The Vatican

One of the many places we wanted to visit on the trip was the Vatican. When we were in Roma we made a couple of trips to visit the Vatican to see the museum, the Sistine Chapel and the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica. Travelling downtown Rome for us is a bit of a journey. First we take a local bus to the Ostia train station, catch a train into a station in Rome that has a subway attached, hop on the ‘B’ line for a couple of stops, then onto the ‘A’ line hopping off at the St. Peter’s stop. 

All in about an hour and a half. So we’d leave Tara around 9:30 and arrive downtown between 11 and 12. As we’ve said many times before, this army travels on its stomach so we needed to grab a bite. If you eat on the main drag you get the places with 15 euro pizzas and 5 euro cokes, a couple of blocks away you’re back to the 7 Euro pizzas and 1.5 Euro drinks, so it pays to walk a couple of blocks that’s for sure.

We made reservations to go to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel to avoid long lineups. The lineups were to pick up our reservation tickets, there were no lineups to just buy the tickets – another 20 Euros wasted ... oh well.

To say the Vatican Museum is awesome is an understatement. While nobody knows what the rest of the world was doing in the dark ages, clearly the Catholic Popes were collecting priceless antiquities from around the world. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, all cultures were represented and the pieces were spectacular. What truly gets me thinking is that most museums only display 10% of their collection, so imagine what the overall collection must be.

The real David... (actually in Florence ... testing to see if you're awake)

The crowning glory of the Museum tour is a trip through the Sistine Chapel that was restored to its glory about 10 years ago when the frescoes were cleaned and now are much easier to see. 

The Sistine Chapel requires long pants...what fun for Ross!
Yes, we had to go shopping. 

Marina and I listened to the Rick Steves ITunes download and really got a bunch more out of seeing the ceiling and the final piece Michaelangelo painted on the wall of the alter. Which we were unable to get any good pictures of as you are not allowed to take photos in there. We tried and have a few but they are not well positioned and grainy as we tried to not look like we were taking pictures. 

Not from the Sistine Chapel...but beautiful none-the-less. 

While we were there the previous pope Giovanni Paulo II was beatified – the third of four steps required to become a saint. Apparently the miracle he performed was ridding a woman of Parkinsons – which is somewhat ironic as he died from complications from Parkinsons. As a Concierge said at the Hilton, all of Poland was in Rome. There were hundreds of buses, tens of thousands of pilgrims carrying flags and posters, and all sorts of people ready to camp out in St. Peter’s Square.

A couple of days later Granny met us downtown and we went to St Peter’s Basilica. After a 15 minute lineup to go through metal detectors, we made it inside the church. Wow, wow, wow and more wow. What an incredible place. Again we used a Rick Steves podcast and we marvelled at the Bernini alter and the many sculptures by great Renaissance masters, and of course the Cupola designed by Michaelangelo. We saw the bodies of Pope John the Good and peered down into the basement area where St. Peter is said to be buried. 

The scale and size of the church is overwhelming, apparently 60,000 people can fit inside, then add a couple hundred thousand on the plaza ... it’s mind-bendingly big. 

Large scale mosaic...

Bottom right corner of the mosaic....

One thing that was really cool is that all the “paintings” in the church are actually mosaics that are painstakingly made from small chips of tile or stone. 

Left shoulder enhanced to see tile pieces.

This way they can be cleaned regularly as the smoke from the candles and incense would have made paintings black over the centuries.

Artwork from in the Museum....hmmmm....

By the time we left St. Peter’s the kids and Granny had had enough, so we did a pass on climbing the rotunda where the view is said to be fantastic. The way we figure it, you want to leave something for the next time you go.

Back to Rome and Vatican City

When we left Tuscany, we drove back to Rome; my mom and the rest of the clan headed to Florence. Jeff and Kristen to catch a train to Pisa to fly back to Paris and then home to Boston. Betsy and Chloe were off on a train(s) to Paris, to catch a flight to Seattle to be picked up by Andrew, and Granny said goodbye to them and then wanted to stay a few days in Rome and booked into the Airport Hilton.

Trains and buses...we're good at it now!

It turns out the Airport Hilton is really close to Porto Turistico di Roma so we caught a 1 euro bus to the Airport. We met Sharon for a nice lunch (thanks!) at the Hilton and the kids had 5 euro Cokes.  

We sat in the sun by the tennis court, then caught the bus back to the boat with Granny in tow. We had a great afternoon, sitting in the sun, eating hors d’oeuvres , drinking wine. I escorted her back to the bus, put her on it and then caught a bus back to the boat.

Cocktail Hour with Sharon

This was the approach we used to visit the Vatican later that week. We had visited the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel as a family a couple of days before which was awesome. But went back again into Rome (you really do need at least 3 days) to meet up with Sharon and visit St Peter’s Basilica. 

We had intended to go a couple days earlier but the beatification of John Paul II was a massive celebration – including a body viewing. We piled onto transit and headed downtown and visited St Peter’s and had a nice lunch. 

Michelangelo's Pieta with Mother Mary mourning her Son

We caught the tube to Roma Termini and put Sharon back on a train to the Airport where she finished packing and headed out the next day at 7am for home.

Saying goodbye.

It was a nice way to end her visit with some time with just us and we really enjoyed it.

Maintenance Day in Roma

After returning to Roma with our booty from Granny we had to install some of it. Unfortunately the BBQ we bought was just too big for her to put in her bag ... bummer. The cost of a BBQ in Europe is double in Euros than we pay in dollars ... so we were disappointed. Anyway, we still had a new boat stereo, Marina had a new laptop, and various other boat parts (and 2 new tennis racquets).

Anyway, all this stuff needed to be installed plus we were due for an engine service so everyone pitched in. Ross, Jessie and Marina cleaned the boat inside and out while I did the engine service and installed the stereo. Over the next couple of days I also built some shelving for Ross’ closet (now he has no excuse for clothes on the floor) and for some useless space in the Galley that we wanted to convert to a place to store big things like cereal boxes etc.

Anyway, after a couple of days of maintenance, Tara is ready for the rest of the season. We filled up the tanks and got ready to leave Rome for northern Italy, France and Spain.

Tuscany with the Whole Family

The Villa at the back

Part of the reason why we needed to ‘sprint’ across Greece is that my Mother rented a villa in Tuscany and my brother Jeff and his wife Kristen, my sister Elizabeth and her daughter Chloe, my mom and us four were going to meet up there for a week and tour Tuscany.

Left to right:  Ross (on a lower step!), Matt's brother Jeff, Matt,
Michaelle (the Villa owner and his dog), Matt's mom Sharon,
Matt's sister Betsy (the one in front), Jeff's wife Kristen,
Jessie, Marina and Matt's niece Chloe. 

The others actually started in Paris while we were working our way up the coast of Italy – spending a couple of days at the Louvre and other museums while we washed the boat, did laundry and generally bummed around Ostia (a suburb of Rome) and tooled around on the trains.

We rented a car for the week. What a difference from Israel – where the car is $20 per day, in Europe – at least Italy, it’s more like 50 Euros a day  -- we had a Peugeot hatchback – we’ve gotten used to the size of cars in Europe – it is about the same size as a Nissan Micra – which is a reasonably sized car here.

So we headed up the A1 toll road towards Tuscany. The directions from the villa owner were probably the only beef we had with the week. We got off the highway and turned left (I would guess they don’t get out much) and that turned out to be the opposite of where we needed to go. Eventually after driving around asking for Cottage Cortona – in a village that’s 15 miles from Cortona when you don’t speak Italian can be challenging. Eventually we called on a house, showed them the place on the Internet (thank goodness for high-speed internet sticks) and their young son hopped on his scooter and led us there. What a nice thing to do. We were impressed and suggested to Ross he would be a good role model.

The view to Cortona from the back of the Villa - sadly,
the pool was not open yet. 

Anyway, we arrived and the place was way nicer than we had expected. Each group had their own cabin – so we had 4 in all, plus a dining room that we could share. Each ‘cabin’ was well equipped with a gas stove (4 burners – wow, we have more than 2) a big fridge, a dishwasher – boy the kids really appreciate a dishwasher now they’ve been washing dishes for most of a year! The first night Michaelle and his wife served us dinner of local meats and vegetables and we sampled their own wine label, olive oil label and tomato sauce label.

Kristen, Jeff and Sharon getting a meal going in the dining room. 

The rest of the week is a blur, we toured Cortona, wine country, Firenze and also had a chance to just hang out. The kids really loved having their cousin Chloe around and it was great to catch up with Betsy about what’s happening back home. We’d Skype every day with Uncle Andrew – Betsy’s husband who gave us the play-by-play on the Canucks – though I was secretly listening on the Teamradio.ca internet feed in the middle of the night. Betsy and my mother were cooking up a storm and we dined very well indeed.

Cousins!

When my brother Jeff and Kristen came the cooking moved into seafood– with many beautiful meals being prepared. Marina and I managed to sneak away for a couple of dates on the tennis court and one nice day alone in wine country. I am sure the kids enjoyed their time without their parents.

Wine country....

Wine tasting!

The small bottle we bought Jeff for his birthday!

One of the events that will live with us for quite a long time is a close encounter Ross had with a clay planter. The kids would play kick-ball for hours and one time Ross was running by the planter, he hit it with his leg and ended up with three rather nasty gashes that needed medical attention. Michello lit off with Ross and Marina to the Hospital and returned about an hour later with Ross hobbling having received 8 stitches. 

Is this going to hurt...?

Clearly he didn’t have a plastic surgeon put these stiches in as I would reckon they could have done 20 or 30 in the cuts if they bothered to put them closer than 5mm apart. Anyway, that kind of stopped the kickball for a while and Ross hobbled around for a couple of days in some pain.

I think he likes the attention.

The last night came and it was time to say our goodbyes. My mom true to form said they should be leaving around 9am and had everyone packed and ready to go by 8 … so they left at 8:15, only to return 5 minutes later because someone thought they forgot something ... typical.

We had a lazy morning, nice to have the quiet and be back to our quartet running on our own schedule. We piled an enormous amount of stuff in the car – did I mention that my mom brought 50 pounds of gear for us all the way from home?? And we piled in the car for the trip to Rome. We had wanted to go to Ikea to see if they had totes that we can store our gear in when we come home. Sure enough we saw Ikea,I missed the turn and blamed it on the others – typical skipper – but we made it and added a bunch more stuff into the car so we were loaded down even more.

We were fully loaded. 

We made it back to Porto Turistico di Roma in the early evening, unpacked the car, took several trips to the boat and filled our fridge from the leftovers from Tuscany. The only real casualty from the trip was my waistline that probably grew an inch or so in the process.

Lunch with Maria Novella

The family that is staying in our house in West Vancouver, the Beltramos, are from Rome, trying out West Vancouver so their kids can attend an English speaking school ... and you must admit, West Vancouver is a little slice of heaven.

Waiting for the bus to Rome

Anyway, Maria Novella was back in Rome overseeing repairs to their house that had some type of water damage (seems like we have that in common too) and invited us to a lunch at her sister and brother-in-law’s pizza restaurant. We had a wonderful meal – with some of the nicest procuitto we’ve ever eaten. Me having a couple of beers at lunch didn’t hurt my attitude either. Anyway we were talking about all things happening in our lives, what we liked and didn’t understand about the different countries we’re living in. 

One of our first views out of the train station. 

One of my questions was around marketing (grocery shopping) in Europe people buy less per trip and make more trips. Also, you buy meat from the butcher, cheese from the cheese shop, bread from the  .... you get the idea. She said that she did both the North-American way ... load up at Safeway and the traditional European way ... but what she said she loved was that she could always find a parking spot. I can imagine that coming from Rome that would be a unique experience.

Walking to the restaraunt. 

Also when they arrived they bought two cars: a Yaris and a Mitsubishi 4x4 – the Yaris is a sub-compact and the Mitsubishi is a smallish 4x4 – like a 4 door Rav 4. Here the Yaris would be a mid-sized car and the Mitsubishi would be large – but in Vancouver she’s taken to driving the 4x4 because the Yaris is too small. I remember her saying Marina’s truck was so huge – but everything is relative ... she'll probably buy a Suburban next.

The only picture we took of lunch. 

She gave us a bunch of great advice on places to go and visit and islands and marinas to stay in. We’re making our way to one of them today. It is very nice to have a local help you navigate the complexities of visiting a beautiful country like Italy. 

Gaeta to Rome ... plus an intimate encounter with sand

On our way toward Rome we left Gaeta a little later than we wanted to. The wind was again pushing us from the starboard side at about 15 knots and we really had to be on our game to get out of there quickly without fouling our prop – particularly since we were only 150 feet off the rocks if we messed up. As soon as we dropped the bow I applied bow thruster to keep the bow pointed left but it wasn’t going to last long, so I belted the motor and we squirted out of the poste haste. It must have been quick because Ross came back to me and said “I didn’t know the boat could accelerate that fast” .. perhaps it was my panic vision of being piled up on the rocks with a fouled propeller that got Tara moving quickly that day.

We had hoped to watch some of the Italian Match Racing Championships but they were slow setting up and we needed to get going because Nettuno was some 40 miles away. We decided the wind was OK to sail so we cut the motor and got going. There is some weird geographic thing happening along that coast – it was a convergence of 2 wind systems … so we would sail along getting headed 90 degrees, then tack, then head back out only to have the same thing happen on the other tack – basically think like you’ll never get to where you want to go. Anyway, we headed out quite a ways and finally hooked into the wind. 

Once we were close to Nettuno – near Anzio, the landing site for a large WWII force, we pulled in the sails and motored in. We called on the radio, came in slowly as there were a couple of makeshift buoys out (usually showing that the channel has silted up in that area) so we approached it dead slow. I felt the unmistakable bump of hitting sand – “Marina, we just hit bottom” … “are you sure” … “yes – let’s hope ….” And then we slid into the silt and stopped. I gunned it in reverse, nothing happened except for the boat spinning left with prop walk (a boat will turn with the torque of the propeller before the rudder has water pressure over it). I helped swing the bow around with a lot of bow thruster so we were pointed heading out of the harbour but still couldn’t get off – even giving full power in forward. Fortunately the Ormeggiatore came out in a 4 meter RIB with a 50 HP motor, stuck his bow on our stern and gave us a push – and thankfully we came off. He said we could anchor in Anzio but the next alternative was Rome. After giving him 10 Euros (all I had in my pocket – I wish I had 50!) we were on our way. Anzio is 5 meters deep a mile off shore. It was very open and we decided, let’s head to Rome. If the wind holds we’re fine, so we took off. It looked like we’d get in right at dusk.

Well the wind gods being what they are we went from a close reach, to close hauled, to motor sailing, to powering into a 15 knot wind and a steep chop. Powering directly into wind and waves usually kills about a knot of speed – and over 4 hours that knot or so translates into another half hour—which meant we were going into Porto Turistico di Roma at about 9:30 or thoroughly after dark. We have some SeaClear charts but they’re not very detailed so we were somewhat blind – with an aggravating factor that the GPS waypoint in the Imray pilot book is inaccurate – being about a half-mile off the entrance. We slowed down, looked at all the lights and figured out where the entrance was … did we mention that it’s shallow here 3-4 meters deep. When I’m swimming I like the water to be shallow – when sailing, I like it to be deep! 

We motored slowly through the entrance watching the depth sounder get to 0.5 meters under the keel as we glided through, the Ormeggiatore met us at the dock and we quickly tied up, had a cocktail to our success, hooked up power and water and had a nice, long sleep. 

Porto d'Ischia to Gaeta

We left Argripole in the morning and decided to get to Salerno. Salerno is a bigger city and we thought we could do some marketing, get some gas for the stove, and hide from the wind for a day or so. 

We were able to sail on a beam reach for quite a bit of the journey, though we messed up a little bit because the “island” we were looking at turned out to be the point of land we needed to go to. The low lands aren’t visible until you’re under 10 miles or so away, so we were looking at a point of land thinking it was an island. Once we did a bit of a course correction the wind was even more behind so we had a nice long sail to Salerno.

When we arrived the wind was blowing in the 20’s and there were a half-dozen race boats – a locally built 25 footer designed by Paulo Cian that looked a bit like a Melges 24 with no coach house. The rig is fairly small which is a good thing because it was windy. Anyway, it turns out that we were at the site of the Italian Match Racing Championships ... a regatta with 12 teams invited. They had a couple of days of racing followed by the semi-finals and finals on Sunday. Just watching the teams do the pre-regatta setup made me wish I could have been a part of it. Oh well, maybe we’ll have to organize something when I get home.

The mooring that we had a Salerno was very exposed. The inner harbour has 2 meters of draft and we’re 2.3 meters. 

We came in beside this new 55 foot long sailboat that had been med-moored at the inner harbour and had broken loose and was worked against the pier for a couple of hours in a storm. The damage to this new boat was ugly, the rail was pulled out for about 20 feet on the port side, the stern had a huge gash in it, the entire starboard side had road-rash – and they had a small ‘swimming pool’ filled with water on the bow to keep the stern out of the water so the boat wouldn’t sink. I asked the dockman what happened and he told us this and two other boats didn’t weather the storm 3 days before very well. I don’t know if the boat was a write-off but it had many tens of thousands of dollars of damage minimum. Note to self – when the wind is blowing 25, get to a marina with laid moorings or a safe harbour to anchor in.

We ended up staying another day at Salerno since we liked the harbour and there was lots of stuff to do. The time we sped working our way up the coast was paying off since we had the time to spend in the places that we liked.

Salerno past Capri to Porto d'Ischia

Once we left Salerno we were headed north again. Marina decided that it was worth an hour's investment to go past the island of Capri. I have heard of Capri but had no context about it. It's fairly close to the Italian shoreline and must be some type of basalt volcano or something because the towers that are standing would have been some type of igneous rock. The famous hole in the rock Jessie's looking at is one where a number of Italian powerboaters (including the Navy) photograph themselves tooling through at speed. We got within 2 boatlengths of the rock on the left in the photo and it was still 100 meters deep -- so the rocks are like mountains.

The rocks on the south side of Capri. Famous in
Italy where many Coast Guard pictures are taken in
front or going through here. 

Entering Porto D'Ischia on Isola Di Ischia...what a lovely,
tiny port - where huge ferries would come in and out
all day...and several times more than 3 or 4 in there!

A few right across the port...we're standing on the west
side of the tight entrance looking in at Tara, the sailboat
just right of centre in the picture. 

One of the ferries passing through the entrance...you can
see the other side just under the front of the ship. 

Pompeii Photo Essay

Pompeii was an amazing trip and well worth going...I'd highly recommend it if you're travelling Italy. It truly gives you a sense of what an ancient Roman city would be like as it was "preserved" under several meters of ash from Mt. Vesuvius. You can clearly see how people lived...there is the town centre where everyone gathered, there were residential streets - both rich and poor, market streets, an unbelievably well preserved stadium for entertainment with a big side strolling area for relaxing during intermission, even some bodies of people to give you a real feeling of what happened to the few who didn't leave. Here is a summary from Wiki ... 

Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in 79 AD. The eruption buried Pompeii under 4 to 6 meters of ash and pumice, and it was lost for over 1700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1749. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire.

And the rest I'll leave to photos! 

Arriving!

A side street

Part of the central square

A Market Street

A "cross walk" for when the roads were flooded
and deep ruts from wagon wheels  rolling down the street. 

"Teeth" we called them...to stop wagons from going
down a walking street. 

The inside of a baths area. 

The bakery!

A family crest.

An inner courtyard to a wealthier home. 

Beautiful tile work...with teeny tiles in a home. 

What is remaining of the columns of the forum.

Columns where you can see how they have been restored.

An archway...don't know what for but it's solid!

The Amphitheatre

The Grand Palaestra - to relax around during intermission.

Looking down you can see all the walls...like a puzzle. 

The people...they were so small compared to today.