The children ask to stay at home today, and also Olga is not completely fit (and was not completely fit the past 5 days), so we decide to take a rest day at home. It’s fantastic weather and we enjoy our garden to the fullest, playing hide and seek, Anne Maria Koekoek, picking clemantines and eating them. It’s the best holiday so far, according to the kids
The next day, it’s already time to leave our Neapolitan appartment, and drive further South. We leave our appartment at 9, after sleeping until 8 (and feeling fit again), cleaning and packing our car.
The first stop is the Lidl, as we are a member and we set today as our birthday, we get a 5% discount and some free groceries. It’s quite a hunt to find all gifts, and at the check out our membership card is not loading. So we just pay for everything and take our loss.
Then, we visit two more Roman villa’s in Castellammare di Stabia, just south of Pompeii. It was here that there was the largest concentration of huge elite villas. We start at the Villa San Marco, it is enormous and every wall is painted with the most intricate details.
Just down the road lies the Villa Arianna. It’s a bit smaller but still huge and stretched out along the cliffs to provide the maximum amount of seascapes from all the rooms. It’s no wonder that this area was such a hotspot of villa buildings.
The trip to our next appartment leads us along the Amalfi coast, where the most beautiful villages of Italy are. It’s stunning indeed. Steep cliffs with beautiful pastel houses and a blue sea.
Tim takes the endless turns patiently. Many car parks are full with other tourists, but every now and then, we find a spot to drone or take some pictures. The children patiently sit in the back, listening in turns to fairytales on the MP3 player.
At the end of the Amalfi coast is our next appartment, only for one night. We still have time to visit Paestum, a major ancient Greek city with three standing temples from 550-450BC. The city walls and amphitheatre are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remain, as well as paved roads.
We try to enter the site with our passes but our told to exchange them for tickets in the museum. There they have to most incompetent and unfriendly staff of all time. We have to wait for 15 minutes while there is only one customer in front of us. Meanwhile 2 other employees are sitting behind their desk doing nothing. But we get there in the end and go back to the archaeological site first as the light is best now.
We start at the far edge of the site and head to the temple of Athena. It dates from around 500 BCE and is fairly simple with Doric frieze. From there we head to the other end walking along the Roman road and through the remains of the later Roman town which was built beside the temples.
There are several strange buildings, a small house like structure which was originally covered by a tumulus. It’s called a Heroon, an empty mausoleum. Next to the forum is a sanctuary with an enormous pool.
Then we get to the best preserved and largest temple of the three, the second temple of Hera. It dates from around 450 BCE and is one of the best surviving examples from this time period.
Next to it stands the other temple of Hera. The oldest temple of the three dating from 550 BCE. This is an unique site, it’s rare to find a temple from antiquity with all it outer columns and entablature still standing and here there are three of them. The light is also perfect as the sun is setting so we take some photos and explore the rest of the ruin before heading to the museum.
The highlight of the museum are several frescos from Greek tombes. The most enigmatic is the tomb of the diver, with a painting of a person diving into the sea. The rest of the museum houses various objects from the town and the temples such as the friezes and votives.
As it gets dark we head back to our car to check in at our holiday home for the night. It’s a big house on the edge of town. The man explains everything using google translate, it’s a bit bare and cold but the man is friendly and it’s fine for one night. He makes sure we understand how the coffee machine works (very important for Italians).
We head into town for dinner as there is no kitchen in the rooms. Our first choice is closed and not much seems open at 18.00 on a cold December evening. But we remeber that we saw lights and something called Las Vegas. Not the best name for a restaurant but we can’t be too picky.
Olga does some recon, and there are willing to open an half our early for us. When we enter we are greeted by a wall with trophees. Unknowingly we have entered into a two time world champion pizzaria. So we stick to pizza and try some different pizzas. They are really good and the most expensive one was 12 euro. The children get over the fact that there are no fries and finish their pizzas too. We head back home and go to bed as it’s late and cold.
