Author: cpcrowley

Post by Wynette: We took a little day trip to Galipoli from Lecce. (No, this is not the Galipoli from the movie, but it is a Greek name.)

The train was very local and the funkiest we encountered on trip. But fun.

Galipoli is a small sea-side town on the west side of Italy’s heel.

We had the BEST seafood there. The guide-book said this stew was not to be missed:

These were the best roasted potatoes I ever tasted:

Galipoli was pretty and quiet.

We did see several of these puppety things in various places. Never did figure out what they were. This one is hanging out a second floor window.

Post by Wynette: Doing the laundry is always a highlight of any trip. First you have to find a lavanderia and then you have to figure out how everything works. But in Italy it’s pretty easy. Here we are in Lecce doing the laundry:

Someone had taken a bunch of photographs of people doing non-laundry-related things inside the laundry. You can see them on the wall in the above picture. Below is a close-up of one of the pictures.

This is what we washed (two baskets on the floor, darks and lights):

Posted by Wynette: Here are a few pictures of Sorrento. It was the first stop on our trip and we are returning to the States tomorrow. But I wanted to post a few more things. Always hard to blog about a trip after you return home.

We took a walk above the town the first full day we were there. Here we are looking down onto the Marina Grande.

We ate a lot of sea food in Sorrento:

Here is a school bus:

Here is the main piazza (square) in Sorrento. We saw wisteria blooming all over Italy as they are here:

And here we are looking down from the top of our landing in our B&B (Magi House):

Post by Wynette: We went to Pompeii early in our trip but just now getting around to blogging about it. I wanted to post a few pictures.

The city was buried by volcanic ash and lava when Mount Vesuvius erupted 2000 years ago. They found hollow spaces where people had died and decayed, leaving the shape of their bodies just as they were when they were caught in the lava. Here is a plaster cast that was made from the hollow area the body left behind.

I believe this is an early Roman pedestrian crossing sign:

This is one of the baths. There were some places where frescos are still preserved. Pompei was a grand beautiful place before the volcano.

This was a room inside the brothel. I think the people then were pretty short.  And didn’t mind really hard beds. (Well, maybe they had a mattress.)

Here I am with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

And here is Charlie, same spot.

One of the guide books said to trace a triangle up from the two bumps on Vesuvius so they are joined and that is how high it was before it exploded.

I wish I’d gotten a picture of the roads. You’d see lots of deep ruts made by the chariots. Charlie said he’d read that the chariots had a standard width between the wheels so they’d all fit in the ruts. And when trains arrived in Europe hundreds of years later the engineers made the tracks a standard width, the same as the width between the chariot wheels.

In Lecce:

It wasn’t really that fast but it didn’t stop much. I sat next to kind of a crabby lady. Note how I am innocently reading my Kindle and she is kind of invading my space. She had an iPad but I didn’t think that it in any way trumped my Kindle.

Being gauche Americans we order cappuccino any time of the day. An Italian would only have it in the morning if at all. We decided to try the caffe, straight espresso, looks a bit like mud. This was the only time we tried it (at the El Duomo Bar).