Category Archives: Italy
Sentiero Degli Dei (Pathway of the Gods)
It was a freezing morning, and thankfully we’d decided to start today’s activities around noon, because it took about that long to muster up the motivation to drag ourselves out into the cold (and rush to the heater!). We are soft. Half a cup of tea later, we ventured out into the fitful sunlight to catch a bus from the … Continue reading
Driving the Amalfi Coast
We’ve visited the Amalfi Coast before, during the brief time we were travelling with our friends Tim, Jen and Annie. We have fond memories, and didn’t really do it justice last time (that, and Katherine has been wanting to re-visit the wonderful clothes shop she found in Positano), so we decided to visit again! Using my brilliant new-found POI database … Continue reading
Contursi Terme
We awoke in our dodgy car park in Salerno, walked along the foreshore and visited the same café as yesterday for breakfast — no healthier this time, I’m afraid; it was ricotta-filled pastries and chocolate croissants. Tasty goodness. All fuelled up (Katherine: …and feeling a little queasy), we headed out to attempt a few items on our to-do list, then … Continue reading
First day in Salerno
Italy! [Audio clip: view full post to listen] (Busker in Salerno) We awoke in the late morning, after a wonderful sleep, to the cosy sound of rain on the roof, washing all the salt from the long voyage off Nettle’s flanks. We had nice and hot, refreshing showers, and by the time we were all dressed and ready to head … Continue reading
The great escape
We awoke on our final day in Tunisia (and also our fourth anniversary!) with a feeling of great anticipation. Italy, baby! We finished up our final tasks, which including emptying the black water cassette into the nasty pit supplied, which was a particularly unpleasant experience when a splashback from the poorly-designed emptying facility hit me in the face!!! Freaking hell! … Continue reading
Sicily to Tunisia
The Schengen visa arrangement under which we are able to travel without any prior visa-seeking — which is a brilliant thing to be able to do — has the caveat that we’re only allowed within the Schengen area (most of the EU) for 3 months out of every 6. For the rest of time, we must be elsewhere. Three months … Continue reading
Roveto wetland reserve, Noto
For the final time, we met Nuccio and Graziella in Linguaglossa in the morning — Our plans for the day were to visit the Roveto wetland reserve way down to the south, a spot Nuccio was fond of. It’s quite near the south-east tip of Sicily, and just a short hop over the ocean was Africa (!), and many migratory … Continue reading
Etnapolis, Randazzo, Mount Etna lowlands, Aci Castello
We met Nuccio again the next day, along with Graziella and Nuccio’s mum, who we took an instant liking to, although she didn’t speak English. She had a friendly, playful demeanour that was very disarming. Our plans for the day this time were to visit Etnapolis, a shopping centre south of Etna — Italy’s largest shopping centre, Nuccio told us … Continue reading
Taormina-Messina Rally, Forza D’agro’
We met up with Nuccio again for the next rally, this one outside of a town whose name I never ended up discovering; Carmelo couldn’t make it, but we picked up a friend of Nuccio’s, Salvadore, who we had met briefly on St Martins’ Day, and his son André to join us. Salvadore was a meteorologist, interestingly; the language barrier … Continue reading
Taormina, Taormina-Messina Rally
With some time to kill before we were to meet up with Nuccio and Carmelo again, we decided to see if we could find a caravan park to spend some time hooked up to electricity to do some work. I spent some time finding possibilities online, then we proceeded to spend the next five hours or so driving around being … Continue reading
Mount Etna, Alcantara River, etc
After a day of downtime, we drove up from the caravan park on the coast to Linguaglossa, north-east of Mount Etna, where we were to meet up with Nuccio and Carmelo. We parked Nettle by a park in the town, and were shortly joined by Nuccio, with warm greetings all round. Nuccio drove us around the corner to pick up … Continue reading