Flashback: Day 5 (Castel Gandolfo, 'Alba Longa', Nemi)

I suppose I should mention that it's getting quite late here, and with each passing minute my thoughts become less and less understandable... But maybe it'll make me charming. :P

This was our fifth day in Europe, one of those with definite ups and downs. (I know, I know, it should all be 'up' - and it was! Mostly.) The downs were all my own stupidity, and honestly I was in a bit of sun/blue-sky/Italy-induced daze, so even things that should have worried me immensely were hard to get a grip on. It was all too beautiful.


Stop one: Castel Gandolfo, a gorgeous little hill-town on the opposite side of Lake Albano from the area where Dad and Graeme had taken me driving a couple of days before. This is the main street of the new town: to the left is a beautiful view out over the lake and a row of character restaurants, and to the right a memorial I fuzzily remember as having an angel.

One of the houses perched on the slope: this was a place where you could imagine yourself living fifty or sixty years ago (make that one hundred, so we can skip the wars), in a Captain Corelli-esque world of low-key beauty and never-ending sunshine.

The view! Our wonderful Pope has his summer residence in Gandolfo, and it's not hard to see why.

Dad and the wall that surrounds the old town - don't ask me how old, as I haven't yet checked Google to find out.

At the end of the road: the wall in which stands the entry to the Piazza della Liberta, pocked with what Dad and I called bullet-holes. Quick internet search to check... Ooh! Not that, but apparently the papal gardens at Gandolfo were built on the ruins of Domitian's villa. Gotta love Rome. ^^ Also: up to three thousand Jews took shelter here during the Nazi occupation of Italy.

Wait. I've just found a sentence which is... Well, it's pretty damn brilliant. From britannica.com: "Castel Gandolfo probably occupies the site of ancient Alba Longa." This was "the oldest Latin city," traditionally (mythically) founded by Ascanius, son of Aeneas of Troy, ancient ancestor of Romulus himself. This is very cool. Below I've taken a picture of a sign further along the lake, which claims the spot for itself. But hey, this is the closest you're ever going to come to the legendary settlement of the Trojan exiles: a few miles one way or the other don't matter a bit. :D

I wish I'd read some good, eloquent and wordy books recently, so I could channel their style and ramble on about the grandeur of ancient Latium... But I haven't. It's been all-enveloping fantasy so far. Would you like a story about knights?

Back on topic. Gandolfo!

Inside the Piazza, looking back at the gates of the palace. Dad tells a story of a Catholic friend who attempted to enter, claiming that as a member of the faith he was free to step inside - needless to say, that didn't happen.

Close-up of the doors. The shield above carries the papal crest (found everywhere in the Vatican), and the plaques commemorate Popes Urban VIII, Paul V and Alexander VII.

Typical small-town atmosphere: crumbling, peeling, but aesthetic.

Aren't those names just perfectly Italian? Okay, so it's a little sentimental, a little obvious - but 'Via Roma' doesn't happen anywhere else.

A shot of the water, far below...

... and of the cafe in the piazza where Dad and I had breakfast. I'd never had breakfast out so much before, and have come to believe that Italy is a bad place to start. You get spoilt. Utterly.

The fountain the centre, with flags (I haven't been able to find out what the two on each side represent) and the souvenir shop where I bought Sarah (and, inevitably, Jessie) a present. :P

... And this was the third-best cup of coffee I'd ever had, behind the one at San Vittorino (gorgeous Italian barman!), and the mug that Aunty Moira gave me on Thursday.

For atmosphere. I wish I could bottle sunlight - this heat doesn't communicate to a Kiwi!

Back down the street outside - there was a maze within the walls, much more than I've shown and more than Dad and I had time to explore.

Reproduction of the Sistine Chapel, in tile on a wall in a small Italian town. I think it was around this point that I realised I'd left my bag at the cafe. Dad was shocked, and bolted back up the hill to get it - I followed much more slowly, still taking photos. It was beautiful, and I wasn't worried (absurdly): the town was quiet, sleepy, and friendly, and even if someone had seen it underneath the table, there wasn't much interesting inside to take. Or so I reasoned - heat-haze! Luckily, an elderly couple had stumbled over it and handed it in to the barman. Dad glared a bit, though. He had a point.

Back in the car, on a special drive just so I could capture this:

Ha! *beams madly in memory* The first time this came into view, my heart stopped in my chest. To understand that you're in Rome, centre of the Mediterrean world for millennia, is one thing: it's abstract, inconspicuous. To see, written in stone, a name you'd only ever associated with Classics books and scholarship exams, is completely different. It's a shift in your frame of mind to something much, much bigger. I think I got a bit dizzy.

And now, for Nemi! It was the second time Dad had visited, so he was free to laugh at me: this town is beautiful. Insanely, ridiculously beautiful, a more subtle version of the highly manicured sites like Assissi. It's surrounded by trees, and once more on the side of a lake - but now, when you look out, you see acres upon acres of fruit trees, and strawberries grow in the bush.

A stream of pictures, to help convey a sense of the atmosphere - I think I'd lowered the exposure for this, so they're a little dark... Though actually (even if Italy is covered in an almost-constant ray of sunshine) it did start to rain that morning.

Aha! Strawberry tart, courtesy of a rather expensive (and very tastefully decorated) little cafe. It was delicious, about 10cm in diameter and filled with tiny, sweet strawberries that were almost as good as the ones that grow near the old inn at the end of Skipper's Canyon. Almost as good. Central Otago fruit's got them beat. ^^

And now, the 'down'ish part of the day begins. We drive, aimlessly, through stunning Italian countryside. It gets wet. And cloudy. You can't see much. We pass through many small towns, all with gorgeous views (hidden in the fog), fascinating sidestreets and no parking. So we keep driving, and driving: and then we come to a farm track. We take it. It leads us:

Here! Imagine this picture, repeated seven times across your view, with a sprawling, terracotta-coloured city at its centre. On a clear day it would have been breath-taking, but we were both getting a little cranky. There's another picture which shows Dad buckling on his seatbelt, half-scowling, with not a single inch of the intrepid traveller about him. I must have been a hundred times worse.


Beautiful, no? Frustrating!!!

A brief respite - oh, who am I kidding? This was all good. :) The poppies here... Have I written about the poppies? Back home, the poppies have such a significance to them; the vivid red is war and sacrifice, bravery, brutality and dread. In Europe they grow wild, and so I found myself constantly reminded: they're an emblem of all the thousands of years of bloodshed this continent has seen, something deep and ancient that seemed to give the land a heartbeat.



Olives, in fields by the hundred and on hillsides by the thousand... But just you wait, because later this afternoon Dad and I met the grandfather of all olive trees. That was at Hadrian's Villa, which will need at least one post to itself.

When did I get so corny?