to the train station, and everything is easy. We’ll probably check out the Spanish Steps, which we didn’t get to the first time round.

This appears to be a universal natural law. More investigation is needed, although plenty of preliminary evidence has been collected in the last three days, and will soon be published online for other interested observers of the natural world.

In other news, Venice was pretty cool. Lots of very twisty streets, random funky bridges over random little canals, lots of shops selling pretty glass things. Steve was very patient with my obsession with the pretties - he waited outside so many glass shops… Mmm, pretty things… We had the obligatory gondola ride, too. I’ve turned into a bit of a nautical geek, and spent some time pondering the rules of right-of-way. Because of how the gondolas are paddled, they have to keep to the left - which means that the usual rule of passing to starboard just doesn’t work, especially in narrow canals. So how does it work? etc, etc.

Anyway, gotta go now to catch our scenic train….

I’ve been pondering how I’m going to continue sailing. I don’t want to forget what I’ve learned. Every winter for the last few years I decide that this summer I’m going to do some sailing, and every summer I forget. I think my mistake is in leaving it to summer to do something about it, so I’m planning to sort something out as soon as I get back. I’m thinking of joining a sailing club & signing up for crewing (in the lowest, least pressure, division, at least to start off with). The certification that we’ve done here is also done in Australia, so I should be able to progress on to Flotilla Skipper, and maybe even Bareboat Skipper. But mostly I just want to do more sailing…

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But when I went to Centrelink’s website and pressed the “Login” button, all I got was a “Service Unavailable” page. Grr. I suppose that at least this time I got it before I’d started, rather than at the very end of the reporting process, which is what usually happens.

Sigh.

In other news: sailing is awesome. more details later, time to meet the rest of the crew for dinner… 

• We nearly missed our train to Rome this morning. Lesson: look for the train number, not the destination. But then our train got to Rome mysteriously 2 hours before we thought it would. I think this was related to point 1 - it went through to Milan, and the “arrival” time we had was for there, not for Rome. Getting to Rome earlier meant we were just in time for an earlier train than the one we’d ooriginally planned to catch. And because we have a rail pass, we didn’t have to go wait in a line to buy tickets - because it was a regional train we didn’t neead to reserve a seat, and could just hop on. So we got to Ancona about 3 hours earlier than we were going to before, which gave us a nice comfortable 4 hours to find the port, buy ferry tickets, check our bags, visit a pharmacy, get an Internet fix, and find some dinner. Sweet.
• More below the fold, with pictures…

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Day 1

• Naples appears chaotic, messy and a bit seedy, especially after the peaceful small island we’ve come from
• We’re pretty tired after our climb, a day of wandering around, a late night waiting for the ferry & getting settled on board (queuing for cabin key, etc), not quite enough sleep on the ferry (they woke us up at 7:30, after leaving Stromboli after 11), and carrying our big bags through Naples & on the bus. Also, Steve was feeling a bit sick. So we slacked off & sat around in the hostel all day.

Day 2

• Steve, in his own words, “turned into a snot producing machine”. We decided to take it easy and skip Herculaneum. In the morning we went to the National Archeology Museum, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, Steve spent most of his time sitting on any bench or chair he could find, and I was walking pretty slowly and carefully too, having caught whatever it was the Steve has.
• Some of the highlights of the museum: the mosaics from Pompeii; the dodgy pictures & phallic protection charms (with bells and cute little wings) in the “Secret Room”, also from Pompeii; a amusing trio of giggling 14 year old boys in the Secret Room; and ancient (ie, pre Roman Empire) safety pins.
• In the afternoon we both collapsed in our room going “blergh”, and did as little as possible.

Day 3

• Today we went to Pompeii. Steve was feeling better, and I seem to have so far escaped anything worse than a constant slight headache. So we were able to make a pretty good attempt at Pompeii. We didn’t see everything, but we saw a good deal. I don’t think it’s possible to see it all in one day, because there are no toilets on the inside.
• Highlights: the House of the Faun, the bakery, the “lupenarium”.
• Lowlights: forgetting my hat, sunscreen and knee-braces. Luckily I still had Nurofen in my bag from the Vatican excursion, and I’d brought my umbrella as a charm against rain, so I had something to make shade.
• When we got back, we had to rush to get all our chores done, because we leave tomorrow morning for Croatia. We got our train reservations at the station when we came back from Pompeii, then stopped off at the hostel for laundry and photo storage devices. We’ve been running short on storage space for a few days now, having been unable to find any internet places with DVD burners. So we left our laundry with the very kind people at the laundromat, who bumped us up the queue when they found out that we actually, really couldn’t get it back tomorrow, and headed off to look for somewhere, anywhere with a DVD burner. We headed up to an internet place recommended by the laundromat people, but they didn’t have one. We decided to follow the road up in the direction of the museum, as Steve remembered seeing a camera shop there. By this time we were thinking that we’d just have to buy more USB or camera cards. So we walked up the road, in the drizzle, past many second hand bookshops, none of which appeared to have English sections (it was torture :P). Eventually Steve said something to the effect of “I suppose we’d better turn back”, and I said - pointing at the shop immediately in front of us - “photo shop”. It was amusing. They did have a burner, and set our 4 or so gigs of photos to burning. After quite a while, Steve had to run off to the laundromat to pick up our clothes just before closing time. About 5 minutes later I got our photos and set off back to the laundromat. I made one wrong turn, and it was raining pretty hard, but the trip was otherwise uneventful. Steve and I helped the laundry people to fold our clothes and headed back to the hostel to drop them off.
• For dinner we went to a pizza place recommended by our Lonely Planet, and it was good. They only make two sorts of pizza there: margherita and marinara. There was a take-a-number system to get a table. We were seated at a table for 4, with the couple who were next in line. They were on holiday from Germany. By the time we left the line had got much longer. Steve and I stopped off for gelato on the way home.

Tomorrow

• We catch the train to Rome at 9:45, and from there head to Ancona. We have about an hour in Ancona to organise ferry tickets to Zadar. We’ve done our research, so that hopefully won’t be a problem. The ferry to Zadar is another overnight one, and we get there at 9am. Then we hang around there for most of the day, probably checking out their Sea Organ, which looks pretty nifty. Then we catch the bus down to Murter, where our sailing trip leaves the next day.

Commentary

• This was supposed to be brief. Oh well…

Then went to Stomboli, where, it turns out, the tap water isn’t drinkable. This was a bit of a disaster, as we’d arrived, at the end of a long day of travel, with about half a litre of water between us. We were going to have to buy some water. And then keep buying water for the next several days!

The amusing part is that Steve and I, without any consultation, both came down to breakfast the next day with the same idea: free breakfast == free liquid. We had both realised that breakfast was now an occasion not just to stock up on food for the day, but also to stock up on water. That first morning I drank a glass of juice, a glass of water and a whole pot of tea (about 2.75)  cups worth.

Free breakfast seems to be a standard thing. On Stromboli we were staying in a hotel, because nowhere else replied to email. But in Rome and here in Naples, and on all the brochures I’ve seen, the hostels provide free breafast. It’s not necessarily very interesting or very good, but it’s free. And as poor travelling students, we make sure we get what we can out of it… At the hostel in Rome they also had free pasta dinner. It was very basic - pasta, with a bit of tomato-based sauce, and an even littler bit of token vegetable. But with that, free breakfast, and Steve’s conference lunch, we were spending about €3 a day on food (for my lunch). Sweet.

Since then, of course, we’ve been paying a bit more, but I think we’re doing pretty well. €2 or €3 each for lunch, about €15 between us for dinner, and maybe about €3 on fruit and bread and biscuits for snacks. Food here is pretty cheap.

Anyway, lunchtime…

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

BTW, I’ve discovered that my camera can make the pictures smaller, but the Internet cafe is closing soon so I don’t have time to mess around. I’ll try to make small pictures next time. For now, a fold:

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