A series of articles describing our cruise around the Western Mediterranean with Island Cruises on their ship, the Island Star. Our Itinerary will be: Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Messina, Sicily > Naples, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Toulon, France > Barcelona, Spain > Palma, Majorca.
Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.
Tuesday 22 May 2018. We arrive into the Port of Naples at 7:00am. We have an excursion so the alarm was set for silly o'clock.
We were booked to take a boat ride to Amalfi, but apparently there was only one other couple wanting that particular tour. I did suggest they either got a smaller boat or we would just spread out, but to no avail. Instead we transfer our booking to one doing both Sorrento and Amalfi by coach. It will be a long day and most of it will be spent on the coach...
Norwegian Eric is dogging our footsteps... Right on top at the back is a climbing wall. You'd have to be seriously deranged wouldn't you? We board a coach and settle down for the ride to Sorrento. We spent a week there once and have plans to invest in a bottle of Limoncello, that wonderful lemon-based liqueur so beloved of.. er... me... But what's this? We have made a stop at a Limoncello factory! I want to drink it not watch it being made! But that's not a problem as it's still so early in the morning the factory isn't actually working yet. However we still get the talk and tour. When we reach the shop we gasp at the prices... Our plan to buy in Sorrento does not change... Having wasted half an hour out of our day we get on the coach and waste another 20 minutes as the guide tries to find another bored couple who have left the factory to sit on a hidden bench in the factory garden...
A photo stop above Sorrento. This is "above" in the same sense that Blackpool Tower is "above" Douglas on the Isle of Man. Sorrento's harbour is the one against the cliff dead centre of the photo, not the one in the foreground.
Being familiar with Sorrento we decide we will duck out of the guided walking tour. Especially when we find that we have just one hour ten minutes and the coach has to stop well outside the town so there will be a 10 minute walk both in and out. I'm not sure what the guide showed them, but none of them seem particularly thrilled when we catch up with them later.
I suspect they may have had time to buy a drink but not to sit and take their time over it. Which is pretty much what we did and then went in search of our bottle of yellow nectar.
The little market streets of Sorrento are interesting and fun places. At night the locals promenade here, all dressed to impress and to meet friends and socialise. We find lots of places with Limoncello at much less than factory prices. Strange that...
Then there's literally 5 minutes to do whatever we want before we see the guide and coach driver legging it back towards the coach park and we head back too. One of the passengers is limping and supported by his family, obviously in pain. We were quite worried, but he seems to be alright after a bit so perhaps it was a turned ankle or something.
It takes ages to reach Amalfi. The roads are so narrow that in many places they are governed by men with stop/go signs. They don't seem to have any way to talk to each other. I think that they just turned the sign to "go" when there was a break in the traffic. So it leads to scenes like this halfway between the two signs where we meet other traffic and one vehicle has to reverse to a slightly wider bit of road. Miss Franny watches a wing mirror pass by literally one inch from her window. It doesn't look quite so dramatic on the photo but believe me... one inch...
Our total time in Amalfi was two hours. Again because we had been here before and knew the town, we ducked out of the guided walking tour (we are real rebels, aren't we?) and surprised a restaurant barker by accepting his entreaties and taking a seat to order a pizza. Pizza margherita in this part of the world is as good as you will taste it anywhere in the world.
We didn't have a great deal of time for a detailed sketch so I kept it to half a page (so roughly A5 size) and when a few drops of rain started to fall we headed over the road to buy an ice cream. Again, ice cream - gelato - in Italy is something to die for. We got into the shop just as the young serving girl dropped a large metal tub of ice cream sideways into the space it had come out of and then struggled to get it out again. As the owner looked at me and raised his eyebrows, she got the giggles and there was a moment that severely tested my rudimentary Italian but was very funny! We left with our ice creams and a pat on the shoulder from the owner. I glanced back and the girl was grinning at me with mischievous eyes through her fringe. Dammit, when did I get so old...? Miss Franny grasped my ear to help me safely across the road.
It was a long drive back to the ship. Out of an eight hour day we have spent over 5 hours either on the coach or at the Limoncello factory that we didn't want to visit. Ah well... We repaired to the Squid and Anchor pub on Deck 7 and a pint of Guinness disappeared quite quickly!
It was quite overcast but very warm and we sat on our balcony until it was time to sail away. A fine figure of a man...
I read until the harbour wall started to slide past as we got under way which was our signal to get ready for our evening meal.
Sunday, 15 May 2011. The Thomson Destiny docks at Naples and we are booked on an excursion to see the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. Like its near neighbour, Pompeii, Herculaneum was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August AD79.
Unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum was not subject to the intense rain of heavy ash that brought down the roofs of Pompeii's buildings. Herculaneum was buried by molten rock from successive pyroclastic flows to a depth of 50-60 feet and Naples was built over it, the builders having forgotten its existence. It was buried deep. I was standing between Herculaneum and the coast on top of today's ground level. Those buildings at the bottom of the photo are boat houses...
This point was close enough to the coast then to sail right out. Unfortunately for around 300 people, whose skeletons were found in the boat houses, there were not enough boats for them all to escape.
Whilst sheltered from the direct impact of the surging ash and molten material, the intense heat (around 500 degrees) caused instant death and sucking all moisture from the structures which were then buried and preserved for us to see.
The remains were discovered by builders digging a well over one and a half millennia later, in 1709. Much of the site still lies beneath modern Naples.
A mosaic floor showing Neptune. I couldn't get to the bottom of the artwork and so had to turn the photo upside down to view the image properly. That's why it looks more like a ceiling... The flooring in this building showed sagging and breaks caused by earthquake motion during the eruption. At one point the floor elsewhere in this room had broken, falling into the hypocaust.
The College of the Augustales. In this building with its fresco of Hercules, after whom the town is named, it looked as though the roof had lurched sideways. The top of the fresco leans out and in the adjoining room the top of the wall correspondingly curves inwards.
A stack of amphorae in the remains of a shop.
Some of the buildings have remarkable treasures. Wooden staircases, partitions and doors, albeit somewhat carbonised by the heat of the pyroclastic surge. One room still contains a bed frame.
This would have been a beautiful place to live, with views of the Bay of Naples and the mountain behind. Vesuvius had been inactive for 800 years prior to the AD79 eruption. No one even dreamed of it being a volcano. Few people had any idea that such things existed. It has erupted around 40 times since that fateful day. They say a large eruption is overdue...
Our excursion comes to an end and our coach takes us back to the ship at modern-day Naples.
We are up on deck, shivering a little to watch us sail out. The top of the volcano has disappeared under cloud.
We pull out from the side of the Maritime Station and glide past the ferries in the harbour. Our next stop will be Corsica.
I used to have a set of web pages about our 2005 Sorrento holiday but it disappeared when Orange decided they were doing away with the web pages offered by their predecessor, Wanadoo, and there were some good memories and some spectacular photos from then. (Just to bring this up to date, Orange took over Wanadoo who took over Freeserve, but then Orange were taken over by EE... Clear?)
Anyway however all that history of mobile phones, 14k modems (ka-ding-bzz-bzz-bzz-fchhhskek-fchhh-spa-dung and other such electronic noises) and early web sites apart, we arrived complete with my mother at Naples Airport and caught our transfer bus. Which took us to our hotel in a place called San Agnello, just a bit outside Sorrento.
By the time we got there and had unpacked it was a bit late to have Mum walking all the way into, around and back out of Sorrento. We had a look at San Agnello, such that it was and I bought a hat to stop my distinguished but slightly over-exposed top of head from getting sunburned. Then after our evening meal we went to watch the sun go down over the bay. There's a little harbour close by, but Sorrento's harbour is the one further round with the cluster of bright lights and the wake of the boat that has sailed out of the harbour, leading back towards it.
This was a pleasing view of Vesuvius, seen at sunset from a bar in St Agnello, a short walk from our hotel on the outskirts of Sorrento. Wait a moment... oh no... we've come all this way and the Italians have let the fire go out... Another eruption of Pompeiian proportions is, so the scientists tell us, quite a bit overdue. Vesuvius is not sleeping. It has erupted several times since the Romans woke saying things like "Is that next door's lad playing football against our fence again?"
Vesuvius has had 28 principal eruptions since the famous one in 79 AD. The last was in March 1944 and that followed a period of several weeks in the January and February where a pool of lava formed in the crater and overflowed into streams running down the mountain. Since the March 1944 eruption Vesuvius has been biding its time, working itself up perhaps for another spectacular eruption. It's a case of when - not if.
Our first night gave us this sunset. This was from the same spot but looking west by north west towards the islands of Ischia and Procida and the stumpy peninsula west of Naples that marks the northern edge of the Bay of Naples. I had mistaken Ischia for Capri at the time, but Capri, which we shall see later on this holiday, is further south and out of sight behind the peninsula upon which Sorrento sits.
There were some fantastic views to be savoured and the heady combination of sunset, wine, atmosphere and chirruping crickets made an intoxicating start to the holiday. We were on a half-board arrangement so all our evening meals were to be had in the hotel, which after seeing cosy little restaurants like this, could have been a mistake!
At the hotel bar. With the new hat. Rather natty I think! The hat will crop up regularly in photos of this holiday, but it all ends in tragedy for this excellent headgear by the time we leave Italy. Don't rush, there's more to see first!
We'll move on from Taormina. The following day, Tuesday 8 July 2008, sees us docking in an overcast Naples. Excursions go off to Pompeii, Sorrento and Capri.
We've never been to Naples itself and although we've heard warnings about how impoverished it is we decide to just get off the boat and explore a little bit on our own.
We are met out of the port by this impressive pile of a fortress. Built between 1279 and 1282 it became a royal residence with the accession of King Charles II of Naples. It was also a papal residence at times. At one time it was found that prisoners regularly vanished from a dungeon used for those who had been sentenced to particularly harsh treatment. This was found to be because a crocodile had managed to enter through a basement opening and was dragging off prisoners by the leg! The dungeon became known as the Pit of the Crocodile...
We started our walk, heading through a large park near the castle. As we get further into the park, we suddenly find that almost every tree has a tramp or vagrant wrapped in sleeping blankets or huddled together in twos and threes staring at us. "I don't like this - get us out of here!" said Fran. We changed direction slightly towards a fairground and out of the park. Definitely a bit dodgy! I don't want to take the old saying "See Naples and die" literally, ha ha!
Traffic is unbelievable. Cars, taxis, buses and, most of all, scooters are vying with each other for each bit of road space, not caring which side of the central line they are on or whether they are moving in the same direction as the road. Changing lanes here means two or three at once and horns are blaring continuously. I apologise to all Parisians - I thought you were terrible and inconsiderate drivers but these guys have you beat!
We ended up taking an open-topped bus tour which was interesting. This is a set of traffic lights and obviously one direction is showing red, yet every one of these vehicles is moving...
The bus tour went along the coast although for a while there were more back streets than anything else.
It took forever to move the first half mile as we were in the city traffic. We passed one bus, surrounded by cops, deserted by passengers, a huge dent in the front bumper and a shattered bulge in the windscreen glass suggesting that when it hit something some poor soul was standing and was thrown forward into the glass from inside.
The bus driver seemed oblivious to overhanging trees also. On the open top deck, we were all having to duck at the side of the bus as branches whipped into our faces! Not ducking was painful. Sometimes even ducking was painful...
The tour took us along the coast - though more than half of it was down uninspiring back streets with little of interest. It was almost a relief to see the Island Star again as we neared the end of the ride!
The better part of the day came later, on the pool deck with my James Herbert book, Nobody True. Brilliant read!
