Home again, Home again.

Apparently I can travel faster than I can write.  I made it home Tuesday in the small hours of the morning, but I still have several articles I want to share with you including about my time in Italy and Germany as well as my reflections on and lessons from the trip.  I’ll send those your way over the next week or so. Thanks so much for following along and keeping me company over 18 days and 25,000 plus miles.  It was a fun experience!

Italy

After wrapping up my time in France, I took an early morning flight to Naples, Italy where I had a car service waiting to drive me about an hour and a half to a little seaside town on the Amalfi Coast called Positano.  During the planning stages of the trip I read that parking a car in Positano is a difficulty on par with splitting the atom, so I decided to save myself the frustration and just use the aforementioned car service.  The cost was surprisingly reasonable and talking to the different drivers (I used it for several trips) about the economy, politics, their families, the culture and more was a kick.  Plus, the guy who picked me up from the airport was named Fredo so I instantly felt like I had been dropped onto the set of The Godfather (best movie ever).

When we arrived in Positano, I was reminded of a line from Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London where he described the houses on the narrow street where he lived as “lurching towards one another in queer attitudes, as though they had all been frozen in the act of collapse.”  Imagine pushing an entire town over a steep cliff and then somehow freezing the picture as the houses, buildings and roads spilled toward the sea.  That is Positano.  It’s beautiful, but it seems to defy the laws of physics.

Fredo dropped me off at the Hotel Marincanto where I checked in with the usual questions (Just you? Is that backpack your only luggage?) and then found my way to the hotel restaurant for lunch.  It’s hard to imagine a meal with a better view.  My table was outside on a veranda that was covered with flowers and lemon trees (Limoncello originated on the Amalfi Coast) and looked down the hillside at the crashing waves below.  My waitress was a friendly Italian woman who age-wise could have been my mother and who, like my mom, took joy in providing a good meal. I ordered the ravioli and a beer. She asked me what kind of beer and I told her to surprise me.  “Ah, Peroni for you,” she said.  When I later complimented her on her choice of beers, she brought me another, gratis.  Smiling, she said: “Is good, no?”

Stomach full, I decided to do a little exploring.  As you might imagine from my earlier description, walking the streets of Positano is like doing a Stairmaster workout with the machine on “Everest” mode, but the shops and scenery reward you for the effort.

The itinerary for Italy was designed to give me a little downtime after the breakneck pace of Hong Kong and France.  I had four days instead of three and the only scheduled activity I had was a tour of Pompei and Mount Vesuvius.  The rest of the time was earmarked with exploring Positano, hiking the paths above the town and working.  A typical workday started with breakfast and cappuccinos in the hotel restaurant and then writing, answering emails, calling clients and running trades in my makeshift office on the balcony outside my room.

Makeshift office on the balcony outside my room.

Pompeii and Vesuvius

Visiting the ancient Roman city of Pompeii and the volcano that buried it meant taking a day trip back into Naples.  After the solitude of Positano, Naples felt raw and frenetic.  I met the tour group near the train station and we took a small bus to Pompeii.  Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying the town in 20 feet of volcanic ash.  Heat was the main cause of death, however, with temps reaching nearly 500 degrees Fahrenheit as far as 6 miles away from the crater.

The ash preserved the town, leaving people and animals frozen in time.  The bodies eventually decomposed and left voids in the ash that excavators—hundreds of years later—filled with plaster.  The result were eerie 3D casts that tell the story of those panicked final moments.  After the tour we walked to a local restaurant for pizza (which originated in Naples) and then took the bus to Vesuvius.  From the parking lot it was about a mile hike/climb to the top where steam vents remind you that the volcano is still active (it last erupted during WWII) and where you can see Pompeii off in the distance.

Path of the Gods

I got up early the morning after Naples and worked until about 3 pm.  With a few hours of daylight remaining, I hopped the local bus and road it to the final stop in the Nocelle neighborhood at the very top of Positano. There is a trail there called the Path of the Gods (Il Sentiero degli Dei) that links Positano with the tiny hilltop town of Agerola.  With my limited daylight, I couldn’t hike the entire thing, but I did enough to recognize that the path came by its name honestly.  The views were really breathtaking.  After returning to Nocelle, I thought about taking the stairs—about 1,500 of them—back to my hotel, but descending the dark, uneven stairs without a headlamp seemed like a surefire way to test out my health insurance, so I walked to the bus stop instead and caught the last bus of the evening.

Watching the sun set from the Path of the Gods.

On to Munich

The next morning I packed, had a few final cappuccinos, said goodbye to the staff and then walked up to the rooftop of the hotel (street level) to wait for my ride.  Stepping out the door, I heard a hearty “Bonjourno Joe!” and looked up to see Fredo.  About halfway through the ride to the airport he asked me if I had time to stop for an espresso.  He took me to his local coffee shop and ordered two espressos made with Kimbo, the local brew.  We stood at the bar (there were no seats in the small café) and were each handed a small cup of orange flavored sparkling water to cleanse our palates.  The perfectly pulled espresso shots came 30 seconds later. We clinked glasses, downed the contents in one shot and it was on to Munich.

~ Joe