Dec 31, 2008 – Quiliano, Italy

On New Years Eve we were en route from Orvieto, Italy to St-Raphael, France on the French Riviera.  We stopped half-way in a small town called Quiliano (see Google Map link here).

We had a room in a bed and breakfast located in this building that was huge and cold but I was sick and just wanted to get into bed and stay there.

We were in bed before midnight but kept awake both before and after by the detonation of approximately 1 bezillion firecrackers and other assorted fireworks in these seemingly peaceful streets.

We were served an excellent breakfast in a charming old dining room but, despite this, weren’t unhappy to put Quiliano in the rear view mirror.

Dec 29-30, 2008 – Orvieto, Italy

After getting off the ferry from Greece at Brindisi, our route to Orvieto took us up Italy’s east coast and then through its center to the Rome area before turning north to Orvieto (see Google map link here).

Our guidebooks suggested Orvieto was a nice hill town and it didn’t disappoint.  We stayed down in the new town at the base but made a couple of forays up the hill to visit the old town.

Orvieto was celebrating the season by decorating the old town with lights and hosting a jazz festival that, from the voices we heard around town, had attracted a range of different nationalities.

More evidence of the Christmas season.

These boars run wild in parts of Italy and France and there are shops like this one that specialize in boar products.

There were lights on the facade of this church, but sunset lighting helped make the lighting for this photo more interesting.

Dec 29, 2008 – En route to Orvieto, Italy

We arrived in Brindisi, Italy at about 7:30 am with a plan to drive to Orvieto, Italy, a trip of about 660 kilometers.  By the standard of our trip, this was a long drive for us but we didn’t want to linger too long in the south because the weather reports were calling for more snow.

We had also made arrangements with friends from Victoria, the MacDonalds, to meet in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France and wanted to keep moving north so we wouldn’t have to rush to our rendezvous with them.

There were a couple of good images on the way to Orvieto.  We don’t know what this structure was but it looked so dark and forbidding but at the same time like an elevated restaurant that Allister named it Darth Vader’s Diner.

A little further up the highway on the east coast of Italy, we saw these wharves that we assumed were fishing platforms of some kind.

More than once on this trip I observed how nice it was to have someone to share the driving.

Dec 2, 2009 – Ferry from Brindisi, Italy to Patras, Greece

We stayed an extra day in Paestum, Italy to arrange the ferry trip from Italy to Greece.  Our first decision was whether to take the Italy ferry from Bari or Brindisi which was fairly easy, voyage time from Bari, to the north, is about 2 hours longer than from Brindisi so we decided we’d rather spend the time driving in the car than on a ship.  It also would take a little longer to drive to Bari than Brindisi.

I was thankful again for the Internet and that we are traveling in the off-season.  We knew about a common web site, www.greekferries.gr , maintained by the Greek ferry operators, that provides schedules, costs, and a partially automated on-line booking of their ferries.   We found the name of the line, Endeavor Lines, that operated between Brindisi and Patras and they were sailing the next day, Dec 2rd, leaving at 7:00 pm and arriving in Patras at 10:00 am the following morning.

Endeavor Lines was also offering a family special on inside staterooms and we thought it was worth trying to sleep away as much of the voyage as we could.  We provided our personal information and travel plans through the web site and within an hour or so received an e-mail back from Endeavor’s ticket agent proposing a return trip fare, including stateroom of around 400 Euros for the approximately 15 hour trip.

This may sound like a lot to those used to traveling on BC Ferries but considering we would pay 2 nights accommodation somewhere for 80-90 Euros / night, we thought this was a reasonable deal so we sent back an e-mail confirming our acceptance of their offer and confirming our reservation.

The last time I went between Italy and Greece by ferry was in 1980 and I went from Patras to Brindisi and bought passage on the deck (no stateroom, not even an inside seat). This time, because of the season the deck wasn’t an option and the seat really wasn’t either.  We had to decide between an "inside" and "outside" stateroom.  The difference is that an outside stateroom has a window (which we later learned didn’t open) and was not part of Endeavor’s special family offer so we opted for the inside stateroom.

We arrived in Brindisi and picked up our tickets at the Endeavor office which looked out over our ship – the Ellie T. – shown in the picture below.

We were early for the 3 hour boarding period that began at 4:00 pm so we went back into Brindisi looking for some food for dinner and breakfast.  We saw this road sign and thought we might never again see a road sign directing us to Albania and had to get a picture.

As we drove a bit further, we happened on a herd of goats grazing in urban Brindisi (yet another sight I don’t think you’ll find in Saanichton or Richmond) and the one in the center of the picture had found a prickly pear cactus leaf that it started to work on immediately.  I think this proves quite conclusively that goats can and will eat anything.

When we got to our ferry’s berth for loading, we found a bunch of trucks and containers on trailers ready for loading onto our boat.  These pictures of the trucks waiting to board the ferry made me think of a Thomas the Tank Engine video.   For those who don’t understand this reference, in these children’s videos, Thomas and his railroad engine buddies take on human characteristics and play out a variety of human dramas.  These trucks seemed like kindred spirits of Thomas’.

 

We all had a surprisingly good sleep, despite some weather in the middle of the night that slowed us down and made the ship rock.  I took advantage of the shower (yes!) in our stateroom and hit the deck feeling halfway human and found these views.

A boat from a competing ferry line, Superfast, appeared behind us and over the course of an hour,  caught up and passed our ship which was not nearly as modern as this one.

Then suddenly, we were slowing down and could see Patras and the berth where the Superfast ferry had already docked and the berth where our vessel would unload.

Patras was a bit of a jumble and our first exposure to Greece and its traffic.  I should also add that there is limited GPS coverage of Greek roads and addresses and even though the integrated Peugeot GPS tried to navigate for us, it was quickly apparent that Greece would demand some ‘map on the lap’ support.

We passed through Patras on our way to Delphi and found our route involved crossing this bridge.  Our first glimpse had us scrambling to find a place where we could pull over and take some pictures.  I think we all shared the view that this was the most beautiful and spectacular bridge we’ve seen on our trip to date.  Even the 11 Euro toll didn’t change our minds.

Nov 30 – Dec 1, 2009 – Paestum, Italy – Scenes from our stay

We stayed the Hotel Casale in Paestum and I think were its guests at the time of our visit.  The building in the following picture was where its owners, a couple with a 10 month old baby girl that was just about to start walking lived on the ground floor and the guest rooms were on the upper floor.  We had an excellent room, that retained old world charm with all the modern comforts.

In the summer it would be very nice to lounge at the tables under the big canopies out front.

Adjacent to the guest rooms was the restaurant that was part of the hotel which looked out over open fields and a set of local mountains.  We had dinner at this restaurant both nights and the food was excellent. 

A picture of the owner and his 10 year old daughter.   Both he and his wife were very warm and gracious people.  He spoke Italian and French and she spoke Italian and English but his French was better than her English.

A bonus of this accommodation was the availability of bicycles for use by the guests.  We went for bike rides to the nearby beach and explored the surrounding area both days of our stay.

Laura-Lyn said that in Canada jade plants like these are indoor plants yet we saw them all over Italy, sometimes in some very large bushes.

Between the beach and the housing of Paestum was a treed strip of  land that acted as a buffer between them.  We had never seen a denser growth of trees anywhere.  This photo is trying to show how dark it was in the tunnel through the forest to the beach.

 

Beaches in Italy aren’t like what we’re used to in Canada found in France or Germany.  It seemed as though beach property could be bought or leased because operators had put together sun-bathing concessions on this beach and others we’d seen in Italy.  These concessions included change rooms and other equipment such as sun umbrellas and chairs for sun-worshippers to rent.  They may also have included rights to parts of the beach and control over who used their part of the beach.

At this time of year, none of these concessions were operational so we had the beach to ourselves.  Except for this ultralight and its pilot that passed overhead.

 

On our next visit to the beach we spotted a large number of jellyfishes that had been washed up by the waves or tide.  Allister and Charlotte took it upon themselves to round them up and return them to the water.

I haven’t attempted many of these types of photographs but I was curious about how it might turn out.  This one was quite good.

Nov 30 – Dec 1, 2009 – Paestum, Italy – Greek ruins

Pronounced PAYST-oom, Paestum Italy was another stop on our Roman and Greek antiquities tour.  Believe it or not, Paestum was originally a Greek city founded in the 6th century BC.  The Romans took it over in the 3rd century BC and has one of the best collections of Greek temples in either Greece or Italy.

The site consists of a museum and the ruins site.  We started off with the museum.

 

It contains some well preserved antiquities of various types, all of which were discovered at the site.

The museum also shows this rare example of Greek painting taken from the side of a tomb that shows a diver possibly representing the dive from life to death.

 

After our museum visit and before visiting the site, we made our lunch.  We were befriended by a local dog that kept Laura-Lyn company while she made sandwiches in the back of Jean-Pierre Peugeot.

 

The highlights of the site are three, well-preserved temples Neptune, Hera, and Ceres.

This one, that Charlotte and Allister are bench-pressing, is the Temple of Ceres and it sits at one end of the archaeological site.

This is another view of the Temple of Ceres.

Allister feeling eloquent.

The Temples of Neptune and Hera.  I think Neptune is the closest one and was massive and this huge structure is apparently a classic example of the Doric style.  It was easy to see where Renaissance architects and artists got their inspiration.

Here is a close up picture of the columns of the Temple of Neptune.  One of our guide books claimed this temple is better preserved than the Parthenon in Athens.

 

We returned at night to get this photo of the Temple of Neptune.