Cilento Day 11 - Part 1

No pictures of day 10..just eating, reading, meditation, sunbathing and nothing else. A needed break before the most challenging activity of this vacation: a one-day visit to Pompeii. I took about 150 pictures on that day, will try to summarize it in two posts.
Let's start with the arrival at Pompeii train station.The modern city of Pompeii may be a nice one (in an Italian way of beauty) but it was barely visible behind tourist shops, fast food restaurants and tourist coaches. Just the tall church was worth a photo.But even the church is encircled with vending booths selling every kind of souvenirs, every booth the very same assortment.Entering the ancient Roman city was only a change in the style of the houses...the endless stream of tourists (like us) was in no way different to the outside. The ubiquitous groups of Italian pupils, making noise like a Boeing 747 at takeoff, came virtually around every corner and forced the smaller groups to switch to sign language because audible communication was impossible.
After a first shock we realized the giant size of the area (it is indeed a whole city) and discovered places of refuge on the outer skirts. Nevertheless it took a while to mentally blind out the groups of tourists and to imagine Roman life. But then it became awesome...

Cilento Day 9

Ruins and the beach were the theme of day 9. The travel guide mentioned ruins of the ancient greek town Elea, now named Velia, and recommended to go there not only to see the remains of the city but to enjoy the scenic countryside as well.
Again it was a rather long-winded drive following the narrow local country road across mountains and valleys. After just two hours of world class rallye driving ;-) we finally left the car in front of the historic site. There were almost no other visitors than us and the place was as scenic as promised.
Elea/Velia was once home of a couple of famous philosophers like Zeno. I remebered the name from a book I recently bought: Gödel, Escher, Bach (not yet finished), so it was even more interesting to me. However, one needs a lot of imagination to enjoy these old heaps of stones :-)As promised it was a beautiful place to go for a walk. As it rises above the surrounding valley it has an amazing view above the new Italian city of Velia and along the coast.Must be a nice place to live between the green valleys of the Cilento and the Mediterranean sea. Not really difficult to become a philospher there...
Although it was mainly cloudy the temperature was pretty high. After several hours of walking, hill-climbing and exploring the glistening sea became more and more tempting. So we left the green hills for the beach.Again it was completely empty. A totally different view than the terribly crowded Italian beaches I was afraid of.Feeling safe within sight of the medieval watchtower, which was erected on a hill made from stones from the ancient philosophers city,....
....a long walk along the beach helped to clear the mind of any unhappy thoughts, remaining memories of unfinished work, city noise and so on..
Probably I had many important philosophical ideas there, maybe I even found the meaning of life....unfortunately I forgot to memorize it... :-)To appropriately finish such a great Italian day it had to be Pasta for dinner, with fresh tomatoes and green peppers.