More Italian Adventures

Everyone needs to go to Stromboli! Because everyone needs to see a volcano erupting lava at least once in a lifetime. But on Stromboli, on a typical excursion, you will see about twenty eruptions with real live lava. Almost enough to be scary.

So, I guess you could say that our Sicilian travels ended with a bang. We also made a new friend, Gaetano, who gave us a ride (one at a time, of course) on his Vespa to the campground in Milazzo. We learned lots of Italian while talking to him for a couple of hours over a bottle of wine. (He knew just a couple of English words...)

Berdie and Bronwen (my mom and sister) met us in Sorrento and from there we went to Capri for a night, because Craig and I had found out the day before that you really aren't supposed to drive a camper onto the Amalfi Coast. We really tried, driving past several people who made valiant attempts to turn us back, but finally had to take it seriously when we heard it from the Caribinieri.

We are now in Rome, and have been practicing "power tourism" for four days. I still will probably want to come back!

-SK
a Roma
May 21

ah... salt water

May 10

After the Aosta valley, we drove to Ravenna, where we camped on the Adriatic. It's been a long time since we've seen salt water! After Ravenna, we drove to San Marino, one of those "novelty" countries (their economy seems to be driven by selling coins and toy guns), and to Naples where we caught an overnight ferry to Sicily. The ferry company, SNAV, seemed to be the least organized of the lot (although they had a pretty good website*), and following the signs to their loading dock deep in the Port of Naples proved a bit challenging. It was impressive, though, watching them load a dockful of semi trucks and trailers onto the boat. I think it took the better part of the day. The bonus of taking the ferry meant that we had free parking for the camper in Naples, so we could wander around the town for a bit in the afternoon.

The other bonus of taking the ferry is that we got to Palermo at 8:00 in the morning, which meant we could find parking there too! We might not have even come to Palermo otherwise, which would have been a shame, since it is so far one of our favorite cities. All in all, we are really enjoying Sicily -- everyone should come here! And May seems to be the perfect time to visit... The island is green (it turns brown in the summer), the wildflowers are blooming, and it is not yet too hot or overrun with tourists. Surprisingly, there are very few individual tourists here... the major sights are dominated by guided groups. If you come, bring guidebooks with lots of information about the sites, most are light on interpretation, even if you can read Italian.

-SK
a Sicilia

*Note: Getting onto the internet in Italy is an adventure in itself. It is fairly easy to find, actually easier than in France, but to use the "Internet Point" we had to show a passport, which they photocopied, and get registered into a some sort of (anti-terrorism, I suspect) database. We were technically supposed to furnish an address in Italy as well.

Happy Birthday to me!

For my birthday, Craig and I skied from Cervinia (Italy) to Zermatt (Switerland) in the shadow of the Matterhorn. This is also the one-year annivesary of my knee accident, so it is pretty monumental. We spent the night in Zermatt and will ski back over into Italy today. The Italian slopes closed yesterday, so we should have them to ourselves, which will be nice. I think this will be the last skiing of the season, which, considering that is May, is not bad.

-SK
a Zermatt

GET WELL SOON MAX AND BONNIE...