Paestum and Ravello

We had researched the train schedules to get to Paestum, and the trains were either too early or too late. Ira made the tough decision to hire a private car and driver to take us to Paestum, and still have time to get to lunch and see some gardens at Ravello. At 9 am we confidently set forth. Unfortunately, it is May 1, and everyone had piled into cars and were headed to the coast for a weekend of camping. So the drive down took two and a half hours instead of 90 minutes, but we did make it.

Paestum was the inspiration for this part of the trip since it's one of the very few places in Italy Ira has never been. Paestum is a complex of Greek temples and ruins located in what was for many centuries a swampland filled with mosquitos and malaria. So it wasn't until the 1800s that people really "rediscovered" Paestum and began to study it. There are three temples left upright if not intact: dedicated to Athena, Hera, and Poseiden respectively. In between are the ruins of quite a lot of other building, gymnasia, ekklesiastica, a huge forum, and many smaller constructions that seemed residential, with tiny foundations surrounding a small piazza. I wandered around and took pictures while green lizards scampered away. Ira sat on an ancient rock and sketched the temple dedicated to Poseiden. As a result, he became one of the attractions. Everyone wanted to take a picture with the artist guy and talk to the artist guy and generally annoy the artist guy. I was some feet away enjoying the spectacle. Despite the interruptions of his newfound fame, Ira did manage to complete a sketch of the temple before we have to leave.

We had 90 minutes to make Ravello and more importantly, make it to the ristorante before the kitchen closed at 3. We couldn't take the Amalfi Coast because it was wall-to-wall traffic, 3 kilometers in 3 hours. So we took the back way up the mountain to Ravello, starting at a town called Angri. We did get held up by one of those old 3-wheeled work vehicles, but we finally managed to lose him and we sped down the hill on a white-knuckle driver to make our lunch appointment. We had a lovely lunch. My rabbit was fine, as usual, and my pasta particularly good. We haven't been eating as well as we'd like in Southern Italy. They make some things well, but they don't have a lot of variety, and once you've had the veal, you've had the veal!

Now we had about two hours and two gardens to see. The was Villa Rufolo, which is just off the piazza. And before I get to the garden, the piazza is one of the best I've seen, with shallow steps on the church facing a broad piazza with a line of stone pine fronting a ravine with a view through the trunks to the other side. Leading into the piazza are a warren of small, sometimes tunneled streets, all of them filled with tourist and luxury shops. Ravello seems to specialize in that lovely Italian majolica. We were not there to shop, however! Villa Rufolo is an old complex. As a tourist stop, it's perfect, with towers and vines, and small squares, and archways, and of course, the view. At one end of the garden you stop and see all the way south to Africa!

After that it's a long walk across town, up and down a steep hill with many steps until you reach Villa Cimbrone. (Along the way you pass the hotel where D.H. Lawrence wrote "Lady Chatterly's Lover.") And Villa Cimbrone has its own brush with celebrity, as Vita Sackville-West (of "Orlando" and fame) helped out with the garden as a frequent guest of the Becketts. You enter the garden walls and immediately there is a long allee. The first part of it is covered with wisteria, which was in full bloom in a purple shower above our heads, some stretches in shadow and some in bright light bringing different moods to the purple whether peaceful or in explosion. At the far end of the walk is a simple temple structure and a statue. It's there that the garden turns from lovely to extraordinary. Once you hit the temple, the walkway goes off to the right, and it edges a cliff of some 500 feet straight out over the Tyhrrenian Sea. I got a touch of vertigo as I leaned over the railing and had to sit back on the benches to relax after the hike and to enjoy the unobstructed view of the complete blue sea. There are white busts in a row along the edge and they offer the perfect contrast to the blue blue water. We just sat and felt the breeze blow around us until it was time to head back to our patient driver and head for home. Tonight a quiet dinner and then tomorrow, perhaps Caserta if we have the energy!