More Italian Volcanoes: Stromboli and Vesuvius

The very first day of the cruise we passed through the Strait of Messina which is between Mainland Italy (the boot) and Sicily. This is the “rock and hard place” between Scylla and Charbydis that may ring a bell for mythology experts.

A bit north of the strait is Stromboli, a volcano that, according to the ship captain, erupts every 15 minutes or so. It was nice to pass Stromboli our first morning at sea and it was amazing to be there on our penultimate evening after sunset to see the orange (hot) lava in the dark sky. I was fortunate to get to watch for a while, and I took a picture that shows the lava reflecting in the ocean. The ship captain stayed in the area for some time, turning around more than once which resulted in sound effects reminiscent of when we hit the pier while leaving Dominican Republic in January.

Having seen Etna and Stromboli, it was only fitting that our next port included Vesuvius, though admittedly our focus was on Pompeii, the community that was destroyed in year 79 when Vesuvius blew its top. More recently, Vesuvius blew in 1944, and is the first observatory in the world.

Pompeii was incredible – much larger than I would have assumed, and very well preserved. It was easily the size of a city downtown, with homes, businesses, a public square, amphitheater, aqueduct, baths, and so on. Incredible to see something older than two millennia. And sobering to hear about the near-immediate devastation to those who were unable to flee before Vesuvius blew.

Our tour of Pompeii including a morning at Pompeii, lunch, a visit to a cameo factory (grumble), and the Naples National Archaeological Museum which contained many items from Pompeii. My “I can handle one hour a day of museum” has been more than satiated with the impressiveness of Pompeii, so I’m sure I did not appreciate the museum’s grandeur (one might rightfully accuse me of being one of the children). Another cacher was very pleased at having spent 5+ hours at the museum and while I’m happy they got such joy from that, my inner child had some inappropriate thoughts that could be politely be summarized with my gratitude to be there only an hour or two.

I did appreciate our guide’s curiosity about caching, though would have preferred more caching to the cameo factory. Incidentally, Monica, the guide, shared that the word “tombola” means “bingo” in Italian….not that any of us will have a need for that particular word, but it’s always good to expand one’s vocabulary.

Of greater interest to me was the “umbrella pines” (Pinus pinea) that we’d seen in Rome and again in Napoli. They are pine trees but are not in the canonical Christmas tree shape. Instead they have long trunks and no branches until nearly the top of the tree where it branches out into a canopy, sort of like a small piece of cotton candy on a long stick. Apparently they are “trained” to grow that way (Italian bonsai?) to produce shade.

Now some thoughts about the food from this trip. I tried frogs legs for the first time and concluded that they do indeed “taste like chicken.” Sorbet o’clock continues to be worth celebrating, as I did most days. I am happy to donate my share of olives to those who would enjoy them more. As usual, I ate more bacon and other pork products in the 2+ weeks of this trip than I have for the part of 2019 that I spent at home. I had close to a bottle of wine on this trip – spanning 2 formal nights on the ship and several wine tasting activities off the ship. I also highly recommend dried strawberries and dried cantaloupe.