Italy2017

Title page for Our Big Trip 2017 (Italy)

Our highlights and Impressions of the tour.

Our route on Google Maps.

The main alter of the Amalfi Cathederal. Almafi stole itself a venerable saint from the Holy Land in the 12th century, which is why the body of St. Andrew the Apostle lies under the altar in a lavishly decorated crypt started in 1206.

View from our window at our first hotel, the Marmorata, a few miles from Sorrento. Not always 5-star, we appreciated the tour operators choice of hotels. Their choices enabled us to appreciate the beauty and charm of Italy much better than had we stayed at a fancy hotel isolated from it's surroundings.

Jerry & Sylvia on the water taxi enroute to Almafi.

Cindy tries her luck at making paper. Amalfi's Paper Museum is located in an ancient XIV century medieval paper-mill. Among the century-old tools in the Museum are ancient wooden mauls, operated by an hydraulic wheel, the press used to remove the water in excess from the paper, the continuous printing machine and the Dutch machine.

The first of many cathedral we visited. Amalfi Cathedral is a 9th-century Roman Catholic cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo, Amalfi, Italy. It is dedicated to the Apostle Saint Andrew whose relics are kept here. Towering over it on the left is a bell tower of 1180–1276, with a majolica drum at the top surrounded by four smaller drums.

Main street of Pompeii. Once a thriving and sophisticated Roman city, Pompeii was buried in meters of ash and pumice after the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Pompeii Forum with ampitheater in the background, and even further back a little bit of Mt. Vesuvius is visible.

An excavated shop in Pompsii. The jars held different kinds of oil. A couple guys from our group, Jeff and John, are trailing us.

Ancient tombs just ouside the original walls of Pompeii.

Joyce and Kenn enjoying their first pizza in Italy. This was lunch in Sorrento.

Joyce on the old track from Ravello to our hotel on the coast. We lost track of the number of steps, but Google says it is 1200 feet down.

Late May and early June was a great time to visit Italy. We had 15 days of sunshine. Lot's of flowers and trees were green. Fruit was in season for the most part.

Helga, our tour guide for the all 14-days, shows us a pomegranate (or maybe a tomato??) from a street-side vendor in Almafi. She did a good job baby-sitting our 18-person group. Originally a German from Hamburg, she has lived in Italy for 40+ years. Her English was much more understandable than any of the Italian local tour guides we encountered.

Trevi Fountain, in Rome, is the largest Baroque fountain in the city. A traditional legend holds that if visitors throw a coin into the fountain, they are ensured a return to Rome. The travertine fountain is 85 feet high and spills about 21,129,504 gallons of water a day.

Kenn and Joyce at Trevi Fountain in Rome.

Mosaic of Christ, Mary and St. Benedict at the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

A statue of St. Benedict at the abbey. The town, Monte Cassino, formerly Roman town of Casinum, is best known for its historic abbey. St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. The hilltop sanctuary was also the site of the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, where the building was destroyed by Allied bombing and rebuilt after the war.