Southern Italy: A Photo Preview
Rand and I got home last night. Since we landed, I’ve been waging a losing battle against jet-lag. It is 9:15 am, and I really want to go to sleep, which, even if you take into account ALL of the time zones I’ve visited in the last few weeks, makes zero sense (depending on which location my body got stuck in, it is either 12:15pm or 5:15pm, neither of which are appropriate times for curling up and going to sleep). As best as I can figure out, I’m on Papua New Guinea time.
I have never been to Papua New Guinea, but it is presently 2:15 am Thursday there. Which feels about right.
As soon as we left Italy, Rand and I started to have a little bit of perspective on it. On our way home, we spent one more night in Germany, and two in Boston (I guess that counts as taking the scenic route), and when people asked how the Amalfi coast was, we both answered to effect of this:
It was beautiful. And stressful as hell.
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That, in brief, is southern Italy. It is lovely and infuriating. Something will inevitably happen that will cause me to think, “I’m never coming back here,” and then, in nearly the same breath, I’ll be planning our next trip to Naples and trying to convince my husband that we need to buy a summer home in my family’s village, which is hilarious for lots of reasons, not the least of which is this: we don’t even own a regular home, and I want to buy a summer one.
The entire country makes me absolutely lose my mind. I detest it. I can’t wait to go back.
Here’s a quick preview of our trip, via ten photos that my beloved husband took. They make me sad. They make me smile. They make me strangely homesick for a place that I’ve never lived.
They also make me sleepy. But that could be said of everything right now.
- Walking back to our hotel in Amalfi, under a hot Italian sun.
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- View of Amalfi from one of our hikes. In the far distance, one of the large white hotels on the cliffside was ours.
– - Rand and I near the center of town. The row of lights above us is from the cemetery, I think.
– - The street in Frigento on which my grandfather bought a house, in an attempt to get my grandmother to head back to the village from America. It didn’t work. We still have the house.–
- I have no idea what’s happening here, but I love it. (With my uncle, my aunt, and my not-so-little-anymore cousin in my great-aunt’s home).
– - Rand discovers his new favorite dessert: amaretto cookies dipped in red wine.
– - Family hike! I don’t know where we were going. I think there was a castle or something up on a hill (I realize none of that is helpful, but you guys, there are castles EVERYWHERE in Europe. You can’t walk five feet without bumping into one).
– - The photo is blurry from the steam. Rand declared this pasta some of the best he’d ever had. It was hand rolled by my aunt and great-aunt in the village.
– - Walking with my aunt Rosamaria along the limiti of town (The village sits at the summit of the mountain and extends downward. The limiti form a ring around the summit, where the center of town lies).
– - This gentleman was amazing. His name is Marciano, and he stopped me in the street and asked me to whom I belonged. When he found out my mom’s last name, he took us to meet my third-cousin who lived down the road, and then showed us his workshop, where he made everything you see on the shelves.–
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