January – February 2018

Jo says I’m totally lazy because I’m combining two blog posts into one.  Bite me, Jo.  For the rest of you, feel free to just scope out the pictures if you, too, feel lazy. 😉

A Pup and Her Crazy Human in Pompeii

When Jo was young (don’t worry, Jo; you’re still young), she watched TV shows on Pompeii, Greece, and Atlantis (and, of course, all of the Indiana Jones movies) and dreamed of becoming an archaeologist!  When she discovered a good chunk of her archaeology career would involve teaching in a classroom instead of running from giant boulders and poisonous darts or melting a bunch of Nazi faces with the Ark of Covenant, she said, “Boooring.”  But she still longed to visit at least one of those places one day.

Well, after finding out how difficult it is to travel with a dog, Jo quickly decided there was no way in hell she was going to make a side trip to any of the Greek islands.  And, well, we all know the many myths surrounding the location of Atlantis.  So that was a no go.

But Pompeii…well, now THAT could easily be done as a day trip, as it is only a mere 2 hours south of Rome and is dog friendly!

Although it should be noted it took us more like 3 hours to get there because the train system in Italy is fuuuuucked. 

It was a nightmare trying to get a ticket for me.  There is no option online to buy one for a dog.  You have to physically buy it at the station or on the train (paying double the price on board).  This time, Jo took a chance on not buying one ahead of time, and luckily the ticket guy on board (both ways) didn’t charge her because I was so small…and cute.  It was most likely because I was cute. 😉

QUICK TIP:  Turns out a child ticket is the same price as a pet ticket, so save yourself a crap load of trouble and buy a child ticket.

Crazy Train

Trains arriving on time…or at the correct platform?  Forget it.  You’d have better luck putting lipstick on an alligator.

And if the train was late, an announcement wasn’t always made.  Not like that would have mattered anyway.  Jo can’t understand Italian.

Sometimes the train that was supposed to show up after our train…showed up before our train!  And there was no screen on the inside or outside of the train listing the stops/destination either…so then she was stuck wondering if this earlier train was actually our train !?*@!

It wasn’t.  So good thing we didn’t get on that one.

Things were so screwed up, we wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised if the freakin’ Oscar Mayer Wienermobile rolled up on the tracks.  And we would have happily hopped on for a ride. 😀

After surviving the first train, Jo couldn’t figure out where to catch the second train.  So she pathetically motioned for help at a ticket counter and mentioned Pompeii.  Apparently, you can take the Circumvesuviana line too.  It practically drops you off at the gates of Pompeii!  Why in salty sea dogs the freakin’ railway website didn’t give that as an option is a mystery for the ages.

*sigh*  Italian trains, man…they mind as well just pipe Ozzy’s Crazy Train through the speakers and let people fend for themselves.  😀

* AT LAST we had arrived at Pompeii!

* While most of the Pompeii artifacts are at the nearby museum in Naples, there is still plenty to see here!

* Like a mural of this guy asking this girl if she likes what she sees…”You get two testicles for the price of one!  And if you buy now, I’ll throw in the cape for free.”

* There is a mini museum inside Pompeii with some murals, jewelry, and body casts

* The Pompeiian weather forecast in 79 AD included 6 inches of pumice rain an hour…followed by pyroclastic flows:  Usually a mixture of super-hot, super-fast ash, rock, gas, and signs that read, “Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.”

I recently suffered a pyroclastic flow of my own after eating one too many Dentastix.

* THE CURSE OF POMPEII:  There are even letters (whether real or not, who knows?) from those who stole pieces of Pompeii…and suffered the consequences!

* It’s one thing to see places like this on TV or in magazines…it’s beyond words to see it in person.  I think we were both stunned by this amazing place.  Even in ruins, it was still grand, a marvel we traversed in silence for hours!

* Jo was completely nerding out over this city, going on and on about the engineering…and these damn wheel tracks…and stepping stones for folks to cross the street without trudging through sewage.

“Penny, we are standing where Pompeiian wagons once rolled, walking where people walked 2000 years ago!”

I get it, Jo.  I get it. 

* Not even animals were spared in this disaster. 🙁 Here, a dog with a collar.

* Recently, a man initially thought to have been crushed by a boulder hurtling through the air during the eruption was found!  But the conclusion was that he did not die by said boulder.  If you say so, guys… Photo via Nat Geo

What’s That, You Say?  More Penises?!

If anyone has gotten the vibe that Jo and I get a kick out of penises…you’re right!  Penises are hilarious, even more so with smiley faces, whilst donning a tiny top hat, or used as a microphone.  But the Romans really loved their penises.  Pompeii was once full of them!

Imagine:  Get yer popcorn!  Flying penis necklaces!  Penis wind chimes!

And, today, there are even still penis carvings in the streets which point in the direction of the brothels.  Unfortunately, however, try as Jo might, she never did locate even one of those weenie street carvings.

Furthermore, the House of Vetti, a large villa in Pompeii, was closed for restoration when we were there.  So we didn’t get to see the mural of Priapus (god of fertility and protector of livestock, gardens, and male genitalia – is there anything this guy can’t do?)

In myth, he’s cursed with a circus-sized member.

Oh. What. A. Terrible. Curse. Indeed.

In the villa mural, located in the foyer, he’s weighing his “curse” on a scale against a bag of gold.  This mural was meant to be a sign of good luck and fortune.  Nowadays, I’m pretty sure humans just tack a horseshoe to their front door, right??

What about a penis horseshoe?  That’s gotta be worth double the luck!

* There’s also this guy in danger of getting his jibbly bits mauled by dogs…or who the hell knows what’s going on here.

* There were also a ton of intricate mosaics, including depictions of guard dogs at the entrances!

* Translation:  Beware the Dog!

FUN FACT:  Pompeii had fast food restaurants!  Feast your eyes on the above photo of McPompeii’s:  The holes housed pots which contained local favorites such as fish, partridge stew, figs, nuts, and wine.  Gambling and prostitution were rumored to have been popular at these restaurants too.

But, even back then, customers complained about the quality of fast food, claiming there were fingers and other human flesh found in their meals!

* Speaking of prostitution, here is a mural in one of the brothels and (below) a stone bed in one of the rooms.  Uhhh, fornicating on a stone bed?!  What kind of animals are you, humans?  I hope they at least covered it with Egyptian cotton sheets!

* Ah, yes – who doesn’t love the ol’ favorite pastime of chariot fish racing

* This place had a ton of amphitheaters and arenas!

* Courtyards galore in these villas!

* There’s even political graffiti, with names of some dudes, describing what good people they are, the positions they’re running for and how worthy they are of those positions…and, finally, a request to vote for them.

Blah. Blah. BLAH.

Dogs don’t do elections.  We just pee on stuff to let it be known we’re boss.

* Mount Vesuvius peeking through the clouds

We had an incredible time at Pompeii!  There was so much more to see, and these pictures only scratch the surface.  Totally worth the train chaos!  What I found surprising, however, (and which Jo was completely oblivious to) was that there were no remnants of volcanic debris in the areas that had been excavated.  All cleaned out.  Clean as a whistle!

If you want a better idea of how insane the amount of debris deposited was, pop on over to Herculaneum, a neighboring city that was decimated by Vesuvius’ wrath as well.  Herculaneum was excavated, but the surrounding walls of volcanic ash and rock remain.  It’s also supposedly less busy than Pompeii, although there was practically nobody at Pompeii the day we went.

********** INTERMISSION **********

You probably have a blood clot now, so stretch those legs and grab some refreshments before the thrilling second half of this blog post! 😉

Where to Next?!

As per usual, it was a righteous cluster f**k trying to catch our trains back to Rome.  We were exhausted, and Jo almost missed our first train.  After that train arrived at the station and we were waiting for our second train, Jo was still trying to figure out how to get to the next place we’d be staying when we left Rome soon.

You see, Jo had been pinching pennies for awhile now to stay within budget, but recently I had a “Come to Jesus” talk with her.

“Jo,” I said.  “Quit being a penny-pinching candy ass of a human!  If you’re gonna do this trip, DO IT.  Don’t miss out on something because it’s too much money, and don’t starve yourself for days because food is too expensive.  Suuure, you might have to sell your kidneys to get out of debt after this adventure, but you bet yer ass you’ll be thinking of all the amazing shit we did together every time you make a payment on that debt.”

I guess that wasn’t exactly the best pep talk in the world.  Either way, she bought it!  And she decided to splurge on a trip to Venice for the Carnival!

But that wasn’t until around mid-February.  It was currently mid-January, so Jo found another place to kill some time until then, a quiet, secluded place to relax after the stressors of city life.  So she randomly picked a place on the map, found an Airbnb she could afford, which also had relatively easy train access, and booked a trip to Montalbano!

Montalbano is a village in the town of Zocca, nestled amongst the Apennine mountain range, in the Province of Modena, in the Emilia-Romagna region.  Phew!  What a mouthful!

The Italian railway website showed there was a route from Rome to Vignola, a station near Montalbano, but for some reason, we couldn’t purchase the ticket online.  So while we were at the station heading back from Pompeii, we went to a ticket counter for some help.

The reason for not being able to buy a ticket to Vignola, you ask?  Because the train line was closed for repairs.  For how long??  For months, apparently.  Is there any other way to get there?  Only if one has a car.  You can catch a train from Rome to Bologna and drive an hour to Montalbano.

If we were only staying for a short time, renting a car would be okay, but we were staying for a month.

Once again, I can’t help but wonder why the hell this line closure wasn’t mentioned on the railway website!

So we headed back to our apartment in Rome, nearly missing our second train as a result of getting on the wrong portion of the train (section B, instead of A).  What the hell, people?!

And with 3 days to spare before we had to leave Rome for good, Jo and I slapped on our crap-dancing shoes and thinking caps and managed to find a personal chauffeur service that would pick us up from the Bologna station for a cool 100 euros, the cheapest taxi/private service offer we had received.  Yikes!

Hiking the Mountains of Northern Italy!

After being picked up by our handsome salt-n-pepper-haired driver, we made our way into the mountains…the further up we went, the foggier it got.  I had seen Silent Hill with Jo before, and I nervously nudged her.  Jo was thinking the same thing.  The fog was so thick, you could literally only see inches in front of the car, and on these winding roads, one wrong turn…and, well, we’d be Spam at the bottom of a cliff.

Go into the mountains, Jo said.  It’ll be relaxing, she said!

* Thankfully, we arrived alive!  And the fog cleared a bit for some photo ops.

* You can see where we stayed behind my wee head: Antica Locanda La Canonica!

Once a rectory, it is now a restaurant and bed & breakfast.  And this place was freakin’ amazing!!  If anyone ever gets a chance to visit Italy, go, go, go here!

* Jo snapped this great photo of the fog rolling in on Antica Locanda.  Then she turned to me and said, “Well, Penny, this is where John’s Carpenter’s leper pirate ghosties come and get us.”  I hoped she wasn’t serious!!

* View from the top of the Antica Locanda’s driveway

We stayed with the sweetest, most helpful family:  Angelo (on left) and Nicoletta (on right).  They spoke little to no English, but they welcomed us right in, their home always warm, and even in off season the restaurant was insanely busy on the days it was open.  Cars lined up and down the driveway and into the road!

I think they were a bit like local celebrities, having their own cookbooks and newspaper articles.  And let me tell you…their food was THE BEST Jo and I had while in Italy.

I’m not so sure Angelo was too fond of Jo, however, what with her bugging him with the only Italian she knew:  “Posso cenare stasera?” (May I have dinner tonight?)  But Angelo and I shared a great bond, with I running down the stairs to meet him for breakfast every morning and him greeting me with a hearty “Buongiorno, Penneee!”

And one night when their son, who speaks some English, was visiting, they bought us a pizza and invited us down to eat it with them.  We talked about all sorts of things, with the son acting as interpreter.  They made us feel just like part of the family!

* Outside the defunct bell tower of Antica Locanda

* This entire area is part of one humongous park called “Parco Regionale dei Sassi di Roccamalatina,” and the first hiking trail of many starts right at Antica Locanda, branching off their driveway, past a goat, and right up into the hills.

* They have 4 bedrooms to rent, and the above and below photos were the views from our window.  It was so quiet and peaceful out here, the silence only broken by a chorus of church bells chiming in the distance every hour or so.

* Our bedroom with hilarious portraits of what Jo will soon look like if she keeps eating all their pasta! 😉  This was, by far, the cleanest place we had the pleasure of staying in so far.  And Jo was over the moon to have a bathroom all to herself for the first time in a long time…complete with her first bidet!

* Italian breakfasts are traditionally sweet, and Nicoletta’s did not disappoint!  She baked lemon cake with homemade strawberry jam and some sort of chocolate chip cheesecake-type of dish. There was biscotti, orange juice, and an assortment of tea and coffee

* Sundays were insane!  Usually a plate filled with cookies and either a bowl of sweet mascarpone cheese topped with chocolate shavings or panna cotta drizzled with a fruit or chocolate sauce.

* Even though it was January-February, the area was still decorated for Christmas, and this horse nativity scene next door just tickled us. 🙂

* Coolest random oven ever!

* I met a goat!  We weren’t particularly fond of each other.

* In my search for this cat, which I was adamant I smelled, Jo said it never occurred to me to look up.  Suck it, Jo.

* A perfect day to go hiking!  So Jo asked Angelo if he would be so kind as to drive us close to one of the trails we wanted to check out.

* He was nice enough to drop us off at the visitor’s center, and we followed the trail, which led us through tiny  Medieval villages, a forest, sunny fields, icy valleys, and across rivers

* Take One!

* Take Two!

* THIS is what we really came for.  We had heard of these giant rock formations and wanted to see them in person.  Sassi di Roccamalatina translates to the “Rocks of Malatina/Malatigni Fortress.”  Jo could find very little about this place in her research, but apparently it was used as a fort in the 13th century!

And if you look close enough at the top of the rocks, a little to the left, you’ll see a cross.  You can, in fact, climb to the top of these rocks!  The path consisted of narrow, worn stairs and metal bars sticking out of the rock, fashioned into a ladder.  It looked insane, and while Jo would have loved to try it, she didn’t want to risk my carrier breaking and me plummeting to my death.  Aww, thanks, Jo!

* This photo with drawing of the fort Thanks to This Guy

* We came across this place, along with another structure, which, judging from the signs nearby, was a reconstruction of a charcoal pit, a place built to turn wood into coal.  Pretty cool!

* I literally thought these chickens were real and immediately needed to investigate!

* Charming view of my cute butt and to show the other side of the rocks.  We had already hiked up from the left, into the wooded hill, and down to the right, coming round to where we are now

* Telepathically exchanging phone numbers. 😉  This cute guy followed us along the trail for quite awhile!

* These stairs ain’t so bad, Jo – come on!  Nope, nope…it’s bad.

* Google Translate initially said this read as:  “Voluntary ecological guilty guards.” Mm, hmmm…Go home, Google.  You’re drunk.

* We did it!  Exhausted and freezing, but we did it.  Hiked for hours without seeing another human soul, and the views were breathtaking.

* Sporting my winter gypsy-duck hunter look

* When it came to dinner, we were blown away!  We think Nicoletta hand made the pasta, but Angelo was the chef for everything else.  From walnut and pear tortelloni to mouthwatering grilled steak in olive oil, and some of the best-tasting local wine Jo ever had.  She never did ask them what kind of wine it was.  She simply asked for “vino rosso,” and they brought out a carafe of just that.

This, my friends, is gnocco fritto e tigelle/crescentine, and it’s fucking outrageous!

A traditional local dish of little crescents or rectangles of fried dough as well as round, fluffy baked dough which you use to make sandwiches with the assorted meats offered (prosciutto, pancetta, salami, etc.), assorted cheeses, pickled onions, and a paste called “cunza” made of bacon/lard, garlic, and rosemary.  OUT. OF. THIS. WORLD.

* Rabbit cacciatore!  It was our first time trying rabbit and, sorry, Thumper, but you tasted delicious!

FUNNY STORY:  While out hiking another trail one day, we were stopped by a couple kindly talking to us about “cacciatore” up on the mountain.  Jo didn’t understand the rest of the Italian but immediately got excited, thinking there was a restaurant serving some sort of cacciatore dish on the mountain.  What an incentive to reach the top!  Turns out, “cacciatore” means “hunter” in Italian.  The couple was actually warning us to look out for a hunter they saw further up the trail. 😀

* One of the trails we reached from Antica Locanda’s driveway.  It wraps around the mountainside, all the way to the top!

At the top, we ran into a bunch of local hikers who asked, “You’re American?  Why did you decide to come here?  Why all this way?”

We’ve been asked that quite a bit on our travels, and Jo still doesn’t have a good answer.  For this particular gentleman, she motioned to their surroundings and replied, “For these views.  For relaxation and introspection.  For food and drink.  The simple things.” 

He laughed and nodded in agreement.

* I mean, just look at these views!!

* Even Peeny couldn’t resist taking in the sights!

* “Uneven ground”  Yeah, no shit.  Whenever notoriously clumsy Jo slipped on a patch of pine cones, she looked like Scooby-Doo trying to run away from a ghost.

* Found this on our hike!

* Towards the end of our time in Montalbano, it snowed!  And snowed…and snowed.

* And Jo took this time to finally finish crocheting her scarf she started 7 months before.  I think she’s pretty damn excited here.

* My first time experiencing snow!  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it and initially thought a giant dog in the sky had disemboweled his favorite stuffed animal, its fluffy innards floating down on us.  Apparently, that’s not how snow works.

* Jo kept calling to me, telling me I could do it, keep going, Penny…Very funny, Jo.

* It snowed all night and all the following day, but the next morning was a winter wonderland!

* Jo made me try my snow boots on.  Hardy-har-har…

* And Peeny made a snowman!  Without hands.  Well done, Peeny…

* It was also during this time that Jo decided she would allocate her rapidly diminishing funds to other areas of our trip, which meant we would not be making it to Germany since we would be heading home much earlier than expected.

But hey, no sense in letting some good lederhosen go to waste!

Our driver ended up canceling our pickup because of the snow, but Angelo was nice enough to drive us to the Bologna train station when it was time for us to move on.

We will never forget our time here at Antica Locanda with Nicoletta and Angelo.  Everyone and everything was absolutely amazing!!

Next Up:  Wrapping up Italy with the Venice Carnival!