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Italy Trip Itinerary and Review: Were we in Italy for Easter week or Holy Week?

David — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:40:11 +0000

Our Italy trip is done. It was a perfect example of old-school, fast travel. We got in and out, packed every day with stuff, and enjoyed a robust adventure. It was classic travel but we had a touch of the exotic too.

It seems, however, that I failed to understand the difference between Easter week and Holy week. Throughout the blog, I mixed the two up. This was pointed out to me, with a detailed explanation by our dear friend Mr. Sutherland:

To avoid consternation among your Christian readers and ameliorate confusion among the infidel, I point out a few phrasings you may want to clarify in the log. In Western Christianity, the week before Easter is regularly named Holy Week, La Settimana Santa as you found in Rome. In Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity, it is called Great Week, Megale Hebdomas in Greek and something similar I imagine in Russian. So far as I know, it is never referred to as Easter Week.

In English-language countries and specifically the U.S., if the term Easter Week appears at all, it always means the week following Easter Sunday. And, peculiar to English-speaking cultures, Friday in Holy Week is uniformly called Good Friday, rather than Holy Friday, Venerdi Santo in Rome and its variants found on the continent; or Great Friday the orthodox preference, both Greek and Russian and one supposes the language groups in their spheres of influence.

In no event is it ever called Easter Friday, though I recognize in your Day 5 Log, you mean it as the Friday part of the Easter weekend. As for Easter Monday, La Pasquetta, that day is celebrated broadly (but not in the U.S.) as a public holiday in countries with Christian traditions, Western or Eastern – as you found in your rainy day in Amalfi. And as we discovered in Sydney many years ago.

Accordingly:

You arrived in Italy and were first in Rome during Holy Week
You visited the Coliseum on Good Friday
Easter Monday in Amalfi it rained
Later in Easter Week you visited the Vatican

I blame protestantism for my mistake. The catholics would never have let make these mistakes. They also would have taught me the value of proper punctuation, spelling and grammar errors. (I am, however, free of guilt - a worthy trade, imo)

Here is the rundown from Italy.

Day One: Venice – Travel from Washington D.C. to Venice, Italy

Day Two: Venice – Wandering Venice Photo gallery

Day Three: Venice – Glass blowing and gondolas and Photo gallery

Day Four: Rome – Travel from Venice to Rome and Photo Gallery

Day Five: Rome – Colosseum and Palatine and Photo gallery

Day Six: Amalfi – Travel to the Amalfi Coast and Photo Gallery

Day Seven: Amalfi – Sentiaro Deigli Dei and Photo Gallery

Day Eight: Amalfi – The City of Amalfi and Photo Gallery

Day Nine and Ten: Rome – The Vatican then home and Photo Gallery

Day 9 and 10: Renaissance Rome then on our way home

David — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:38:11 +0000

We stop the car and let Lily get out on the side of the road. Her little tummy can’t handle the winding roads out of Amalfi, back to Naples where our train departs shortly. The driver takes it slow and the rising sun over the Tyrrhenian sea is gorgeous. But we can’t afford to dally because all the trains are booked today and we don’t want to be stuck in the Napoli train station all day. Lily piles back into the car. She’s a trooper and we make it on board with about 10 minutes to spare.

This is our last day in Italy, the one we left for the Vatican and Sistine Chapel. Our desperate hope is that the Easter crowds would have died down slightly. The Daphne hotel is our home again, and we drop off our stuff and connect to the Internet for the first time in 3 days. We have to post!

The streets leading toward the Vatican are mobbed and we can see the lines to get inside are at least 2 hours long. So much for our plan to avoid the crowds! The guide books says book a tour to get in immediately, and we do but we pay for it. (about $175 for the four of us.) Still, avoiding a 2 hour line is worth a lot.

The tour takes us quickly through the main parts of the museum, and the girls seem genuinely interested. But it’s hard to see, and they sit perched on my shoulders for much of it. The sistine Chapel has been fully restored since Trish was there, and she is amazed at the difference. I try to explain the significance of the Rennaisance to Emma, but it’s hard to comprehend even as an adult. She likes what she sees though.

St. Peter’s Basillica is amazing. It seems huge to me. I can’t imagine how big it must seem to a 7-year-old. We don’t spend to long, probably 30 minutes. We need to get back for Trish’s spa appointments, and again the girls get a treat from the toy store. We eat kinda late, and it’s good but everyone falls asleep before we can even order dessert.

The ride back home is uneventful. I am amazed at how easily the girls handle a 7 hour plane ride. The video player helps a lot, but still they can amuse themselves so well. Trish is a little sick, with some kind of a cold but she gets through it (even without dayquil). By 7pm, we have our dog back from the boarding place and the bags are open on the living room floor. We’re done with another great trip. Work and school starts tomorrow like we never left…

Italy Day 9 gallery

David — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:00:45 +0000

Our final day starts in Amalfi, and we get to Rome in time to do a whilrlwind tour of the Vatican amidst huge crowds.

Italy Day 8: Stuck in Amalfi. What to do?

David — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:29:35 +0000

Everyone is sore in different ways after the Seniero Deigli Dei walk yesterday. We get up slowly. Breakfast is served downstairs today because it’s raining and the rooftop terrace is too wet. Afterward, the kids eat a little more Easter candy. Yes, the Easter Bunny found us here in Italy, much to Lily’s relief.

Our itinerary says we are going to Pompei today to see the ruins at the base of Mt. Vesuvius. But weit’s not going to happen. It takes almost an hour on windy roads to get there by expensive taxi, or 3 hours by public transportation. And Lily’s stomach doesn’t handle the twisting and turning very well. Our back-up plan was to go to Ravello and hike, but no one feels like hiking, and it’s raining. So we confine ourselves to Amalfi and search for some fun nearby.

It’s a national holiday; Easter Monday. We expect the main streets to be quieter, but no. Shops are definitely open, and it’s already packed. We head back to a store we saw our first night with lots of seashells. We have a steam-punk dining room with a few nautical elements. We’d love to get something cool here because the other gifts, Limoncello and pottery are crap. Trish doesn’t even get in the door before she is transfixed by a tiny stuffed shark, about 10 inches in length with sandpaper skin. It’s not the most PC thing to buy, but we both love sharks, and anything that makes Trish creeped-out has to be pretty cool.

The guide books says there is a Paper making museum up the road and we head there, hoping that it’s not closed on the holiday. It isn’t, although we wait a long time for the guide, who speaks in very broken English. Nonetheless it’s interesting. The girls had no idea how paper was made. This mill is the oldest (surviving) in Europe and was in use until the sixties. It’s at the base of cliffs a thousand feet high, and it’s situated here because the volume and speed of water that drains after a rain is impressive. We see manual machinery for both cotton and wood pulp paper-making.

After lunch, we take a long walk searching for a boat tour that will take us to Grotto di Smeraldo, an attractive spot a few miles up the coast. We head down by the beach and boat basin but nothing looks open, much less like a boat tour company.

From the beach, Trish spots a walkway far up the side of the beach cliff and suggests we try to find our way up there. Behind a small playground rises a terraced, vertical public ‘park’ that is all benches, some trees and stairs. High up at the top of the park, is the walkway Trish spotted. But it requires us to hop a locked fence, which the girls remind us, is breaking the law.

It’s a fun view of the coast, and the pathway heads back down to the center. On our way back we spot the place where we get the boat, but they say it’s closed today because there isn’t enough sun. Apparently the grotto needs some light to be enjoyed.

Trish heads back to the hotel for a rest, and the girls and I decide to explore the city more. After gelato, (strawberry and vanilla are the favorites) we go to the church and light some fires. It only takes 10 minutes to walk through, and we can’t find a way to climb the clock tower.

Rain begins to drizzle again, so we wait under the marble canopy of the church and play our game of punch-centration. The girls play a game called concentration that starts with a hand-clapping rhyme. Each person is supposed to name something in the chosen category or lose. Common categories are colors, foods, states, countries etc… Punch-centration is the same, except I up the ante by punching the looser in the arm when they miss one. It makes them giggle uncontrollably and we waste several minutes in the rain.

Amalfi is crisscrossed by back alleys and stairways that go up the sides of the valley to homes farther and farther up. It’s still drizzling, but we decide to go as high as we can go. It’s slippery in parts, due to the water. There are several false-starts and dead-ends, but after an hour we find a path up very close to the top. Lily and Emma’s enthusiasm grows as we get higher and higher.

We are rewarded for our efforts. The view is amazing, and the sun comes out just as we hit the peak. The girls and I head back to find Trish and Dinner, which turns out to be amazing at a restaurant called Risto, that makes homemade pasta. Trish eats all of her dishes and most of mine, too. We pack and get to bed early. We are done with Amalfi, and head back to Rome early tomorrow for our final day of the trip.

Italy day 8 gallery

David — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:27:25 +0000

This is our final day in Amalfi, and we roamed the streets for cool stuff to do.

There are some great shots of the city after a thunderstorm and the oldest paper mill in Europe.