To save you from the 8 million pictures of the past 2 weeks of traveling I have courteously split up these posts and a lovely pickpocket thoughtfully stole my camera on my way home from Spain so you didn’t have to go through the tediousness of pictures of Seville, Granada, Cordoba or Madrid. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Southern Italy first!
Pompeii , Paestum, Padula , Castel del Monte, Trani
Is it bad that they’re all starting to blend into each other? With the bus ride scenery inbetween that rather reminded me of the windows xp background. Pompeii was amazing and creepy, it really is a ghost town, well now with tourists. But the plaster casts of the people at their moments of death was really creepy. Some peaceful, some flailing out, mouth open screaming.
That night the hotel we were staying at provided us dinner at which vegetarian translated into an omelet of just eggs on a bed of iceberg lettuce. But the night didn’t end there, it was a beach resort hotel… in February…Didn’t stop us from going down to the beach and going swimming. With much screaming (on my part) as I realized that it was cold enough to see my breath and the water was a good bit colder.
The next morning we went to the nearby ruins of an ancient Greek town, the temples still largely intact. Their perfect geometry made them oddly hard to draw, the portions of everything had to be just right. That was kind of the theme for the day as next we went to a monastery that was at the most amazing scale, it made you feel quite small but at the same time it wasn’t intimidating, it was peaceful in its seclusion looking up at the town on the hill above it.
The next day we packed up and headed to the next town visiting Castel del Monte on the way which was quite the opposite to a military defense castle, it was apparently an ancient think tank basically, the gathering place of the great minds of the time. Also a great view, you know the important part of any visit. After that we made it to the town we were staying and found ourselves in a rather luxurious renovated convent, wishing we were staying there longer, we found a great little pizza place and spent our time exploring the dead little town. The towns people seemed disturbed by our presence or rather we were the entertainment as everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the Only tourists in the town.
The fun only continues… in the next blog entry that is.