Photos: Italy - part 1 - Rome and Naples
A traipse down memory lane.
In 2006, I had saved all my time off of work so that I could take a three week trek to Italy. Not long after I met my wife in the late 1990’s, we took a trip to Italy and did the north pretty well. Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome before a couple of restful days in Lake Como (highly recommended!) and back home.
But the 2006 trip, we wanted to start in Rome, and head south. My wife being a film buff, she wanted to be sure we hit Cefalu, as that was prominent in one of her favorite films “Cinema Paradiso”. But otherwise, I let her pick the itinerary. Also, this time, we had digital cameras, so a lot more pictures were taken1.
Since Susan Speaks hasn’t been to Europe, I thought I would share some of the gems from this trip.
Roma
There are plenty of things to see in Rome. There is literally ruins popping up everywhere, including a sub-street level entry to the local equivalent of a 7-11, there will be some ruins just there behind glass.
But what most people think of is the Colisseum.
Here is a panorama of the Colisseum, stitched from three pics.
The inside is just as impressive. The subfloor is where all the “acts” and animals that they slaughtered during their events.
And then there is the infamous Trevi Fountain.
No, I didn’t toss any coins in the fountain!
Then, there is the river that runs through Rome, the Tiber. This is a bit of a gritty process, but I liked it. It was an overcast, and promising rain sort of day and this image captures that well!
Napoli!
After Rome, we caught a train to Naples. No, not Naples in Florida, but the one across the water from Mt. Vesuvius.
Not much in Naples, as we spent the nights there, but really our destination was to slum around Pompeii. But there are some killer museums in Naples, with some outrageous statuary. And, being a dog person, I bet you can guess why I grabbed this snap.
Pompeii was enough to warrant its own post. But I will close Naples out with this. Apparently, Naples is credited with the creation of Pizza. Here I am heating a Naples style pie. They are cooked at a very high temperature (wood fired oven) and it was pretty fucking awesome!
Naples is also where we were almost robbed. We were walking back from this dinner, and someone tried to steal my backpack. They came up behind us, grabbed the backpack and pushed me forward, expecting me to flail and them to grab it and then get away. Alas, I had the front strap buckled, so that was a foiled attempt. And it would have sucked big tool to lose my camera…
That will be where I end for this post. The next one will be a long-ish post of our in and around Pompeii. We didn’t take a tour, and spent a full day just roaming. The best way if you ask me!
Yet, 2006 was a weird time. The internet wasn’t so prevalent, and iCloud storage wasn’t ubiquitous, and memory cards were pricey, so I did a lot of shooting at reduced resolution to make certain we didn’t run out of storage.
Shit you don’t worry about today.
Oh, Thank you! Great shots. I gotta see all this. You went by yourselves I take it. And you're a dog person? You have just risen in my esteem for you, sir! Thanks for sharing these... looking forward to more!