May 12-14 – Salerno, Herculaneum, Pompei, Paestum & Pertosa

Left the lovely Praiano & headed along the Amalfi coast for Salerno via Amalfi, Ravello, Minori & Maiori. The incredible road continues to carve its way through cliff faces & hang over precipices & the locals drive where they want. The detour to Ravello was fantastic with two beautiful & colourful gardens at Villa Rufolo & Villa Cimbrone covering huge areas & with spectacular views over the surrounding countryside (terraced gardens everywhere) & sea.

From Ravello

Salerno is a major port & large city. Our accommodation is at a small hotel in the hills nearby – we enjoyed dinner to the sounds of a church service & singing from the hill above us.

Monday is a day of archaeological ruins. We first visited Herculaneum (or Ercolano) a town entombed in hot mud when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Some of the ruins are well preserved & the extent is quite surprising as they continue to excavate in the middle of the busy town. There were well preserved shops, bath houses & a great statue of a hydra. Then off to Pompei which was buried with rocks & ash in the same eruption. Here many people’s bodies were preserved in the ash. The highlights here were the Anfiteatro (Amphitheatre), the two theatres - Teatro Grande & Odeion, the bath house & not to mention the Lupanare – a brothel full of suggestive murals & statues.

A great day but I’m over old stuff for a while.

Mt Vesuvius from Pompei

Cobblestone road at Pompei

Take away food shop Herculaneum

Well, not quite over it yet. Today we headed to Paestum, more ruins, but this time they were Greek ruins in Italy. Some very impressive buildings from around 500BC & a fantastic museum – quite different to yesterday and most enjoyable.

Temple of Neptune at Paestum

Then we headed east across the mountains of the Parco del Cilento to Pertosa and Le Grotte dell’Angelo. We travelled through farm land, steep mountain passes with cliffs and beautiful forests with waterfalls, fountains, goats & cows on the road wearing bells – just marvellous. The Grotte was a huge cave – we went the first 200 metres by small barge then walked a further kilometre through winding caves – from narrow low passages requiring us to stoop to the grand hall with a 40 metre ceiling. There were more than 3 kms of passages in total – a huge complex & well worth the visit.

Cute cows

Passo d Sentinella