Italy - Day 18 - Rome to Amalfi

Although this was supposed to be a travelling day, the must-see status of the Galleria Borghese and the lack of opening times on Monday meant that we were up early to go see one last Roman attraction.  We checked out of our nice hotel, the Hotel Canada, and hiked alongside the ancient walls of the city.  It was a nice day for a stroll, but the humidity and heat were both rising and we were glad that we would be spending the day in either a temperature controlled museum or an air-conditioned car.

The Galleria Borghese is not an easy museum to get in to.  You have to book at least three days ahead of time, through the internet or on the phone.  This gets you a voucher for entry during a specific two-hour window during the day.  Your time inside the museum is limited to the two-hours - no dilly-dallying.  They only sell 360 tickets per window, so you're not competing for space in front of the Berninis.  There is also a very strict bag check policy - you are essentially not allowed to take anything into the museum and photographs are a definite no-no.  You have to show up a full half-hour before your allotted time slot to claim your ticket and then are forced to wait for the window to start.  They first herd everyone into the gallery containing the painted art, where your time is again further limited to a half hour.  It's almost oppressive.  We ended up dubbing them the Museum Nazis.  We were doubtful that whatever lay behind the closed doors would be worth all the effort.

Boy were we wrong.

If you like art, the Galleria Borghese is a must.  There were all sorts of amazing paintings in the first gallery, all competing for your attention in lavish rooms with faux three-dimensional frescoes painted on the ceilings.  Our favourites in this section were likely Raphael's Girl with Unicorn or some micro-mosaics by Marcello Provenzale.  We even gained an appreciation for Titian, although the Carvaggio's still failed to impress.

But we were there for the sculpture and we saw some of the most amazing pieces.  There were three major works by Bernini worth mentioning - the Rape of Presopone, where you can see the tears carved on her face and the indentations made in the flesh of her thigh where she is being held by Pluto; Apollo and Daphne, where the delicate work on her fingers, face and the leaves of the tree she is being transformed into need to be seen to be believed; and David, where his mastery is not quite as obvious until you look at the detail work on the rope of his sling.  I invite you all to do a quick Google search on Bernini and have a look at some of his work. It is truly amazing and I will be forever grateful that we were able to see it in person.

After the museum we were back in the car and onto the roads of Rome.  I'm used to the traffic now, so it didn't seem like much of a problem navigating through the city to find the autostrada towards Napoli. You just need to be flexible on lane control and keep an eye on what's in front of you.  Italian drivers are just as eager to avoid accidents as anyone else, so they may act strangely but never put you in any real danger.  Just don't expect to be able to maintain the 'bubble' of space around your vehicle that they teach you about in North America.

The drive south was nice - easy and reasonably scenic.  We went around the outskirts of Napoli, with the sea on one side and Mount Vesuvius towering over the city on the other.  We thought we would have another nice easy stretch into Amalfi, but the Tom-Tom told us to go off the autostrada and it was like we entered a parallel universe, where up is down, hamburgers eat people and ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THE RULES OF THE ROAD APPLY!  As we picked our way through the small villages on the cliffs it was as though complete madness had take control of everyone.  Road signs were not ignored but blatantly disobeyed.  Passing was only done on blind corners.  Right of way was not given but taken.  Luckily for us we managed to break free from the herd and get clear into the small winding roads that took us up over the mountain and down to Amalfi on the other side.  It was some of the most insane driving I had ever done, like the road between Lecco and Bellagio, but on steroids.  There was one particular corner where a full-sized tourist bus and my little Hyundai had to do a delicate dance of forward and reverse to ensure he had the extra two or three centimeters to get by me on a corner.  This trip is not for the faint of heart.

But once we arrived, what a paradise we found.  We knew that we would be a little bit knackered from all the touring by this time so we found ourselves a nice high-end place to settle down and relax.  We were greeted by name on arrival by a nice man who told us "We will take care of everything".  And so far they have.  We've abandoned any noble ideas of taking some time and doing day trips out to Pompei and Capri.  We're going to take our down time and fill it with swims in the Golfo di Salerno, massages and reading on the balcony.  I imagine we'll spend quite a few hours just staring out of our window onto the sea.  Large luxury boats criss-cross in front of us.  On the right is the rest of the hotel, dropping almost straight down a few hundred metres into the sea - we have to take an elevator down a dozen floors to get to the pool.  A lemon grove takes up space on one side, with bright patches of flowers interspersed.  On the left is the village of Amalfi, with its small port flanked by a long pier.  It creeps up the side of the cliff and just sort of sits there, absorbing the tourists and the sunlight with equal measure.  The weather is a brilliant mix of bright, hot sun and cool breezes, making dinner on the terrace a couple of floors below us an absolute treat.  The staff are courteous and helpful and we have yet to hear the word no.  For dinner yesterday we had the most amazing Chateaubriand for two.  If it is an indication of what the rest of the dining experiences here will be like, than sign me up.  It is just going to take all my willpower not to look at what it is all going to cost.  But maybe that doesn't matter. I am under no illusion that the next 6 months, with the move to Oman and the new job, will some of the most stressful and difficult of our lives.  We've been working hard in Aberdeen.  We deserve it.

And I think that is likely going to end the blog posts for this trip.  There will be no more exciting things to visit, just downtime by the pool, which even an illustrious author like myself will have a hard time making exciting to the wider world.  If we manage another great picture, we'll post it.  In the meantime I'll take this opportunity to stow the computer and extract every drop of relaxation from this little Italian paradise.