Villa Cimbrone

Posted by hil

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At the seaward end of the buttress or cliffs you can see sticking out above the hills in this photo is the site of Villa Cimbrone, an historic house and garden estate in Ravello. The house, some of which dates from the 11th century is now an eyebrow hotel. Their site has details of the history and descriptions of the garden. The gardens were redone extensively in the early 1900’s, and are open to the public. I was interested in seeing them because, among other famous people, the Bloomsbury Group used to hang out there, and yes, it was quite possible to imagine them there. The gardens are extensive, and a mixture of very formal and ‘pretty little wildernesses’.

Looking back to the entrance tower.

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The beautiful flowering wisteria along the Avenue of Immensity.

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The belvedere on the Terrace of Infinity.

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The famous view out to sea and the horizon (in the opposite direction to the one above!) is indeed as beautiful as reputed, but I only seemed to get good photos of the view down, which was also amazing!

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Hotel guests having tea – or is it coffee – and newspapers.

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For some reason these rose gardens were where I imagined the Bloomsbury’s hanging out.

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There were many sculptures, including one in a grotto. I liked this one of David best. We read it was a Donatello, but googling suggests otherwise, that it’s by Neapolitan sculptor Gioacchino Varlese.

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Ravello

Posted by hil

I’d thought of the Amalfi coast as a collection of quite distinct individual towns strung out along a coastline, but it is more of an entity than that. They tend to blend into one another as much as the landscape allows, and together occupy a relatively small area. The hill towns are not inland but high up, overlooking the coastal towns. By chance we stayed in one of them, Ravello, and it was lovely!

This seemed the iconic photo of the place for me. The hills are beautiful, steep, heavily terraced and gardened, and everywhere there are lemons!

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The roads are narrow and windy. The locals and the buses have negotiating the hairpin bends down to a fine art, using a language of toots to communicate and choreograph the traffic. This is an example of how cars are garaged. Just along the road I saw a couple of ponies being tethered in a similar but more open area.

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Michael going up the steps to the place we stayed.

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Our B&B had a very pretty terrace where we had breakfast when the weather was warm.

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Looking out from there, down toward Minori, there was always a different sky and mood.

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Early morning.

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Amusing water fountains

Posted by hil

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This amusing water fountain is on the main street in Amalfi. Here’s a close up so you can see how busy it is, even under the water!

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And this one was in the main square:

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Decorative wall ceramics in Amalfi

Posted by hil

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Here are some of the decorative wall ceramics in the towns of the Amalfi coast. The photo above is a favourite, of a lovely ceramic on an abandoned factory wall on our walk from Ravello to Atrani and Amalfi, through the Valle del Dragone. The following ones were in Amalfi itself.

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A modern abstract one:

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The story of making bread:

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Outside a fishmonger’s shop:

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Another favourite – a religious procession:

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Duomo, Salerno

Posted by hil

We came across the Duomo in Salerno, too. The portico looked more like a relic than that of a active church. There are very old sarcophagi, frescos and bass reliefs so worn away they were mere suggestions.

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Inside were beautifully intricate decorative mosaics pulpits.

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I’d forgotten how there are separate shrines along the side aisles of Catholic churches, and how  ornate and graphically macabre the imagery tends to be.  I found myself thinking how appropriate the imagery in the climactic scene of Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was.

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Carotenuto’s Painted Presepe

Posted by hil

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In Salerno, after exploring the Duomo, we found an exhibition of the Painted Presepe by Salerno artist Mario Carotenuto in a dark room open to the street. We just chanced to look in and see that we could enter. It was eerie – a nativity scene made with 157 life-size cut-outs of people – religious staples, historical people and everyday people – painted on really thick plywood.

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From Greece to Italy

Posted by hil

So we have made our way from Crete to Ravello on the Amafi Coast in Italy. Crete to Patreaus (the port in Athens) by overnight ferry, bus to Patra, and an overnight ferry to Bari, a night in Bari, train to Salerno, a night in Salerno, then car to Ravello. (Actually we have already left Ravello, but I’m backdating the post!)

This very little kitten was travelling on one of the ferries – very cute! The young woman seemed very pleased;  she said she had found it and was feeding it every 3 hours. I was surprised because there were so many cats on Crete, that finding a stray to keep wouldn’t have seemed a coup!

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I enjoyed watching all the prime-movers doing their thing at each end. In Piraeus they were all lined up waiting to zip onto the ferry to pick up their containers.

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In Patra the ferry was delayed by six hours until midnight because there were May day strikes, so it was a really long day. Because there were no lockers we could use for our bags, we couldn’t really move around much, and holed up at a cafe in one of the squares. It had free wifi, and they didn’t seem to mind us just hanging there for the price of an occasional drink. In fact they brought us iced water. And a lot of people were just hanging – playing cards, playing backgammon, talking. Everyone seemed to be smoking heavily too, I ended up with a foggy head. There was this nice piece of street art though.

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We enjoyed Bari, an unexpected stop because the delay with the ferry meant we arrived there too late to catch a train to Salerno that day. There didn’t seem to be very many people on the ferry, and when we disembarked it was just a trickle of us straight onto the dock amid all the semi-trailers roaring off the ferry. We walked in the direction we guessed was right and the passport control consisted of a few of us being waved in one door and out another of a little building on the dock perimeter!

The show advertised here is presumably a satire…

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A young woman watching some bare-chested soccer players in a park below the old town wall.

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Preparations for the festival of St Nicolas were in progress.

San Nicola la Strada celebrates patron saint, San Nicola di Bari, in April. The statue from the Church of St Maria of the Angels is carried in procession and comes to rest in front of the church… Beautiful lighted screens light the way.

This one was set up behind a statue of St Nicolas outside the church dedicated to him.

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The largest screens formed this huge airy cathedral structure in one of the plazas. I thought I might like it best as it was, white and unlit, rather than mulit-coloured.

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The unlit structure at night.

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A shop in one of the old town lane-ways. The old town was a busy place, with lots going on behind open but curtained doorways.

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Unexpected blue associations

Posted by hil

So here’s an interesting thing! In Xania there were numerous shops selling blue and silver jewellery like this, as if it were a Cretan specialty.

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I kept wondering what kind of stone it was and kept coming back to opal, but opal is Australian, right? And then I saw a brooch that was a kangaroo! I had to ask, and sure enough it was opal all the way from Australia. Someone must have decided that the blue was so evocative of Crete (and it absolutely is) that people in quantity would buy it. And I guess if it does good things for you, why not?

Agios Roumeli

Posted by hil

A few photos taken after the walk down Samaria Gorge.

Michael on the beach at Agios Roumeli, the sea village at the end of the gorge walk. I had intended having a swim, but there wasn’t really time. A paddle followed by banking up the hot stones around my legs felt like very good therapy for tired muscles!

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The Neptune, the little boat that took us to Sougia, the next little place along the coast to the west, where the bus was waiting.

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Can you believe the colour of the sea?! Beautiful! Cyclops’s cave was said to be around here, perhaps it was one of those?

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Or one of these? To get an idea of the scale of the landscape, if you look closely, there are two specks in the middle of the photo that are people.

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The mountain countryside on the way back to Xania was green and often farmed. We passed through areas that grow nuts of various sorts as well as olives and citrus.

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