DAY 93

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Charles and Dian went to get coffee at the camp cafe and chatted with Monica, one of the camp staff, while Nicole lingered in bed and read Dracula. True to his word, the chef officially named our pizza "O'Live Me," and even let us keep a copy of the menu. With that we bade farewell to camp Lido Salpi and left for a day's drive up the coast to Pescara.

Nicole and the camp staff

Strange, stilt-fishing shacks unique to the region

Inspired by Dian's sister Monica, we set out on a mission to find gelato, and find it we did. Pulling into Marina di San Vito by chance, the first shop on the left we saw happened to be a hoppin' gelateria! Screeching to a halt, we jumped out of the car and each ordered a cone or cup: Dian, two chocolate scoops, Charles, one scoop of bittersweet chocolate and one scoop lemon, and Nicole, one scoop hazelnut and one a local chocolate and nut mix. We unanimously agreed it was one of, if not the best gelato we had ever had.

Poster for the puppet show!

Treats in hand, we strolled around the town and onto the water's edge. There was a good vibe from the whole place, in part because lots of children were playing happily in the street, couples were sharing coffees, and there were even advertisements for an old style puppet show the next day, which would be held in the local library.

Eventually we left, though we still threatened to come back the next day for the puppet show. We were on the outskirts of Descara when we parked next to a park, deciding to free-camp for the night.

Walking along the fairly upscale strip, Dian and Nicole ducked into a restaurant to use the WC, but upon perusing the oh-so-reasonably priced menu, we decided to eat there, lest we should disturb the residential area we were parked in with our cooking in the van.

The waiter, Enrico, spoke great English (he had been to LA many times as the employee of a cruise ship), and patiently waited as we decided whether we wanted the €1 antipasto or the €1,50. Instead we got a big pizza and some house wine, which was still well within our budget. A hard lesson was learned, however, when the bill revealed there was a coreta, a cover charge, which greatly "enhanced" our tab.

Avoiding the man randomly trying to sell Charles an industrial-sized roll of toilet paper, we left the restaurant. Getting back to our van we saw no other cars were on our street anymore, Though we could not see any signs saying otherwise, we thought it best to move on, and settled on a parking lot a few blocks away.

DAY 92

Tuesday 11 October 2011

A relatively lazy day, that got downright exciting by night.

Charles camped out at the beach for a couple of hours, lounging on a small float boat sitting on the sand and listening to the surf roll in, with endless blue and the city of Manfredonia in the distance. No people to speak of, no ships, just blessed sea and sky. Huge white clouds that eventually burned away, leaving it actually warm with a nice breeze. Nicole drew and walked around and swung on the swings and put up four blog pages, yay! Dian painted rocks she had found while beachcombing, and (by choice) spent the first half of the day in silence. In the afternoon Nicole and Dian rehearsed some songs for their upcoming gig in the village of Piegaro. They decided to give it a trial run, and after ordering the most exotic pizza
on the menu, strolled into the kitchen and serenaded the chef Matteo as he rolled and tossed,with "Funiculi, Funicula" and "Santa Lucia finishing with the very American "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy/Route 66"combo. He was so delighted he not only treated us to our "strong" pizza, he let us name it! We decided to call it "Olive Me," a play on a song Dian has always performed (maybe Charles' very favorite -- he fell in love to that song), and with not much English being understood, they got the joke (and by the next day newly printed menus listed it -- what an honor, to get to name a pizza in Italy!!).

DAY 91

Monday 10 October 2011

We awoke in our little church parking lot sanctuary to an elderly woman gesticulating and speaking rapid Italian in earnest. We took it as the church Altar Society giving us their blessing before we moved on.
Heading for Manfredonia, a town on the peninsula of the Adriatic Sea, we set our GPS for Camp Lido Salpo. James Bond, our navigator (Garmin) couldn't have foreseen the road blocks, but a local at the port forewarned us and said to continue through. Boy were we glad we did! Off the beaten path, but with a beautiful layout ten feet from the beach, we had hot showers, laundry, WiFi, and (drum roll) our very own pizza kitchen! We decided to stay two days.

Photo by Charles

Camping can be relaxing, but our schedule has had us staying only one night in most cases. At Camp Lido Salpi, we relaxed by doing laundry, beach combing, and building a shelf in the closet of the car. The weather was blustery and at one point Nicole thought we could reenact the scene from Lawrence of Arabia where he's trudging across the Sahara. We settled for whistling the theme song while picking sand out of our teeth.

In the camp restaurant

The computer was charged up, and we even got to talk to Dian's mom and dad for 30 minutes on Google Voice. We had pizza for dinner (two mushrooms and one four cheese) and yes, this chef obliged us by throwing the dough in the air. We sent out an e-mail and got many responses in return, which was so heart warming. Nicole and Dian put together a set list for their performance in Umbria, and all the feral cats harmonized.

Photos by Charles

DAY 90

Sunday 9 October 2011

Thanks to Nicole's urging us all to travel along the Amalfi Coast, no matter how treacherous the drive might be, (interesting, considering she would NOT be the one doing the driving), we left camp Villaggio Azzurro and began the journey.


Ciao,Vesuvius



It was undeniably breathtaking, and Charles even said that the drive was fine compared to going through the streets of Salerno. Dian had to stop the car to get a closer look at what looked to be mini-houses on the side of the road, built into the rock. Sure enough, they were miniature buildings with people inside or in tiny boats. These sweet characters (which were possibly representative of real townspeople) showed us a side of the blown up commercial towns along the Amalfi coast that we hadn't expected to see from an area that receives so many visitors.

Though we didn't stop in most of the towns, we finally paused in one, which by the plethora of similar shops, we deduced was famous for its ceramics. We knew we couldn't just leave our rooster bowl by itself, so we bought another that was decorated inside with pomegranates, sunflowers, lemons and grapes.

After a full day of challenging driving, we hunkered down outside a small town's church and free- camped. A hot soup warmed our chilled bodies from the cold outside.

Those Extraordinary Twins?

Double rainbow all the way across the sky!

DAY 89

Saturday 8 October 2011

Showers were the first order of business at Pompeii Camp. Next we checked out, sent an e-mail from the camp restaurant, and walked across the street to buy tickets to view the ancient city of Pompeii. Charles got in free!

We entered the well preserved skeleton of a town, destroyed in 79 AD by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which ironically perfectly preserved it underneath the ash and volcanic rock. Nicole found it especially interesting to walk around its streets and into old homes because her Latin textbook's characters had been set in a time when the city was thriving.

Nicole's Latin textbook followed a character (based on a real person from Pompeii) named Caecilius Iucundi

After roughly three hours of walking amongst the ruins, we set out for a closer look at Mount Vesuvius. We got up about three quarters of the way for a spectacular view of Salerno, but decided to skip walking the mouth of the crater.

Pompeiian peasants running from the lava flow

By evening we had found Camping Villaggio Azzurro nestled in a crevice below a hill town at the start of the Amalfi Coast. We were greeted by a gypsy, who it turns out was a woman in costume for a pirate-themed birthday party for her son. Next we met Woody Allen, or at least he looked like him to us. He said we could use his Internet, and told us he had run the camp for over 40 years- (Woody Allen probably wouldn't have lasted that long).

After a cold beer and hot soup we fell into bed, listening to the light rain pattering on the roof.

DAY 88

Friday 7 October 2011


One of the many beautiful hill towns above the coast



Another view of the dashing Clifford, driving along the coast.

Waking up to the church bells, Dian took a walk on the beach and then up through town, winding back to the van to collect Nicole where they went in search of a restroom.

Nicole took the opportunity to try on

her new outfit while we were rained in.

After a light breakfast we drove through hill country and farmland until we came upon a flea market where Nicole found a dress and jacket and Charles bought some local cheese. As we continued along the coast we got caught in a huge thunder and lightning storm, so we decided to pull over and watch the show while munching on sandwiches from the safety of our van (too bad there was a little leak by the door).

As quickly as it came, the storm passed through, and we headed to Paestum, a Pompeii-like site full of ruins from Vesuvius. We stayed for a couple of hours, free of charge, with umbrellas at the ready, though we never needed them. In fact, the sunlight on the temple columns was even more striking after the rain.

A camp we read about in the Paestum area near a river gave us the heebie jeebies, so we hightailed it the 40km to Salerno. Then all hell broke loose. Charles had to drive, white knuckled, through the busy, narrow streets, in the rain at night. When we finally found another camp, we learned that three football (soccer) teams from Nigeria were staying there with their families, and would be returning from the game that night, either deliriously happy (loud) or completely dejected (loud). We opted to drive on to Pompeii.

And you thought Italy was romantic.

FINALLY by 9PM we pulled into Camp Pompeii, directly across from the ruins. Even though the WiFi wasn't free and the price was steep, we were in no position to bargain. After pulling into a space, we walked up the driveway to have pizza and beer. Big beers. Our first pizza chef to throw the dough in the air and catch it.

We're saved!

DAY 87

Thursday 6 October 2011

Before leaving the marina we introduced ourselves to and shared coffee with seasoned campers Wolfgang and Gisella. They generously gave us a map of Europe, and another highlighting all the good FREE camping spots in Italy.

We said auf wiedersehen to the couple and drove on.

Home is where you'd least expect it. Along this road
we also saw signs for "Florida" and "San Diego"

Feeling a bit peckish, we lunched outside a Lidl that looked out on a castle on a hill. We had to leave the sea momentarily in order to end up on the opposite side of the coast, so we boldly went through small, unpaved roads that more often than not turned out to be under construction or a dead end, and we even forded a mighty river (or 6-inch stream, depending on how you looked at it) with Nicole singing the theme to Indiana Jones in the background. Let us remind you that we do not have 4WD.

It was unavoidable traveling through the congested city of Calanzaro, and just when we were about to give up on GPS-James Bond and the labyrinth of streets he was failing to navigate, 007 emerged in the flesh. He spoke no English, but un poco espanol, which Dian and Nicole were able to understand. After considering the thought of telling us how to get out of the city verbally, he thought better and actually acted as our personal escort out of town in his own car.

The sights were beautiful thereafter and because of the waning daylight, we settled into a town called Scario, where we free-camped. The town was quaint, and we chatted with a few of the storeowners. One man explained that the surrounding area had many caves holding archaeological artifacts, but the people there were “not smart enough” to protect them or make something of them. Our last stop was at Anna’s grocery store where we bought a chocolate muffin to share for dessert. Pasta and “Puddn’head” summed up our evening…except for the church bell that sounded every. fifteen. minutes.

Tile artwork in Scario