Walking Italy's Amalfi Coast by Peasie

[RichD]

nice report

did you spend any time in Naples?

struck me as a very dangerous place.

[Peasie]

nice report did you spend any time in Naples? struck me as a very dangerous place.

I see you were just looking at pictures and not reading the text . I was in Naples (Napoli) for three days. It was a run down city and seems disorganized. But I loved its charm - except for the underground Naples excursion, I would go back. I will bring in the pictures of the Naples Archeological Museum a little later. Warning: those pictures are not for those offended by ancient erotica.

[RichD]

I see you were just looking at pictures and not reading the text . I was in Naples (Napoli) for three days. It was a run down city and seems disorganized. But I loved its charm - except for the underground Naples excursion, I would go back. I will bring in the pictures of the Naples Archeological Museum a little later. Warning: those pictures are not for those offended by ancient erotica.

i was going to read the text later

[Tulip]

2 thumbs up on this report. There has always been something so appealing about those alleyways to me. It's hard to describe but it just feels breezy and right. I got just past that and will be back to continue reading in a bit. Oh, also was loving the initial trail walk pics. Clouds just right there. Niceness!

[Peasie]

Thanks for the company, Tulip and RichD and CB and any other sensitive person I forgot to mention. I have lots more to post and this trip report is in no particular order! So I will come back to the trail walks and alleys

[mountaingal]

i'm always up for some ancient erotica so to speak.

nice pix and report ms pz. there's a woman on my team from that region of italy, when things calm dung lickle round here i'll take her thru your post.

[Wahalla]

Pan Vesuvius did dem show u wey Sparticus and his slave army did camp ????

[Peasie]

DWL @ MGee. OK, I'll get right to that. And then I'll try to get to Wahalla's question about Sparticus - I wonder if he means the Colosseum in Rome?

Anyway, on my first morning in Naples I scurried to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli where I laid eyes on some amazing marble sculpture, mosaics and artifacts from Pompeii, and so much more. Quoting a site that summarizes my own impression of Naples...

Naples is a city on the sea, a place full of light yet with dark, hidden foundations. It has a great cultural and artistic identity which is stamped on the brow of its many museums, castles, churches, squares, narrow streets and archaeological remains. It is a city in which culture, art and "light" mix with the obscure darkness of a hidden, submerged, underground world.

Naples historic center is the largest in Europe and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world - or so they claim. It was at various times settled and invaded by Greeks, Romans, Moors, and finally Jamaicans. DWL.

So here in the Museum were just beautiful ancient art - a lot of the Roman marble sculptures in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD were copied from earlier bronze Greek figures. So here I am looking and touching 2,000 year old replicas. Blew my mind.



His face is so realistic. And this is from the 2nd Century AD!




To give you a perspective on the size of those sculptures

[Peasie]

Hercules at Rest.
Roman copy, end 2nd early 3rd Century AD from
a Greek original of second half 4th Century BC






No, this is not the ancient erotica

[Peasie]

Toro Farnese
A huge marble piece with lots of action dated from 3rd Century AD. It tells the story of Dirce, wife of Lycos, a King of Thebes. She was tied to a wild bull by two brothers who wanted to avenge their mother who was ill-treated by Dirce.



Dirce, what did you do to those boys' mother?

[Peasie]

And now we come to really ancient erotica. There is a section of the museum with this sign



It is gated and only open to adults

In this section are lots of phallic art dating from BCE times that would put our Fern Gully sculptures to shame!

Most of the sexually explicit artifacts are from Pompeii which was destroyed by a volcano in 79 AD. These carvings below were signs outside brothels. There were lots of these in those ancient times. The next day when I toured Pompeii - pictures coming - there was indeed one such establishment.

[kia027]

violent romans great report... going back to the sidelines to read

[Peasie]

So let me add some more of my photos of alleys that I took as I walked around Naples, Sorrento, Positano, and the town of Amalfi itself. Oh, and the island of Capri. By the time I left Naples on Monday for Sorrento (on the way stopping to climb Mt. Vesuvius, eat lunch, then walk Pompeii), the weather started clearing so that by Friday when I ferried over to the island of Capri, the weather was just simply stunning. Early October is a great time to visit Italy, it seems.

Naples



Naples, rainy

[Peasie]

Left Naples on Sunday (if I said Monday before, I was wrong) to stay in Sorrento until Saturday. On the way I spotted the private island that Rudolph Nureyev once owned. You just see spectacular scene after spectacular scene! And when you think it cannot get any more picturesque, you turn a corner and there is another photo op!

On Monday I took a bus from Sorrento along the coast to the town of Amalfi. Those coastal views were amazing. Towns seem to grow out of the cliffs and flow down to the sea. I snapped these from the bus window. Let's call this series Scenes from a Bus

[Peasie]

Quaint hotels and restaurants (and expensive homes!) along the way





and towns below!