Panarea for a day

Tuesday we took another boat trip to Panarea which was very fun. We hung out with the crew and some friends from the island and did the usual; eat, swim, drink, and walk arounf the shops on the island.

Lo chillin like a villain

 

 The crystal waters around Panarea

 

Heading back home...

 

...but not before we all swim to the cave and back!

 

 

 

 

Giro dell' Isola

Sunday I woke up early for work then Lo and I took the boat trip around the island, always a good Sunday activity.
 

Someones excited!

 

 

 

The boat I will one day own.

When we got back we hurried back to the house, changed, and ran back down to the boat to get a ride to the fire festival on Stromboli.

 

 This was a bit of a disappointment and a hell of a lot colder than we thought it would be.

 

The boat was packed and on the way back to Salina, a 2 hour trip on the Glentor, we ended up laying on the floor on the top deck pressed up against one of the sides to try and stay out of the wind. It wasnt very effective and we froze our titties off, but we were so tired we fell asleep anyway.

Monday we hung around the island, I took lo to see Bartolinos garden and we went swimming at lungo mare.

Someone loves me!!!

Lolo arrived via Catania airport to milazzo where I met her to catch the ferry back to salina. Unfortunately her bus was running 5 min late and we missed the ferry and had to wait almost 4 hours for the next one. Thank god for booze. 6 hours later we arrived in salina! We loaded our luggage into Brunas car and walked up to the house to make dinner and go to bed!

On Saturday after sleeping in I took Lo to my fav swimming hole and we snorkeled,

sunbathed and read for a few hours

 before heading over to lingua where we had pane cunzato for lunch.

Then off for some more snorkeling, lingua was sporting a pretty strong current that day so it was good exercise! I had to work around 4 so we got the bus back to Santa Marina and hiked up the hill to the house.

Secret Aeolian gardens

Today Bartolino and I went up to one of his big gardens in the mountain. Absolutely gorgeous.

He has 3 mango trees, 2 different types. The mangoes leaked juice from their steams when they were picked, even though they weren’t ripe.

4 avocado trees, one male and 3 female

 

 

pear trees,

 

peach trees, kumquats, mandarins, oranges, lemons, olives

 malvasea grapes, prickly pears

bamboo, American fichus, pomegranate, potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, onion, garlic, almonds, and many many more. I could sit and eat on that mountian side for weeks.  

The view from Bartolinos cousins house that sits just above the fruit garden and just below the veggie garden. 

This house is massive!

 

The almonds are size of tea light candles and I’m talking shelled! They are sooo good! They have a green fuzzy outer layer then a brown hard inner shell then the thin coat around the white almond. They are not hard like a dried or roasted almond we usually eat but have the consistency of a water chestnut except a little drier.

 

Fishing with my favorite Italian

Today Bartolino and I went fishing. We left the harbor at about 6am and headed out to open water between Salina and Stromboli so we had a great view of Filicudi, Alicudi, Stromboli, Panarea, and Lipari, and of course Salina, all we were missing was Vulcano which rests behind Lipari.

This is Bartolinos little boat that he built

We were out just in time for the sunrise.

 

 

We fished and swam until about 130, 2 pm and headed back in with our catch. 2 of which were very rare and very expensive scorpion fish.

Scorpion numero uno

Scorpion due

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of our other catch

 

 

 

 

Swimming in the sea so far from land was weird. The water is so clear and so blue that you can see every freckle on your feet 7 feet down, but so deep  you can’t see the bottom; it’s a little disconcerting and you almost feel like your floating in space.

 Bartolino let me drive all the way home, while he sunbathed on the cooler!
 

 Salina!

 

Morocco... why not!

So around this time I went to Morocco and did lots of fun cool ad interesting stuff. Unfortunately I’m really not into writing about it right now. So, when I get back to New York and feel like taking a trip down memory lane ill post about it. Long story short, I went for 2 weeks, had a blast, then flew back to Milan to pick up my stuff and "permanently" move back to Salina.

Preview pic, yes we rode camels!

RRRRRoma!

That night, once we settled in Rome, we went out to eat at an Indian place which was pretty good. At this point I was craving anything ethnic.

The next day we took a hop on hop off tour of Rome which was a very good idea, mom.

 

The hop-on tours only last a few hours so we hopped off and took a tour of one of the underground crypts. Pretty cool. Im still not sure on the whole story of this one but I remember it being pretty creepy.

 The next day mom left for the states via Rome. I stayed in Rome with La’s friend trying to decide where I wanted to go next. I had just over 2 weeks before I had to be back in Salina to start working again.

 

Napoli!

We arrived in Naples early in the morning. It was beautiful floating into the harbor with Vesuvius looming in the background.  We checked into our hotel and realized that all of the tours for Pompeii had just left. We decided to hangout in Naples and go to the national museum. Where we stared at a lot of really old stuff.
On the way we found a really old church with the doors open and some creepy music playing so we decided to check it out. Lets just say super. creepy. We snuck into the basement and this is what we found... old toilets?

 Stuff from the museum

Absolutly amazing mosaics found in Pompei and surrounding burried towns

 

 With a slightly sexual theme...

The next day we took a train to Pompeii and toured it ourselves. It was massive! And hot.

 Super awesome bodies

 What remains

 You can almost see how beautiful it would have been to live in a ginormo villa

 The smaller of the 2 ampitheaters

Mid afternoon we couldn’t  (I couldnt) take anymore heat and direct sunlight and caught the train
back to Naples, where we grabbed our luggage and jumped a train to Rome.