John Edward Cooper’s Notes

Visit to Pompeii & journey along the Amalfi Coast—Villa Serena, Castellammare di Stabia, Naples

Day 160 Sun 9 June Prov 19-21

The alarm clock sounded a little before 5.30am.… Janet was not happy because she hadn’t slept and was extremely weary. There had been more fireworks in the night, she reported. Took some pictures from the balcony (05:39–05:41); copied them from the camera (05:44); and edited them with Photoshop (05:49–05:51).


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 05:39:38
Looking from the hotel room balcony


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 05:39:56
Looking from the hotel room balcony


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 05:40:42
Looking from the hotel room balcony


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 05:41:12
Looking from the hotel room balcony

I had a shower; the cubicle door that was loose at the bottom proved to be secure enough at the top. However, when I was drying myself and flipped the towel over my head to dry my back, it contacted the corner of the runner at the top of the shower cubicle and the plastic trim fell off! The wash basin plug was defective, too. It was of the type that is supposed to sit permanently in the bottom of the sink, but the assembly lay on the side of the sink. We went down for breakfast a little after 6.30am, then returned to the room to do last-minute things and pick up stuff. It was uncomfortably close to our meeting-up time when we left the room, and after having to wait for the lift we were the last to board the small ca.30-seater coach a couple of minutes later than the 7.15am specified by Jane last night. We find it annoying when others keep us waiting, and felt embarrassed to be the guilty ones right at the start. Janet sat in a window seat on the left near the back, and I quickly realised that it would only be possible to take acceptable photos from next to a window so sat in a separate seat on the right. It was not long before all the toing and froing and upping and downing on the coastal cliff road made Janet feel ill,[i] and for much of the scenic and picturesque journey she had her head down on the adjacent seat. In the photos below, scenes with the hills/cliffs on the left are ahead of us, and ones with them to the right are behind.

[i] All the toing and froing and upping and downing on the coastal cliff road made J feel ill: We think now (2014) that this kind of illness is primarily triggered by sleeplessness and the extreme weariness consequent to that, though perhaps exacerbated by motion. Cf. 15 June 2014, 17 June 2014, where the coining “Amalfi Coast do” occurs for this condition.

Sunday 9 June 2013 — 07:39:40
Views from the coach: Bay of Sorrento


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 07:39:50
Views from the coach: Bay of Sorrento


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 07:57:08
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 07:59:32
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:01:12
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:01:26
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:04:04
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:04:26
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:07:06
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:08:26
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:10:20
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:11:26
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:15:28
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:19:42
Views from the coach


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:25:36
Church with ceramic-roofed dome


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 08:32:14
Rock formation like a Madonna statue

Janet recovered somewhat when we stopped at a ceramic-ware shop, which had a café where we sat and had cold drinks. Janet bought a small enamel-lidded pill-box. Jane told us that the management didn’t allow photography in the shop, but the wares looked so colourful and decorative that I took the photo below when their backs were turned. (Jane is the one in a cyan top at the left in the photo.)


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:06:36
A stop at a ceramic-ware shop


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:17:32
Views from the coach

When we got to Amalfi, most of us opted to go on a boat trip, which took us first in the direction we’d come, before turning back, passing Amalfi and going in the opposite direction. Jane pointed out umbrella pines in the direction of Ravello, saying that it was a place visited by Wagner and that Wagner-concerts were held there. The boat turned again and returned to Amalfi.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:28:12
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:28:54
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:30:30
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:30:30
Boat excursion from Amalfi — detail 1


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:30:30
Boat excursion from Amalfi — detail 2


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:31:04
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:32:00
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:34:08
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:35:50
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:36:42
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:40:36
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:40:36
Boat excursion from Amalfi — detail


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:51:10
Passing Amalfi for the second leg of the trip


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:51:10
Passing Amalfi for the second leg of the trip — detail 1


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:51:10
Passing Amalfi for the second leg of the trip — detail 2


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:54:44
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 09:59:46
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:06:16
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:08:24
Boat excursion from Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:11:24
Back opposite Amalfi


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:12:40
Approaching the mooring at Amalfi

We then had some free time. We had a drink in a nearby bar, before wandering up the main street of the town.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:26:52
View from an Amalfi bar


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:27:32
What Janet bought in the shop
— see 09:06:36.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:29:44
Zoomed-in view from the Amalfi bar


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:49:18


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:49:28


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:49:28
Detail 1


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 10:49:28
Detail 2

A little beyond the cathedral we found and used an ATM, and farther up we went in a delicatessen with hams hanging up, complete with trotters. (This was quite a common sight in such shops, we would find.) Janet bought a few confectionery items.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 11:02:16


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 11:11:48

We returned to the coach, and set off ca.11.30am. The route took us above the road we’d come on, and then over the mountains of the Sorrentine Peninsula, instead of around them as on the outward journey. This involved much zigzagging round hairpin bends, and Janet felt very ill indeed and distressed. She put her head down again. There was optional lunch laid on, including a drink, for (so many) Euros, at a restaurant not far from the ruins of Pompeii. Janet was too ill to consider entering, but Jane directed her to a cool entrance lobby with a sofa where she could sit and recline, just by the main room of the restaurant. I entered and sat with some of the others. Jane and I arranged for Janet to have a Diet Coke. Some of us on the table I was at had spaghetti Bolognese; I coiled it quite effectively on the fork to eat it, while the others found it necessary to cut it into small pieces before eating it. Before I’d finished, Janet felt recovered enough to come and sit with me. Then we re-boarded the coach and went on to the Pompeii site. Jane introduced us to Francesca, our guide, who led us along the city wall, then in through the entrance, stopping and explaining things as we proceeded. Initially, my feet were OK, but during the 1½ hours or so that we were there they became very painful indeed. Towards the end I was swearing badly when each step became barely bearable. I could have managed the visit to Amalfi, and I could have managed the walk round Pompeii — on separate days! But one after the other, they were too much for me.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 14:31:10
Pompeii city wall


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 14:40:02
Pompeii — next to the theatre


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 14:48:38
Pompeii — theatre


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 14:49:14
Pompeii — theatre

Francesca pointed out a mark on the marble floor of the theatre where one’s voice would carry to best effect, and reflect back to the speaker. I was one of those who tried it — I quoted from the King Lear passage at the end of I Am The Walrus — and was quite impressed at how the sound came back. There were stepping-stones at intervals in the streets for people to cross, because the streets themselves would also have served as sewers. There were signs of wear from chariot wheels in the spaces between stepping-stones, and I wished I had a tape-rule because the distance between them appeared to be about standard gauge on railways.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 14:59:26
Pompeii


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:00:14
Pompeii


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:03:42
Pompeii — “fast food” shop


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:09:30
Pompeii — bakery: oven


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:09:52
Pompeii — bakery: flour mill


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:11:06
Pompeii — another shop


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:12:30
Pompeii


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:13:38
Pompeii

We went in one of the bath-houses, the men’s as it happened. This was just for our convenience; the women’s, not far away, had a similar layout, we were told. We went into the “cold room”, and into the “tepid room” which had the remains of the under-floor heating system. We didn’t go in the “hot room”, but Francesca told us that it looked the same as the “tepid room”.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:16:58
Pompeii — bath house


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:18:44
Pompeii — bath house: the cold room

In the hallway of the bath house were two glass cases, each containing a plaster-cast of the impression of a person left by the volcanic ash; the actual organic material within the ash had perished, but the space it had occupied had been preserved in the ash, even down to the detail of folds of clothing and sandal-straps.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:19:24
Pompeii — bath house


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:20:06
Pompeii — plaster cast of the shape left in the volcanic ash


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:23:26
Pompeii — plaster cast of the shape left in the volcanic ash


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:25:18
Pompeii — bath house: the tepid room


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:26:16
Pompeii — bath house: the tepid room

Francesca pointed out a symbol in the masonry above one door, which illustrated what activity went on in the building, though it was not “officially” in the brothel district. I wasn’t convinced that the symbol was, in fact, phallic.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:33:04
Pompeii


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:33:04
Pompeii — indication of the activity practised here


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:33:16
Pompeii


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:33:16
Pompeii

Completely unambiguous, though, was the function of one street-corner building to which Francesca guided us; we entered one door, passed erotic frescos above our heads on two walls, and a stone bed in a niche in the opposite wall, and left by another door round the street-corner.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:37:42
Pompeii — erotic art


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:37:48
Pompeii — erotic art


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:38:08
Pompeii — erotic art


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:38:16
Pompeii — erotic art


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:38:26
Pompeii — erotic art


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:38:56


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:40:48


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:42:52

I didn’t find convincing a supposed depiction of male genitals in a paving slab, for nearby slabs also seemed to have shapes in their surface but conveying no particular meaning.


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:46:48
Pompeii — supposed sign in the street paving


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:46:48
Pompeii — indication of the activity practised in this direction?


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:50:34
Pompeii — marble floor of the entrance of the home of someone well-to-do


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:50:46
Pompeii — entrance of the home of someone well-to-do


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:53:26
Pompeii — forum with Vesuvius in the background


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:53:48
Pompeii — forum


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:54:12
Pompeii — forum


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 15:55:12
Pompeii — forum


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 16:01:14
Pompeii — basilica


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 16:04:24
Pompeii — way to the “Marina Gate”


Sunday 9 June 2013 — 16:12:34
Pompeii — “Marina Gate”

The trip back to the hotel wasn’t very far, so Janet was OK on it. She got a Coke Zero from the bar and took it up to the room. I lay down and slept for a while. Copied the photos taken while out today from the camera (18:50–18:52), and edited six of them with Photoshop (19:06–19:18). We went down for dinner, 7.30pm. Back in the room, I edited the rest of the photos (20:31–23:11), before going to bed; including ones I duplicated in cropped form there were 90 of them. Janet had gone to bed, ca.9.30pm.

[Monday 10 June 2013]