Gaeta

I love this little town so very very much. It could very nearly be my favorite ever. We happened to go through it on our way from Napoli to Rome and we got lunch here. It is on the tip of this tiny little pennisula and is very hilly and filled with tall majestic buildings.

We wandered for about half an hour and saw a good bit of the town while looking for a suitable eatery. We eventually settled on a small sea food restruart right on the edge of the water. The owner brought us each out a bag of deep fried calamari and we also ordered a plate of Alici (which are the tiny eyeball fish). It was all super super good and reasonably priced.

We walked across the to this gelateria after lunch. See the clear shield sign on the wall there? That's an award from a gelato college. So so so so SO good! Cheap, huge portions and the best flavors you could ever imagine. There is not as much cream in gelato, so the flavor is much more intense and accurate than the flavor in icecream.

Tallis and his gelato.

Team Woomert and their gelati.

Mt. Vesuvius

We got up early in the morning, had breakfast, and headed up through Naples to the slopes of Vesuvius. We actually found our way fairly quickly and were soon out of the city and driving through a trees behind a bus. We reached to the top of the tree line in about half an hour where we parked in a big parking lot (There was a French guy having a lot of trouble parking his car where he was supposed to and we watched for several minutes while the parking attendant tried to get him to line his car up with the others). We paid for our tickets to the top and walked for another half an hour to the top. It was very barren and rocky and totally looked like it could be a volcano.

That's the city of Napoli. Pretty much everyone living there will be killed if (when) Vesuvius erupts again. I was super excited to visit Vesuvius after studying it in a Natural Hazards and Disasters class at UI. The class was split into groups and we were all supposed to make an evacuation plan for the city of Napoli. The general concensus was that everyone should get out now... (remember Steph? Remember? Then we'd go play fooseball... good times).

Team Woomert all decked out in their Greens! Again. I was lucky to have Tallis to match with me.

Autocamping Dog

This was Tivoli just after she screamed and leapt into me. It was very rude of her. She had been scared by the dog at the entrance of the autocamp again.

I'm not sure I ever actually saw it move...

Pompei

A colloseum in Pompei. I think it's the oldest one still standing or something like that.



Team Woomert. Girls in lighter shades of whatever the boys are wearing. I felt so out of place...

Inside it was big and round and old and had lots of people taking pictures in it.

This is actually one some of the smoothest street stones in the entirety of Pompie. Most places there was about four inches of space between the worn down stones and the stones themselves stood about six inches from the ground, so it was very hard to walk anywhere without paying close attention to your feet... which is hard to do because there is interesting old stuff everywhere around you.

These were some really hugemongous trees outside the colloseum... although you can't tell how tall they are in the picture... or course...

I think this is something famous because I kept seeing pictures of it.

This guy was about a foot tall and very naked. I was clever in the angle I photographed him at.

A street in Pompei. We had a map of Pompei and we would walk to places that sounded interesting. We would often take the long way round places to avoid large crowds of tourists. They would sometimes overtake us and surround us in a wave of cameras and conversation... always lead by someone carrying a flag... or a pole... or sometimes just a piece of trash on a stick.

A random courtyard.

Another street (Tallis looks epic). I was a little dissapointed in what the tourists had done to Pompei. Every little nook or cranny was filled with wrappers and bottles. Thousand year old wells had a layer of old coke bottles and trash at the bottom. Trash and garbage hid, in little quanteties, was sprinkled all over Pompei.

An ancient bath house. The people in charge had layed carpet down over all the floor tiles so as not to ruin the mosaics. It was rather sweltering inside, but very cool.

Temple o'Zeus I do believe.

This was a cool tower circle-y thing, but I have no idea what it was. There were lizards all over it and Tivoli caught one.

We walked around all day and got very tired and hot and ready for a meal by the time we left. We walked down a street to a hip little cafe and got pizza there. Tallis and I played poker in the car by the light of the few lamps in the auto camp that night. I was bit by a lot of mosquitoes that night. There were a whole bunch of fireworks that went off in the distance around three in the morning, which was a little bit awakening. Plus I thought Pompei was erupting every time a train went past the autocamp... but other than that it was a good night of sleeping in the car. Well... as good as a night of sleeping in a car can get.

six in the morning

Everyone was feeling pretty dirty and tired the next morning. We had Nutella and bread and some gas station juice for breakfast. Tallis had to run back inside the station just after this picture to get the keys from Schyler, because a big camper wanted to top off the pressure in it's tires right where we were parked.

Then we were off driving on the highway again. Around ten we came into sight of the first famous thing I'd seen on the trip yet. Vesuvius. I saw it through the trees, hazy and pale with the dust of distance. I was terribly terribly excited. As the morning wore on we got closer and the volcano loomed bigger. It was gorgeous and rather frightening. I didn't like having my back to the mountain. I couldn't see how people lived within sight of the volcano. It was an ominous shadow in the back of my mind for the two days we stayed there.

We were going to see Pompei today. We got lost in Napoli for about an hour trying to find it. Apparently there are a lot of hotels and restruants called 'Pompei' and they all advertise with big signs along the road, 'Pompei this way! One Kilometer! Next right turn! Next left turn! One Kilometer behind you!' Eventually we did find it and an autocamp right next to it. We unloaded all our stuff and then headed across the street to the entrance. We fought through a press of tour guides and tourists, bought our ticket and headed into the dead city.

Rivoira

The ferry was very late getting in (ten instead of eight or something) which meant we were late starting on our traveling. The little white line on the map actually went through the center of every town we passed, so we would get lost in a maze of streets every fifteen minutes or so... and to top it all off, the map lied and there was no autocamping spot where there should have been...

All this meant that at one o'clock in the morning-ish we were sleeping outside another gas station.

The Ferry

ANGEL BABIES! Do you see them??? They're right there on the table! These one's had more chocolate in them than the ones we had in the car, but they were still amazing. The ferry ride consisted of Texas hold 'em, Tetris and Pinoccle. It wasn't super exciting though... like... we didn't almost sink or get attacked by pirates or anything. I think we sat in the 'too nice for our budget' section of the ferry, but nobody asked to see our tickets or anything so we didn't bother moving.

Speaking of Ferries... There were about twenty gay guys all traveling with us. They all had perfect skin and hair, rediculously well matching clothes, short shorts, and matching rolling suitcases. It was interesting to say the least.

The Graveyard

Man... this post has such a cool title. So anyway... we were still walking around looking for food. We had left the 'old town' about twenty minutes ago and had walked a good distance when we happened to find this graveyard.




Another sideways photo...



Some of the only real flowers in the graveyard...

Can you spot the photographer in the picture above??? Schyler blended in really well...

We wandered around for another half an hour after we left the graveyard, seeing more of Debravontnic than probably most of the natives. We finally gave up and headed back to our car. We found an autocamping spot that looked decent and they gave us directions to a restruant across and a little way down the highway. We drove up and down the highway for twenty minutes trying to figure out where he had told us to go and eventually drove down a really steep narrow winding little road that took us down a cliff to the beach. It was every bit as scary as the alps. The restruant had a large deck that sat out over the water and after several mis-orders (they didn't have about five of the things we wanted) we got our food and it was good. I don't think our waitress liked us though...

After dinner it was back up the road and to our autocamping spot. We had an early day tomorrow.

Devbrotnic

Ok... I have no idea if I spelled the name right... but we had traveled all day to another city. Debrontnic... or something. We were going to take a ferry from here to Italy in a few days. We arrived around lunch time and ate lunch at a small pizzaria that was ok, but not great by any means. After lunch we walked up the street to a scetchy little outdoor bar and used the internet and played cards. There was a cool looking 'old town' surrounded by walls in this city and I was excited to go see them, but since we were staying for several days we decided to go tour them the next day. For now we would go down to the docks and decide when we would leave Croatia.

After several visiting several ferry companies we descovered that our only ferry option was one that left the next day at eight in the morning. The next departure was the day I had to be in Viterbo and that wasn't going to work. After a trying ordeal with international law officials involving van registration and the fact that we didn't have original copies of it we managed to get tickets for the ferry.

Since we only had one day in Dubrontic we decided to head back into town, tour around and get something for dinner. We didn't feel like paying to climb up on the walls of the old town so we just wandered up and down the streets, visiting churches and reading about wars and stuff like that. Apparently Duvbronic was bombed the year I was born... which was kinda cool I guess.



A street in the old town.



Another street in the old town.

Another street in the old town. By this point we are hungry and looking for a good restruant that is not too expensive of touristy. I think we got too picky because we searched for a long time.

A bridge from the old town overlooking the harbor. There was a group of Croatians having a barbique underneath us (just to the right of this picture... you can't see it).

CAT!

Another street in the old town.

This was just outside the walls. We walked from grey stone evening streets, through a tiny door in the wall and into this tropical paradise. It was really weird.

The old wall... and island... water...

Boats... (this is all in the same place... we just stood and took pictures for about fifteen minutes)

Cliffs and the old wall...

Like I said... paradise through a door. We wandered around the old streets until we had come full circle back to the entrance gates and then decided that anything to eat inside the old town would be too expensive and headed back into Debrontnic proper in seach of food. We searched a very long time...

BUY FANTA!

See how much this random person loves Fanta? You'll love it too!

Fanta! The soda of Europe!

A day at the Beach

No photos today. We got up early, had a nice breakfast, and hit the beach. We staked out a boulder under a cliff and spread beach gear and towels all over it. The boulder was half in, half out of the water and about six feet high. My main objective for today was to catch as many different kinds of fish as I could (and I had purchased a net for that very purpose at Split the day before) (the net was pink or green or some other gastly color). The water was a bit too cold for me this early in the morning, so us guys and Liesl headed off for a walk along the beach. Our destination was a line of large, square stone columns that traveled in a line down off the beach and into the water. We had seen them the day before. We couldn't decide what their purpose used to be (because they looked old and had started crumbling) it almost looked like the columns were trying to be a bridge that had never been completed. Since it was Croatia Schyler and I climbed on top of one. It was about ten feet squre on top. Schyler jumped off into the water and I climbed down (a gust of wind blew my drug dealer hat off into the water while I was standing on the pillar, it was very sad). We walked back to our boulder and got ready for some intense relaxing. I propped my hat up in the sun and let it dry out.

The rest of the day alternated between long periods of swimming and sun bathing. The water warmed up considerably and was the perfect temperature around two. I saw many many different kinds of fish, but my brand new net was woefully inept at catching any of them (I think they were freaked out by the bright color and kept their distance). The only thing the net caught the whole day was a sea cucumber, which Tallis caught and set on our boulder. The boys poked it until Liesl felt sorry for it and threw it back. Even though the net failed miserably my new snorkling set worked admirably. I didn't drown once.

An enourmous Croatian couple staked out a plot of beach about twenty kilometers from our boulder. They were tanned past perfection, but lay in the sun all day looking for all the world like a pair of beached walruses. Occasionally one would twitch or raise an arm. When one side got too cooked they would wallow around into a different position and resume their immobility. It was very entertaining.

Our rock had lots of rugged character and so was very fun to climb around on. Later in the day I found it was not entirely reliable though. I was wearing my hat (which had finally dried) and sunglasses and clinging upside down about five feet above the water when the rock of both my handholds broke and I fell into the water. The water was just deep enough where I avoided serious injury (except to my pride). This was probably good since everyone on the boulder was laughing too hard to help me. I had a bump on my forehead, but had no idea how it had gotten their since I fell into the water backwards. I eventually decided that I had hit myself in the head with the broken piece rock I was holding as I fell into the water.

Those were the adventures of the day. We headed back up to our hostel as it started getting dark with all our beach gear and my hat... which was now looking terribly bedraggled and mis-shapen.

Blending with the un-locals

Drug dealer hat plus sweet wicked-y sunglasses with a famous brandname hot-glued onto them.

The church

This is Split from a very high church tower we climbed up. We had to pay twenty Kuna to go up (about five dollars), but it was worth it. We took a narrow stone staircase up to the church roof and then another narrow stone staircase to the base of the tower. At one time there must have been a wooden staircase up to the top of the tower, but it has since been replaced by the metal one we went up. The staircase wound around the inside of the tower up about ten stories and deposited us in a crowd of tourists at the very top.



Schyler makes the best pictures...




Another sideways photo from the top of the tower.




My favorite part about Croatia was the lack of rules about anything.

This last picture is Split harbor from the top of the church.