Michael Visits: Ischia

April 23rd

Today's adventure is long/there are a lot of photos (several of them are Michael's).  
Maybe grab a drink and a snack before you dig into this one.

Last night Michael and I decided it would be fun to explore Ischia.  This involved getting up at 04:30 so we could catch the early ferry out and have a reasonable amount of time on the island.

We made it down to the Pozzouli port, where....we didn't exactly know where to go.  We parked in a random spot and wandered over to where a gate guard was hanging out.  I showed him my ticket and he directed me to the ferry office (through my broken Italian).  We got our official tickets and then dove over to the dock to get in line.  We were maybe one of three cars who were there the requested one hour before departure time.  So we sat and watched people mucking about and about a dozen trucks carrying extremely flammable materials go buy.  I think a Michael Bay film must have been somewhere nearby. 

06:00 the ferry arrives!  

The people who came off it must have gotten up even earlier than we did.  

You have to back on to the ferry.  My car is little and I was early in line, so I turned around in the ferry.  I failed to understand where the ferry guys wanted me to park though and ended up with a nice man turning my steering wheel for me to get me where they wanted the car.

And now for several sunrise photos.  Enjoy!

We went inside and sat for a bit.  The ferry ride was supposed to be a little over an hour long.

First views of Ischia!

The Ischia harbor.

We decided to drive over to some hot springs that are on the South-West (Sant'Angelo) side of the island.  The port is on the North-East side of the island.  Michael GoPro video taped the drive.  It makes me dizzy to watch. 

Views at an overlook.  It's still foggy/misty:

Somewhere on the way to the hot springs I turned down what probably really is a pedestrian only alley way.  Michael got to do a 37-point turn to get us turned around so I could go back down the alley and go the correct route.  I probably should have just backed down.

I also passed the parking area for the springs.  There was no turn around so I just backed up down the road a bit.  I learned from the previous incident.

The springs are at the bottom of a cliff that has many stairs.  

When we arrived the only other person there was a guy setting things up at the restaurant which you can see in the top right of the photo below.

The springs are volcano heated 

I was not paying attention to Michael's phone when it was taking photos.

The springs are a mixture of sea water and geothermally heated water.  I believe in Ischia's case, it's from an underground volcano.  As you sat in the pools you would have to swish the water around a bit to keep it at a comfortable temperature.  If you didn't the parts of you within the top few centimeters of the surface would get uncomfortably hot and the lower parts would get cold.

We had the place to ourselves for a good hour or so and then some locals started showing up, and then a tour group.  We decided this meant we should move on.

We got breakfast at the hotel at the top of the stairs.

Some graffiti along the stairs.

A view from the hotel parking lot.  The hot springs are behind us.

Our next adventure on Ischia took us to find the hotel/restaurant run by Michael's dad's buddy's family.  Or something like that.

We found it.  They were very nice.  We had a lovely chat and then wandered over to the town of Forio to do some more exploring.

The docks by our LEGAL parking spot.  I was amazed we found legit parking.

The main town road.  It is pedestrian only.

This fountain looks like something out of a Dali painting.

This shop looks like something out of an animated Disney movie.

We had to visit some churches, so we did.

Church of Santa Maria Visitapoveri:

Church of Our Lady of Aid (and view):

This was in the church.  Apparently Our Lady is clubbing people who get in her way.

We found the first (as told to us by the other hotel people) hotel on Ischia, which is also owned by Michael's dad's buddy's family.  Or something.

I don't know what this weird little structure thing is, but I am happily eating gelato in front of it.

Another view of the harbor in Forio.

Now's probably a good time for an Intermission.  Go get another drink, more snacks, use the bathroom, whatever.  I'll wait.

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Ready?  Okay!

We climbed back into the car and drove around the top part of the island, past our port, and to the Aragonese Castle.  We parked illegally this time. For sure.  But....so were other people, and we weren't going to be gone too long.  We had to get back to the port to catch our ferry home or we would be stuck here over night.  Not a terrible fate, just unplanned.

The castle was originally built in 474 BC and as with most things that old, it's had many other owners and occupants.  It was mostly destroyed during a British siege in 1809 and later sold to a private owner.  You can only explore a little bit of it, but we explored anyway.

Seems like a good spot for a castle.

Boats! Boats! Boats!

Looking back at the island.

We purchased our tickets and then walked through what we thought was the entry way.

It was this kind of sketchy hallway.

And then we got in an elevator that may have had someone stuck it in.  

He seemed very relieved when the doors opened.

The elevator had these button options.  Two of them are "Don't Touch."

Luckily the elevator took us up to the parts of the castle you can explore.

Oh, did I mention that it reeked of body odor?  Cause it did.  It was gross.

Views from the top:

Ye ancient courtyard.  Now with pretty flowers!

Hey there's a church; let's look in the church.....

Um...What? 

They're doing research on mummies and things in the church.   That's....perfectly normal.
I totally expected this.  Or not. No.  Not at all.  What is going on here?
We did not find out.

Doors!

Who doesn't want to have a drink or something to eat here?

Another view from the top.

My car is that black dot where the dock connects to the road in the top right-ish.  

At least it's still there.

Roman or Greek style church thingie.

More pretty views:

When we left, we walked down the cave like stairway that you were supposed to use to get up to the castle.  I guess we took a handicap/service entrance.  Eitherway, a lot of this was surreal.  I'm not sure how I felt about the whole thing.

Ciao ciao Castello Aragonese!

Driving back to the port.   We were going downhill.

We got to the port a little early, because I was worried about missing the last ferry back to Pozzouli.  We had about 30 minutes to use so we got snacks at a little shop.  Michael got nutella crepes and I got churroitos, or something like that.  Both were basically sugar.  They were good.

Unfortunately, we did not get to see how this truck got on its ferry.  It seemed to long to be able to turn around and we wanted to see what they ended up doing.

Ciao ciao Ischia!

A fishing boat has a flock of seagulls following it off of Procida.

A little lighthouse on the tip of Capo Miseno.  

We pulled back into the Pozzouli port and headed for home.  I think we both may have taken naps or something before finding dinner type food things.  I don't remember.  It was a long, but fun day.

This concludes our adventure for today.

Michael Visits: Carney Park

April 21st

Once upon at time, like 10 years ago, Michael introduced me to geocaching.  I never picked up doing it on my own until a few years ago when my brother got into it.  So naturally, I told him about my failure to find the Carney Park Cache.   He naturally wanted to try finding it.  So we set off with Ta in tow, or her towing us as the case may be.

Last time I went in the park and tried to get to the cache from the top down.  This time we thought we'd try getting to the cache from the bottom outside of the crater.  We parked the car in a spot that was sort of out of the way and then started the steep hike up the roadway that got us "near" were the cache should be.  We saw some pretty views.  Michael took several of these photos, but I don't remember which ones.  Any of the wide panoramas are his for sure.

At some point we may have passed private property, in which was lurking this fellow:

There was quite a bit of tension as we waited to see how German Shepherd would react to us and Ta.

Thankfully he was super friendly and just followed us on our adventure.  We dubbed him "Alfredo."

We got as close as we could to geocache while still on a service road.  This still put us within 100 meters of the cache.  At this point Michael went to explore down the hillside; Alfredo followed.  The above photo doesn't do justice to how steep this hillside is.  At one point I was concerned that Michael and Alfredo had fallen down the hill.  They ended up scrambling back up with little damage (a few scrapes is all and only on Michael).  At this point we both deemed that the cache owner either 1 - input their coordinates incorrectly or 2 - was a jackass.  I hope the former.

We decided to see if we could get over to the power station, but to no avail.  We ultimately gave up and decided to go hike the rim at Carney Park. 

We had a little trouble getting Alfredo to stay at his house once we returned.  He tried to follow us down the hill.  Michael ran down and got the car so we could escape more quickly, hopefully giving Alfredo a hint.  We tried VERY hard not to take him home with us.

Hiking the Rim:

Views down into Carney park and out to the South-East.

We made to the top!

Oh look....a cross?

We stumbled upon some half/mostly buried ruins that Michael explored.  

We also found morel mushrooms.

Yes, that is Michael at the top of the old electrical tower.

Views from the tower:

Looking down into Carney Park.  We started walking up where that little dip is on the left-hand side of the crater and would eventually head down over by the golf course on the right-hand side.

A peek through the gap in the crater.  

Much of the trail beyond the tower Michael climbed was not quite what I would call a trail but I might call it a goat path.  We were unsure a lot of the time if we were still where we were supposed to be.

We made it to the right-hand side of the crater in time to watch the sun set and to take some evening light photos of Ta:

Ta is so pretty!

At this point I figured we should find our way back down.  My phone was dying and it was our primary and only map of the "trails" around the crater.  Neither of us had light of any sort.  We followed the most direct trail down, which lead us to a service gate for the golf course.  As luck would have it, the gate was open because a groundskeeper was messing around with something.  I think we confused him.  We just sort of showed up and strolled through.

I was also unsure when Carney Park closed and didn't know if my car would be stuck in the parking lot.  It turns out Carney Park doesn't close, so this was a moot issue.  We piled into the car and headed home.

This concludes our adventure for today.

Michael Visits: Vietri

April 20th

We had a slow start today.  I let Michael sleep as long as he could in efforts to relieve jet lag.  We talked about doing various hikes, but ended up just going and hanging out at the beach down in Vietri.

The view from the parking lot.  It rained when we brought Dan's parents and my parents here.  Michael got sunshine and fairly clear skies. (He took this photo.)

Woo beach!

I like to come to Vietri to collect beach glass/ceramics as you may already know.  

I picked up a haul this time as well.

Panorama of the beach.  

Again, it was a really nice day.  (Michael also took this photo.)

A little moth I saved from the surf.  

I dunno if he made it or not, but I tried.

We headed home from Vietri.  We wanted to be home in time to get pizza with Dan.

This concludes our adventure for today.

Michael Visits: Cuma Ruins

April 19th

We had a week off between guests, but it was a busy week in its own right.  Dan had a lot to do at work and I had a week of training with Navy Relief.

Our friend Michael arrived in the morning on the 19th.  Unsure of how jet-lagged he would be I had no plans for the day.  I took him over to the Cuma Ruins as they are close by and easy to get to.  Since you just saw things about them 2 entries ago, I've only included a few photos of the view.

Michael brought along his 400mm lens so we had some fun with it.

First shot. 

(My lens "zoomed in" all the way.)

Enhance.

(400mm lens "zoomed out" all the way.) 

Enhance. 

(400mm lens "zoomed in" all the way.)

Fun with camera lenses!  Weeeee!

Anyway, this was about all we did today.

This concludes our adventure for today.

Carney Park Mini Adventure

April 12th

I really like geocaching, but I have never been the first person to find a new cache.  I wanted to change that with a cache hidden, but as of yet unfound, in Carney Park.

Carney Park is a park for US service members and their families.  It is inside a defunct volcano and has a pool, golf course, baseball diamonds, soccer fields, hiking trails, and etc.

I dragged Dan and Ta out to explore the trails and hopefully find this undiscovered cache.

The hike up wasn't too bad, though Dan did not have the best shoes for woodsy style hiking.

I found a shiny blue beetle bug thing, which Ta tried to step on.

 I found an amazing view of the bay of Pozzouli.

I did not, however, find the cache.  I couldn't even get near where it was supposed to be without possibly falling down the outside of the volcano crater.  I thought Dan might get mad at me if I did that, so I gave up.  I will look again another day. 

On our hike down we elected to take the steep but faster route.  This may have been a mistake.  Dan ended up twisting his knee and Ta kept trying to pull me down the trail.  I am surprised a twisted knee was the worst of it.

Maura's Parents Visit: Cuma Ruins

April 9th

The Cuma Ruins are a in the Cuma Archaeological Park about ten minutes from our house.  The acropolis of Cuma was built around the 8th century BC.  Virgil describes Cuma in book six of The Aeneid as the cave of the Sibyl.

This is the Antro della Sibilla.

This is where the Cumean Sybil would have written oracles on oak leaves.

In actuality it was probably a Roman military tunnel. 

A beautiful avenue outside of the tunnels.

Mom and Ta posing with an old entry into the tunnels.

We climbed up the hill to enjoy some beautiful vistas.

Ta was not sure why she was sitting on the stone bench.  We had to hold her in place.

Lizard!  These guys are everywhere. 

We climbed up the last bit of the hill to get another great view.

We are fabulous in our arches.

A peek at the inaccessible ruins from up at Jupiter's Temple.

In the middle of the tree line is  Arco Felice (Happy Arch).

Dad in the Temple of Jupiter's ruins.

We decided to go try to find the beach access.  This proved difficult.  The road that runs parallel to the beach is all built up with failed or closed resorts and businesses.  It's kind of super sketchy.

We did eventually find a place to get out to the beach and went for a walk.

This concludes our Cuma adventure for today.

It also concludes my parents' visit to Italy.  

They flew out on the 10th and had no problems getting home.