The End of This Particular Road

Today we head home. As I am sure our cats will agree, it is time.
It has been a wonderful trip. Full of good experiences, good food and good friends.
Thanks to everyone who played a part.

Perhaps you have noticed on the blog page under “Welcome to our journey” it says:
So much world. So little time.

I scrolled all the way back to see when I started this blog.
Gasp!
Ten years ago on July 18, 2009 as we prepared to take our trip to celebrate my last big birthday.
That is shocking and sad and shocking and yet....
While we have had absolutely no control over the passage of all that precious time, we are blessed to have enjoyed a great deal of it traveling and to still be here to tell the tales.
Hopefully there will be many, many more years and trips to come.

Meanwhile, I will leave with a photo taken off of our veranda in our absence by friend, photographer, and cat sitter extraordinaire, Michael Barrrett. I wonder how close Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic are to offering flights....I would be willing to change the slogan to:
So much universe. So little time.  

Happy Trails.

Jersey

Last day here in Jersey.
The weather started off dreary and drizzling but we had a lovely day in the end.
In fact I just came in from sitting out in the sunshine by the pool. Granted I was fully clothed and then some but the sun was still warm and the skies are clear and blue.
Had breakfast and lunch at different locations along the shore.
(Oh, I don’t believe I mentioned that I ate my first oyster yesterday....also my last oyster, thank you....but I’ve checked that off the list, finally.)
We even saw some Jersey cows to add to our red squirrel sighting at the beginning of our trip.
All in all a very relaxing few days with old friends and new friends in a really magical place.

Happy FryDay

Drizzly day here in Jersey But a good day for visiting the Jersey War Tunnels Museum. Very interesting and timely given D-Day anniversary activities yesterday. Imagine having been aware of the D-Day landings ....so close by...and then not being liberated yourself for nearly another year.

Afterwards lunch where I chose to order fish and chips completely unaware until just now that today is

Supercalifragilisticexpi-cappadocia

Yes, I will get back the title of this blog later, but first catching up.

We left Naples Tuesday morning and flew through London and on to the Isle of Jersey (technically the Bailiwick of Jersey), one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy, France to visit friends of ours who have a house here.

What a lovely place. Not 50% bigger than Anguilla but with almost 10 times as many people. Cliffs along the northern shore. Adorable little villages. French names, English pubs, and beaches all over. In further contrast to Anguilla where the tides hardly change at all...here the tides are nearly 40 feet. And on the south east side of the island the water can recede almost TWO MILES. So the beaches change every day from big to massive and boats spend their days alternately being lifted by the sea and then left stranded on the dry bottom over and over and over again.
(Sorry, But I have no photos yet. We went out yesterday exploring but we are apparently so relaxed that we didn’t even take the phone with us. So I promise some later.)

Just a few days here and then finally we head home. Michael always wants to start planning our next trip before we finish our current one so the search is on. Coincidentally, amazon offered up a book suggestion to me for the flight over here. So I read a little story called Valencia and Valentine and captured this quote:

“I approached the ticket counter with a sense of accomplishment, knowing I had already completed the part of the journey that keeps most people from making it in the first place. I had decided to go.”

That seemed apropos. The character in the book goes on adventures with her husband where they pick a place out of hat (So to speak) from a bunch of locations that struck their fancy based solely on their unusual names. One of the places they go is Cappadocia...taking a balloon ride above the natural rock formations that look like fairy chimneys. It’s just a brief mention in a long list of crazy places they spontaneously visit.

Meanwhile, on the same short flight, Michael flipped through the British airways magazine and reached over to point out an article about ideas for travel destinations which included one photo and a three short paragraph mention of a place he has never heard of.........Cappadocia. Do I know it?

Hmmmm.......perhaps......seems a bit more likely that I will.

Vesuvius from the car today

Last Full Day on the Amalfi Coast

We have been really lucky so far. The weather hasn’t been 100% perfect but it has been accommodating when we needed it to be.  Yesterday afternoon was he only really rainy time and we were staying out here in Amalfi anyway after two days of ferrying around to Positano and Capri.

Fantastic gelato for lunch and a lovely dinner last night (we actually tried grilled octopus) more than made up for the weather.

Today we took the bus up, up and up to Ravello. What a lovely little town. A pretty Piazza del Duomo for some Campari spritz with lots of local cats. And stunning views down the coast to Maiori. The clouds came and went but the rain stayed away. And upon our return to Amalfi the beach was a very busy place.

We will have another nice dinner under the lemon trees tonight and then head back to Naples tomorrow.  :-(

The Bells. The Bells.

Today is a day of rest. No jumping on ferries to visit other towns on the amalfi coast. Leisurely breakfast. Stroll through town. Wine and cherries for lunch on our hotel veranda. 

Which placed us in the perfect position to enjoy the bells at noon. They go on FOREVER but here is a link to a snippet where you can hear and see the big bell tolling (I was clearly intrigued by the fact that it swings up halfway and then much farther the next time and then halfway etc. ....you all let me down on the ‘rabid dog at Mary’s feet’ question, but anybody know the why of this?)

https://youtu.be/9LfvuLOkrqA

Amalfi Coast

Another bucket list destination (will we ever run out of them?), was the Amalfi Coast. Of all of the places to stay, we chose Amalfi. Primarily because there are less steps here than in Positano. However, having done our day trip to Positano, we appreciate other benefits to staying here. There is a nice long sea front with a beach and a wide street sloping though the town while in Positano it is beach or up up up. No in between. But we have been now so no regrets

And Capri. Well, that is the place of dreams. So we went there as well. At first, arriving in the marina was a real disappointment. I mean, one cannot imagine why anyone would ever step foot on the island. But then you take the funicular up to the town of Capri and it all becomes apparent. There you find the views and a maze of chic high end boutiques and the piazzetta and the very obvious distinction between we day-trippers and the folks who “belong” there.

So check, check, and a lunch check. (Oh and the promised first actual view of Vesuvius in as much as you could not see anything but the base on the drive down from Naples. But yesterday it was clearly visible across the bay.)

Herculaneum and Pompeii

Catching up a bit here.
First a side note. Yesterday Mt. Etna erupted for the first time this year. And we missed it by four days. Is that good or bad? Bad, I think as I don’t believe it impacted flights out of Catania. And it would have been cool to see.
Oh well. Life is Chance.

During those intervening days we have done and seen a lot of other things. On the way from Naples down to Amalfi we stopped to tour the archeological ruins at Herculaneum and Pompeii. There are lots and lots and lots of rocks and bricks and walls and columns. And really the size of Pompeii is pretty incredible. In general I would say that we were somewhat unimpressed in as much as the sites didn’t quite live up to the much anticipated hype that the weight of a lifetime of longing to see them lays down on one’s expectations. But that is undoubtedly our fault more than theirs. And it may be more a product of the fact that the truly amazing aspects of the site are not really for the seeing but for the learning. For instance, when I googled to see how they created the castings of the victims (including the dog in the pictures below), I found this link not just about the process of making the casting so long ago but all of the information that modern science has managed to glean from them since. Worth a quick read.
https://m.ranker.com/list/facts-about-bodies-at-pompeii/andy-miller