“South Peachy , that’s where we’re headed”
Would you believe it we had some wind today and a longish portion of the passage to Scario was under sail. Sorry Susan !
We were hopeful that as we continue South the cost of the marinas would reduce accordingly. Unfortunately the peoples republic of Scario are not signing up to this tacit agreement. The cost for a  night here should’ve been 90 euros! which we managed to get discounted to 40 – still very high considering no showers & toilets. It just seems to be the way of things . The harbours are divided up into concessions and it’s your Donald Duck what the price and facilities turn out to be.
This was one of the places recommended by Adrain the skipper we met in Capri. It is very nice and the people are very friendly, however it doesn’t quite live up to Acciarroli.
We are now back on the  5 and 2 so no visits to hosteleries were allowed ! Bah !
 
The approach to the harbour
 
The shorefront
    

A couple of the less appealing attributes of the town are the birds & bells.
During our normal constitutional last evening one of  the local pigeons decorated Louise’s freshly coiffured mop. They say its lucky though.
Its now 08:00 and the bells, two sets of them have been ringing every 15 minutes throughout the night, no wonder the locals all have big ears, and keeping the cartoon / fable theme running who ate all my breakfast cereal Whiteford ?

Susan left us today at lunchtime to head back to Naples. Her flight isn’t until the 29th but the timing wasn’t good for her to stay another night.

So Captain Chaos is taking a shot of the blog  for the next couple of episodes.

Susan & I managed a swim in the morning before she left in far clearer water than she described in an earlier blog .

We feel a bit flat Susan having left us , however she did provide me with the answer to a burning question which arose one moring when wondering what the Roman Legionaires put on cracked heels ? Apparently it is the rectal fat of a Mongoose.

We had a quiet night with a further walk around Acciaroli followed by a pizza and sleep.

This is a very  pretty wee place that I would recommend and not too far from Naples.

Born free. After a cloudy sky and an  eerily calm sea, finally we get the sail up and spend a very lovely day saililng away from the Amalfi coast and south towards the foot of Italy. At last and it feels great. Skirting some shallows we turn into this lovely little port with even rarer than wind, reasonable facilities. We are all taken with the interesting stone buildings around the harbour, the restored castle and the lovely little sandy beach. This town is famous for the longevity of its inhabitants and medical experts can only tie it down to Rosemary and Anchovies but not necessarily together. Beatiful bars and restaurants and this, dear readers, is where I must sign off and hand you back to the sailors to continue Camira’s blog.
      
Arriverderci Acciaroli, arriverderci Italy. Im off to Naples by train I hope!

We set off from the train station – by bus as it was a Sunday and of course there was engineering works on the line- we think! You get to see some of the back country away from the salubrious resorts and quite a lot of old run down housing and lots of washing. No problem getting it dry – its 90 degrees on the bus.

  

Because of the slow journey we arrive at Herculeneum in the midday heat.Its a bit of a walk from the station again through some dodgy streets at which point Louise says “It looks like the Bronx”. Cue picture.

Its surprising that there isn’t more infrastucture around the site. No signposts for example and few facilities.

 

Armed with our audioguides we descend into the ghostly village and are met with a series of sea side houses filled with skeletons of the unfortunates who failed to escape Vesuvious’s deadly eruption. Its a very difficult sight to forget and the remainder of the tour concentrates of the lifestyles of the people who lived and died in this place.

   

Feeling near death ourselves because of the heat we decide enough is enough and head back to the boat.

Motoring again along the coast we arrive at Salerno, a larger town which we plan to use as a jumping off point to visit Herculaneum. What has been noticeable in this part of Italy and especially in Salerno is the amount of litter and especially in the sea. The termperatures are searing so I went for a swim in the sea. Becausee the sand is volcanic and dark it is a bit like swimming in Bovril. And lets not talk about the litter floating past. We did find one of the best pizza places to eat in the nice wee back streets. It is quite a jumping place but the marina is very basic. To note basic does not mean cheap. It had a shower and wc but only a photograph could capture the austerity of the facilitites.

  

Next on the tourist trail, passing Sorrento, Positano on the way and we arrive by engine into Amalfi, welcomed in by Lucca and a bottle of sparkling stuff, some lemons and a bottle of limoncello.

It is a lovely spot enclosed by high vertiginous mountains and filled with people in shorts and tee shirts. It is very busy though and attracts very big private yachts and cruisers. Personally I felt it lacked soul but it was nice to see it and interesting to walk around. Nice anchovies though.

   

Where is the sailing chat you cry? Well unfortunately there has been no wind since we arrived and we have been forced to join the cavalcade of motor boats cruising the Amalfi Coast. It is like a motoway of boats going to and fro and with some questionable sea skills in evidence.

However the view of the coast is lovely with the terraces of houses and lemon groves going down to the sea.

 

Settle down readers we have a visitor blogging today. Louise  and Gordon nave asked me to write their posts for them because they are exhausted finding words to describe their travels. As I have just arrived everything is interesting and new so I will try and describe. I flew into Naples and with my best attitude found public transport to take me over the hills to the town of Baia on the  Gulf of Naples.  Having navigated all that way to their location I just missed finding them in the bar. By this time I discovered I was proudly dispalying a two for £10 sticker on my boobs. Baia marina is remarkable for the number of motor boats and lack of yachts. This becomes significant later on so keep tuned.
 
Having reaquainted ourselves over several gins we dined in a lovely restaurant where they were carrying fresh fish in as we arrived. We chummed them to the table and had a lovely dinner although they looked different by the time we saw them again. Despite this fabulous food’, Gordon revisited those sea creatures  yet again as an unfortunate bug saw him chatting to the fishes for most of the night.
 
Next morning in stifling heat and a rather poor forecast we set off for the heady and hedonistic destination of Capri. Home of glamourous people and Gracie Fields.
 
We wil gloss over the actual marina costs – they clearly need the money- and imagine instead the gatwick of ferry ports, the car park of superyachts, the logjam of toursits – it burst with frenetic and noisy life.
 
However the showers and bicycles were good, and reintroducing Gordon to food, we dined at the marina – fortunately after the toursits had gone back to Naples.
  
Here we made the aquaintence of our  Capri guide the skipper of a catamaran who sails these seas waxing lyrical  about the most beautiful island in the world. He was frankly appalled we were going to leave in the morning wihout venturing further onto the  island. So having joined him on board he gave us join the dot instructions to cover the next morning in Capri Town. He also though us a Bertie bonus by promising to arrange a berth for us next night in Amalfi which was great as ‘no room at the inn was becoming a much used phrase around these parts. It was definately worth the visit and his advice.
 
The funicular up to Capri town from the port
   
At the top
  
Our 1st walk the wrong but very nice way
   
And aren’t they just ?
    
View from the end , note Ms Whiteford has lemon soap in her hand at this moment
  
You can just smell the money

We left Nettuno at 07:45 in a reasonable swell but no wind, albeit it had been forecast and we were looking forward to a nice downwind sail. It was not to be ,hey ho, that’s Med “sailing” for you. It was a  45 mile, 8 hour motor. The wind did eventually kick in as we approached the promontory about a mile from Gaeta but to be honest it wasn’t worth hoisting the sails just to bring then down again said the skipper, it was also approaching beer o clock !

  

Passing the promontory at Gaeta and the lighthouse built into the cleft (bottom right)

The  area the marina is in is called Port Sant’Antonio and shares the area with a naval base. The old village on the promontory was so severely damaged in WWII that it was virtually abandoned afterwards and a new town was built on the isthmus.

The old quarter seen from our approach

The old quarter around the harbour of Porto Santa Maria is a wonderful place: the streets, vaulted passageways and winding steps rise steeply up the medieval village to the cathedral originally built in the 1106.

  

We went for our usual exploratory stroll

    

Finally a picture of the marina in the background and the old town in the fading sunlight.

We left Porto Di Roma in bright sunshine, it promised to be a hot day, although we hoped we would get a favourable wind a bit later on in the morning.

It was nice to get moving again. I think 7  days is too long in one place , even Rome !  Of the 7 days we only spent 3 actually in the city itself due to rainy weather and chores like laundry, engine oil change and fitting the new toilet that we bought back in Porto Cervo .

 

The shiny new toilet and the cleaned up old one (really nice job) as a spare.

We were headed for either Anzio or Nettuno depending what we thought once we got there. This area was the site of the Allied landings to oust the Germans from Italy during WWII.There are military graveyards at both Anzio for the British and at Nettuno for the Americans.

As we hoped the wind picked up and we had a great beam reach all the way South, it really picked up,as usual, just as we were entering our eventual choice, Nettuno.

The prices in the marinas are now climbing ,as expected. We need to get a shift on to be out of Italy before the really mad season starting in July – August.

Nettuno Marina with the mini Empire State Building in the distance

After the faldara of checking in & paying, involving about a 2 mile walk around the marina, we headed to the American Cemetery.

What a serene place, it is immacualte but very sobering to see the vast amount of graves. They played the last post at sundown,very moving.

     

On a lighter note there is the other usual  American presence –  a McDonalds (right across from the cemetery) and numerous baseball clubs scatterd throughout the town.

We headed back through the old town which was very quaint and as you would expect  Italian, with little alleyways and piazzas and restaurants of all shapes and sizes.

 

It was about 19.00 on Saturday night so we stopped at a suitable hostelry to have a drink and watch the world go by. After the rip off in Rome it was wonderful to have a virtual feast and a couple of drinks for the princely sum of 12 euros, what a difference.

 

Then it was back to the boat for  a shower and our tea before preparing for our next leg to Gaeta a further 44 miles South the next day.

Here we are in Rome, well Porto di Roma marina in Ostia to be precise. It was a toss up between Riva di Traiano marina, 30 miles north of here, and this marina for visiting Rome. This one is closer and has good transport links to Rome. If you watch Gladiator, Ostia is where the army was based waiting on orders from Maximus.

The wind got up as we arrived which makes entry or exit to the marina more challenging, in fact there are warnings in the pilot book highlighting this, however, it wasn’t that bad in practice and we got in safely.

We had a quietish first night, eating at one of the retaurants in the marina and keeping our energy for the next days sightseeing tour of Rome.

We were lucky in that the Pope was holding a Mass at St Peter’s. As far as I’m aware this doesn’t happen every Sunday but today he was holding it for people with disabilities. Irrespective of your religious beliefs, this was something you have to see.

St Peter’s is beautiful.  I don’t have the words to describe or do justice to the architecture so the pictures will need to do that for me. The nicest and very moving part for me was seeing the love that some people had for each other and the faith & hope they get from their religion. 

            

Also on the agenda was the Pantheon

 

Trevi Fountain

 

The Spanish Steps

  

Castel D’Angelo

  

Piazza Navona where our friend Dave proposed to Iain,

     

and a walk along the Tiber River.

    

All in all a fantastic day with some amazing sights of Ancient Rome.

Roll on the next  onslaught of culture.

After a days rest we headed back into the city. Today it was the Forum and the Colosseum. For us to get into the centre of Rome we had to take a bus then a train then the metro, all for the princely sum of 1.50 euros

 

We got off the Metro and walked round the corner to be blown away by the sight of the Colosseum, it is fantastic, other than Gordon reciting phrases from Gladiator!

      

After taking a wander round the building we headed for the queue for tickets to get in. The touts trying to sell tours tell you the queue will take two hours but in fact it only took about 40 minutes but it was well worth the wait. We got the audio guide which was very good and meant you could go at your own pace.

           

After lunch in a  great wee restaurant we just happend on by chance , we headed for the Forum. It turned out to be high up on the trip advisor ratings of restaurants in Rome.

 

Now I must admit, this one I wasn’t really looking forward to. I’m not into ruins and trying to fathom out what part of a building some stones in the ground are part of. However, the Forum is really interesting and a lot of it is still intact enough to make out what you were looking at. The best view is from above where you can actually imagine what it must have been like in days gone by.

           

The whole area, the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus and the Temple of Venus and Rome with the Forum and the Capitol Hill was a fantastic sight and must have been even more so in it’s day.

During our stay here, our friend Susan has decided to come and visit us. We will be picking her up around the Bay of Naples in a weeks time so we are off tomorrow making our way South to get her. We promise Susan, we won’t take you to another country this time……….that is unless you want to?

We have enjoyed out time in Rome but only managed to see a fraction of it. There is so much history here that you couldn’t see it all. However, we think we have managed to visit the places we wanted to and thoroughly enjoyed wandering the streets and soaking up the atmosphere. It would be nicer without so many tourists though! Selfish….me?

After a days sightseeing we went home, uncorked a bottle of red and watched Gladiator on the laptop ,lol.

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