The Motherland

Another long evening of insane Italian driving.

These Italians, I tell you. Mario Kart of Death.

Also, our hotel was once again playing coy. We stopped at a late-night bar to ask directions and ended up garbling/speaking with hand signs to a group of rough-looking men and their long-haired bartender.

Side note: I will never understand why some of the scariest-looking people in the world also happen to be the nicest.

Using their all-but-nonexistent English and my throat-sounds-that-pose-as-Italian, they cheerfully told us that our hotel was really easy to get to and that we just had to make a couple turns and "go straight." Easy, so easy, so completely impossible to screw up.

Hahahahaha.

So, a couple hours and several helpful yet oh-so-unhelpful Italians later, we find the hotel.

How, you may ask? Well it was a lot farther off than we expected, and not exactly straight ahead by even the most fluid definition. We ended up following a policeman through a stadium parking lot and up a little side street to find it.

Yes, once again, it takes a policeman to get us where we're going. I hope this doesn't become a habit...

The next morning we woke up at a non-early hour, got into a slight scrabble over Vesuvius vs. Family Heritage Extravaganza, and somehow ended up at the dock buying ridiculously overpriced ferry tickets to Ischia. Or in other words, the island where Great-Grandpa Cenatiempo grew up.

Naples seems third-world picturesque, and really crowded. I especially dig their castlery (a term you may have not heard before because it did not exist until just now.) This is some kind of crazy castle right across from the ferry dock. And this, as you may have already concluded, is a picture of Don and Henry. By this point Henry is obviously okay with grandpa. And perhaps grandpa is noticing that Henry's cheeks are dangerously on the verge of a fat explosion.

And this is proof that your posterity may even go off and have its own posterity someday:The Mediterranean was blue, blue, blue. Even in February.Here we have Dustin's head and Debbie's left elbow discovering LANDAnd this is one of Debbie's shots, pulling into the harbor at Ischia.We took a regional bus to get to the town of Barano. It's a fairly small island but there are five little villages on it, and TONS of lemons. Seriously, gobs. Pics:


These are not exactly in order but I've never been known for my patience in uploading and arranging photos.

In any case, we wandered around for quite a bit. I trailed annoyingly behind and took pictures of lots of inanimate objects.

Towards the end of our visit we even found a little park where Henry and Dustin had a good time together while the rest of us sat on the bench wondering where they get their energy from.

It was dark by the time we took the ferry back to Naples and what I'll go ahead and call the Thoroughly Hidden Hotel. Next morning it was off to the French Riviera!

So, stay tuned for that and see you in Marseille.