Category — Italy

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

The sea stirs me.  As a child I heard stories from the mouth of my grandfather.  Of the beauty of the sea.  Of swimming in the open ocean, and deep-sea diving.  He was a Navy man.  Part of a submarine rescue crew.   The sea meant adventure, danger, death.  For him, a man who had seen and survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, it also somehow meant peace.

***

My trips to Italy have been beautiful, discovery-filled experiences.  Great stretches of self-reflection punctuated by moments with new friends.  During a stay in the beautiful city of Lucca, a new friend suggested that we drive to Viareggio, a coastal city frequented by VIPs. This cloudy, off-season day, it had the feel of Coney Island in the movie “Big.” Many shops were closed, the beach vacant, and even the dark-skinned vendors that usually harass passers-by with their counterfeit goods seemed unconcerned with us, busy contemplating the vast, empty beauty of this place.

We made our way to the harbor and walked along the great jetty that extends from the city out into the water.  Fishing boats lined the way, their masts standing tall against the grey backdrop and giving rise to a stark picture.

The Madonna stood atop a pedestal in the harbor, high above all, eternally blessing those who venture out, welcoming those who return.

I took a moment to think of my Grandfather.  A man who had returned.

Yes.  The sea stirs me.

The Amalfi coast is definitely known as a place to see in Southern Italy.  In the months running up to the trip, every time I mentioned that I would be in the south, I got the question, “will you see Amalfi?” or the command, “make sure you go to the Amalfi coast.”

Like the Cinque Terre, the Amalfi coast is known for its jewel-like villages clinging to the coastline.  We decided that the best way for us to experience the towns would be by boat.  The boats that serve the cities up and down the coast are great.  Varying in size and fanciness, they take travelers the direct route, on the water, from one city to the other.

This was a new form of transportation for us, requiring us to locate the ticket office, dock and slip.  A stop by the information office insured we were headed in the right direction.

Once on board, we scoped out the best seats:  ground floor, starboard side, toward the front – just opposite the helm.  This gave us a good view of the coastline, and the captain, who was very friendly.

I think he liked the Ant.  In the way only an Italian captain can look, this guy was both weather beaten and stylish.  His face was worn, under his designer sunglasses, and metallic trainers distracted from the flesh-toned medical sock running the length of one leg.  He kept leaning out of the cockpit, pointing to the coastline and throwing out the names of the towns.

“Cetara.  Positano.  Atrani.”

Along with the towns, their majolica-tiled cathedral domes blending together, we were treated to views of ancient lighthouses, and caves.

Finally, our captain friend leaned out and said, “Amalfi!”

Amalfi.  That was our destination for the day.  First on the list:  cappuccino.

We hadn’t had much in the way of breakfast, opting instead to catch the early boat.  Now we needed to find a pastry shop that we liked the looks of.  We walked through the town square, past the cathedral, and into a shop with pizza and baba in the front window.

“Due cappuccino, per favore.”  I walked over to the pastry case to see what I could find.  “E una di queste”  I pointed to the bready things that looked like popovers.

“Normale?” asked the proprietor, a round man with shaggy white hair.

“Si.”  I had no idea what the alternative was, but the cream-covered plates in the case looked a bit over-the-top.  Even for me.

He pulled one of the pastries out and put it on a plate.  Then he drenched it in some kind of liquid from a stainless steel bottle, and handed it to me.

“Grazie.”  I took my prize over to the Ant who was waiting at the bar for the cappu.

“Look at this.”  We both stared at it in awe.  We didn’t know what we had, but we were appropriately excited.

Baba is a regional pastry that is drenched in rum.  Not so much my bag, but it was tasty, nonetheless. With our cappuccino in front of us, we settled in for the caffeination we so desperately needed.

“Buon giorno.”  The young man behind the counter was smiling at us, looking up from cleaning the marble slab.  He looked curious.  “Where are you from?”

The familiar question was slightly amusing.  He’d guessed the language, surely he could guess the country.

“The United States.  America.”

“Si, si.  But where?”  Ah, he’d already figured it out.

“Idaho, Oregon.  The west.”  Sometimes people have heard of Oregon, but almost nobody knows Idaho.  Even in the US, Idaho, Iowa and Ohio are interchangeable for the vast number of Americans.

“Ah, but you are Italian?  You look Italian.  I think, you look Italian, but something is not right.”

“Yes!  Our family is Italian.”  We’re more than happy to share this information with anyone who shows an interest.  It gives a little cred.  (I’m sure the “not right” was our shoes.)

“You stay in Amalfi?”

“No, Salerno.”

He shook his head.  “Next time you stay in Amalfi.  This is my town.  I show you.  You will be here tonight?  You come back, I will be your tour guide.  I will show you everything.  Right now I have to work, but tonight, you come back.  What are your names?”

He was animated, looking intently from one of us to the other, sincere in his interest to show us his town.

“Kristin.”

“Leslie.”

He repeated the names.  “Lezley.”  He worked it out, the name an unfamiliar one.  “Kreesteen.”  My name, so close to the Italian equivalent, is almost always converted to Christian.  I went by “Kris” a lot the last time I was here.  It’s not something I accept very often in the states, but in Italy, it seems to fit.

“I am Nicola.”

We both repeated.  “Neecola.”

“Kreesteen, you will return tonight?”  He was grinning, awkwardly, but determinedly.

“Forse, Nicola.  Forse no.”  It was possible, though unlikely.  I didn’t want this sweet boy to get his hopes up.  They were definitely on the rise.  Flattering, but hard to have to manage his expectations while we stood there drinking cappuccino.  “Torniamo a Salerno.”  We would be going back to Salerno.

Done with our coffees, we pushed the cups toward Nicola and smiled.

“Kreesteen, I hope you will return tonight.  I will hope to see you.”  Apparently his expectations weren’t going to be managed.

“Ciao Nicola.  Grazie.”

We stepped out of the shop into the sunlight and walked back to the cathedral.

“Wow, he liked you,” crooned the Ant.

“Yes, he was very sweet.  I hope he’s not too sad when we don’t come back tonight.”  I really don’t like making sweet boys sad.  It’s usually the sweet ones that unwittingly fall for me, developing puppy-dog crushes and making me squish their hearts a little.

The cathedral was on our list of things to see, so we walked up the zillion stairs to the entrance, noticing the colorful rice bits strewn everywhere, and a hunky guy with a messenger bag.

“Did you see him?”  I asked the Ant.  “Go back and look.  He’s hot.”  The Ant is single, and Italian men are fun eye candy.  Even for a big-ole lesbian like me.  In the states, 90% guys looking like this would be gay.  And I love my gays.  So, even though I usually make a point of not giving false hope to my family by talking about cute men (I’d once gotten a call from my sister, chastising me for telling my mother that I was going to have my “gay husband’s” baby.  “What, exactly ,did you tell Mom?!”)  it had been fun to point out the extra-yummy ones to the Ant and see if she agreed.  She doubled back and took a peek, pretending to take in the building.   This one was a little to smooth for her.  So we headed inside.

The art and architecture inside was fine.  We saw beautiful, delicate columns, and an over-the-top tomb decorated in marble and gold.  Most of it we passed by without much consideration, as our stomachs began to churn.  Cappuccino and rum-soaked baba wasn’t really enough to sustain us through much sight-seeing.

Back in the street we considered where to go for lunch.  We’d seen pizza, but nothing had really grabbed us.

“We could always go to Nicola’s place.”  The Ant was smiling and looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Yeah, we could.”  I wasn’t up for too much in the way of game-playing.  “But let’s not.”

Amalfi isn’t that big of a town.  We walked up the main street, away from the water until it became distinctly un-touristy.  Good for a peaceful walk, but not good for food.  Back into town we jogged, the hilly street propelling us downward.  We dismissed take-out places, in favor of somewhere we could sit, rejected the feel and price of several, and climbed a set of stairs to an interesting prospect, only to find it closed.

“Nicola would like to see you.”  I didn’t respond to the statement from the Ant.  “You know you’re not going to live that down for a while, right?  But it’s only because I love you.”  She was nudging me affectionately with her shoulder.

“You love me, so you taunt me?”  I answered sharply.  The lack of food had pushed me over the edge.  “It’s not so fun for me.  Here, this place looks good.”

Finally, we’d found a pizza place that passed muster.  We sat in the courtyard, and I breathed a little.

“I’m sorry I snapped.  It’s just difficult.”  I felt like I owed her an explanation.  Like I wanted to give one.  “Think what it’s like to have beautiful, kind, sweet boys take an interest in you.  To have them flatter you.  And then to have to embarrass them, or to break their hearts just a little.  Over and over.  It’s not so fun.”

She was looking at me with big eyes, nodding faintly.

“And then imagine what it’s like to be me, knowing that, every time a guy hits on me, whether it’s Nicola, or a gas station attendant, that my family wishes I’d accept.  That they wish I would say yes.”

Both of us were tearing up now.

“It’s hard.  And it makes me unwilling to do things like point out hot guys.”

We paused to order lunch, both of us breathing deeply, knowing the conversation was a good one.  A hard one.

We talked about the day, years ago, when I had come out to the Ant, the concerns she’d had, and the great journey of acceptance she’d traveled (she loves the gay men almost as much as I do).

Our pizza arrived, and we were more than a little happy.

The food was beautiful and really good.  We were so hungry that we even ordered dessert.  A gorgeous pine nut torta with strawberry sauce.

The rest of our day was filled with a tour of the paper factory, given by another sweet boy named , Rafael, and a hike to the nearby town of Atrani.

The Ant and I were gentle with each other.  I didn’t snap again, and she didn’t mention Nicola.  We simply walked together through the sweltering day, shared a giant bottle of water, and went home to make dinner.

We didn’t talk about boys again until the next day, when we were walking to the bus station.

“So, I’m thinking,” the Ant started, a look of determination on her face, “that in this journey of acceptance I’m taking,”  I looked at her, interested to hear the rest, “that it would be good for you to tell me when you see someone who is cute.”   Okay, I could do that.  “Like you could say, ‘she’s really attractive’ so that I could get an idea of what type you like.”

Oh!  She wanted to know what type of women I liked!  Wow.

“I mean, maybe don’t go on and on about it, but…” she was a little flustered, her brow furrowed and her hands extended.

“No, I won’t talk about how I want to slap her ass or anything, but sure.  That would be fun.  Kind of like a cultural exchange.”

We looked at each other and laughed.  It wasn’t enough that we were traveling through Italy.  This would be our cultural experience:  eyebrows lifted toward hot women, and fingers covertly pointed at yummy guys.  And not another mention of Nicola.

After a culturally significant trip to Paestum, we were ready for a day of rest.  The weather had been getting gradually warmer and sunnier, a challenge for my afternoon runs, but gorgeous for a bit of beach.  Salerno sits on the gulf of Naples in the Tyrrhenian Sea.  The water is warm, salty and blue, blue, blue.  The colorful umbrellas of the pay-to-play beaches called a siren song, inviting us to enjoy a lavish day in the Italian sun.

We gathered our books and towels, donned our suits and slathered ourselves in sunscreen.

The owner of our apartment, Carmine, had pointed out his favorite private beach and the underground passage that would take us from the bus stop behind the apartment directly to the crosswalk in front of the beach.  Beach bags in hand, we decided it was time for a mid-morning snack to prepare us for the sea.  Like every morning, we’d made our espresso in the stovetop Moka pot and heated our croissants in the little toaster oven.  But we weren’t sure what kind of food we’d find at the beach, and we didn’t want to cut the day short if we got hungry.  I like to eat, but I also like to swim.

Considering and rejecting the possibility of carrying a pizza box with us, we stopped by our local coffee shop for a cappu and pastry.  We’re good at ordering and eating these things.  We’re not so tidy with it, however.

This view would become a familiar one to us, and to our patient waiters and waitresses.

Once full of pastry, we located the underground pass-through and descended the stairs into the passage that used to serve an out-of-commission train station.  The entrance was obscured by an orange construction barrier, its walls plastered with colorful posters and littered with graffiti.  But it provided a valuable shortcut over the coming weeks, allowing us quick access to gelato and sand.

Carmine’s beach, Karsaal seemed to be a favorite for many locals.  With a large parking lot, fancy sit-down restaurant, fine pool and pretty beach, it was much more full than many of the others we’d walked by on our adventures in Salerno.

Along with mothers and children, grandmothers, and men strutting like peacocks, we followed the after-church rush through the gates.  For 15 Euro a piece, we had the run of the place.  Lounge chairs, umbrellas, pool, cabanas, and some of the best people watching, ever.  We headed to the waterfront and chose a couple of lounge chairs under an umbrella on the small black and white rocks.  We watched the locals for a bit, and I dragged one of the fancy chaises that littered the beach over to our camp.

The built-in shades were amazing.  For the next couple of hours we bathed in the sun, swam in the sea, and watched the scene unfold in front of us.  Spettacolare.  Sailboats danced across the bay, competing for our attention with the sea of humanity dancing on the sand.  A pair of men, lounging in their tiny swimsuits, and gold chains, gestured wildly, emphatically trying to convince each other of their position on some unknown topic.

A young buck of a man who looked like a statue of a tattooed Roman god strutted back and forth from the water to his chair, lovingly arranging his girlfriend’s towel on the matching chaise.

Despite our best efforts, the morning pastry was wearing off.  We’d missed the lunch rush, watching families disappear from the sand, and reappear with sandwiches.  I ventured out again and again, taking advantage of the deserted sea.

Eventually, we agreed it was time for food.  We packed up, smiled our goodbyes to the tattooed god and trudged up the stairs in search of a pizza.  Our first attempt was the restaurant.  It was short lived.  Walking along the patio above the beach, we peeked at the people who were dining.  They weren’t eating.  They were dining.  In dresses and white linen pants.  My hula-girl camo boardshorts weren’t going to cut it.

So we doubled back and hit the snack bar.  They had colorful industry signs for gelato and snacks.  And an empty case that looked like it might have held real food at some point.  I sidled up to the bar and braved a question, “qualcosa para mangiare?”

The girl looked back at me and pursed her lips, looking at the empty case.  “Un attimo.”  She disappeared into the back of the shop and reemerged with a middle-aged woman, who was carrying a good amount of sas in her mane of auburn hair.

“Di mi,” she commanded.  Okay, but tell her what?  I tried again:

“Qualcosa para mangiare?”  We were just looking for something to eat.  The people outside were eating.  Was she the keeper of the food?

“Si.  Panini?”  I nodded.  A sandwich would work.

“Formagio, salume?”  She ran down the list of ingredients, shrugging.  “Prosciutto.  Cotto o crudo?”

I looked at the Aunt.  “You want ham and cheese?  Cooked or raw?”

“Cooked.”  She was nodding.

“Cotto,” I confirmed.

“Uno?”

“Due, per favore.”  There was no way we were sharing today.

“Okay.”  She turned to walk away.

“Pero, sono vegeteriana.”  I didn’t want ham, cooked or not.

She turned halfway around, and looked at me, challenging.  “Quindi?”  So then what the hell did I want?  “Formagio?  Pomodoro?”

“Si, si.  Buono.”  I get pretty thrilled when it comes to food, and my excitement about the sandwiches this woman was about to make was starting to show.

She turned to face me fully, “buonissimo?” she asked, an amused look on her face.

“Si.  Buonissimo,” I said, smiling and giving an affirming hand gesture.

She nodded, closed her eyes briefly, and disappeared into the back room.

While we waited, we cruised around the little shop.  We looked at the gelato, and perused the bags of chips, deciding we’d probably need some of the “Wacko” brand.  A few minutes later, the auburn food commander reappeared with two wicker baskets, and two beautiful sandwiches.

The girl at the register looked at her, and the commander told her how much to charge us, shrugging as she apparently pulled the number out of thin air.  Perhaps this wasn’t where the locals were getting their sandwiches.

The little patio outside the shop was empty, and we chose a table closest to the view.

On closer examination, it was clear that the sandwiches we’d seen in people’s hands weren’t these.  Those were more like pre-packaged deli sandwiches.  These were not.

I’m not so sure how it is that we came to have these spectacular sandwiches.  We didn’t see any others like them.  We gobbled them down, along with the un-spectacular Wacko chips and a decent, no-color-added Fanta orange soda.

We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging at the pool, by the edge of the turquoise water, rimmed with mahogany cabanas, more lounge chairs, and people in colorful bathing caps.  I’d been looking forward to a dip and a swim, but first I thought I’d let my lunch digest.  Safety first, you know.

We sat and watched the kids running around the edge, the lifeguards yelling at them, the girls tucking their hair into the swimcaps.  The boys tucking their hair into the swimcaps…then the Ant noticed it.  Everyone in the pool had a cap.  90% of them looked the same:  yellow with a white racing stripe.  Maybe we needed a swimcap to go in the pool?  Interesting.

I pulled out my little dictionary (I bring it pretty much everywhere – even to the beach) and looked up swimcap.  “Cuffia.”  The Ant had seen a couple of girls picking up yellow and white packets from the front desk.  I gathered change, practiced the word, “coof-ya” and walked to the desk.

“Ciao,” one of the women was looking at me with a friendly smile.  The other looked like a puppy that someone had kicked.  “Una cuffia?”  The puppy woman looked at me like she didn’t understand.  The other responded.  “They are all done for the day, I’m sorry.”

“Can I swim without one?”  She looked shocked.

“No, I’m sorry.”

Back at the pool, I watched the swimmers taunting me.  In their colorful caps, they lazed about, up and down the lanes.  Teenage boys splashed each other.  I was quarantined to the poolside, my short hair a menace.

As we packed up, I reviewed what I’d learned that day:  if you’re hungry, ask someone to make you a sandwich; also, along with my little dictionary, I should always carry a swimcap.  These were valuable lessons for someone who likes to eat and swim.

Sidenote:  Mosco

The mosquitoes in southern Italy can be bad.  So bad, they drove the Greeks from Paestum when they wiped the city out with malaria.

We experienced these bad boys in a major way.  With around 20 bites a piece, we headed to the pharmacy to try to find some spray.

It was pretty early in the trip, and I was still trying to get my vocab bearings.  I walked up to the clerk and declared, “qualcosa per mosco,” pantomiming something flying through the air and stinging me.  I knew that I knew the word for “mosquito,” somewhere in the back of my brain.  Mosco seemed to fit.

“Afterbite?” came the question from the clerk.  Sure, it wasn’t really a surprise that she figured out I couldn’t speak much Italian.

It wasn’t until after we’d walked out of the store that I realized my mistake.  While “mosca” is “fly,” “zanzara” is “mosquito.”  “Mosco” either meant nothing at all, or it meant mosque.  I wasn’t sure.  I could see a picture of a fly in the children’s vocabulary book I’d studied months earlier, but I couldn’t remember seeing a picture of a mosque.

After a couple of days in Salerno, it was time to spread our wings and venture out.  Our new maps and bus schedules in hand, we considered our options.

“There’s Paestum,” suggested the Ant.

Now, I’m basically tagging along on this portion of the trip, so I’ve done embarrassingly little research into the area.  I’d never even heard of Paestum.  So I picked up my handy-dandy tourist guide and learned a couple of fun facts about Paestum.  First, Paestum has the largest collection of Greek temples outside of Greece.  Coolness.  My family is Greek and Italian.  We’re other things, too, but we mostly claim the Greek and Italian.  This sounded like our kind of place.

Second, I learned that Paestum was deserted when most of the population was wiped out by mosquitoes carrying malaria.  That’s much of the reason the temples remain intact.  Not good.  But not surprising.

The Ant and I had spent the first two nights battling insane mosquito-like beasts.  These things were big.  I could hear them winging their way toward my headlamp each night while I was reading Pema Chodron and trying to find a little peace.  An interesting challenge.

And they did something funny to our skin.

This is two days after the Ant was bitten about 6 times on the side of her face.  I was bitten, I believe, 3 times on the ear, (it was hard to tell how many times, due to the intense swelling and redness) and it’s still itching, 2 weeks later.  At least the open wound has healed up.  The 20 or so other bites on my face and legs never really took hold.  I’ve just been considering this training for Survivor. Regardless, these things are bad news.

Brimming with understanding of our Greek/Roman mosquito-bate ancestors, we hopped a bus to Paestum.  That’s Pa-ace-toom.  Get it right.  Or the bus driver will act like he doesn’t understand where you’re trying to go.  Then he’ll correct your pronunciation.  Or maybe that was just my experience.

I sat in my seat, going over it in my head:  “pa-ace-toom, pa-ace-toom, pa-ace-toom.”  I’d have to ask him later if we were getting close.

We scuttered along through town after town, noting the differences in the styles of apartment buildings, or the way people hung their laundry.

The country got wilder, and more open and we wondered how much further.  Passengers ebbed and flowed along the winding track we took to the ruins.  Tourists, workers, grandmothers, coming and going between the villages.

We saw a municipal sign of some sort.  “Welcome to Paestum” or something similar.  When we’re traveling by bus, there’s often not much to tell us where we are, other than signs on buildings.  If we miss the sign at the beginning of a town, we could go the entire length of the town without having a clue where we are.  This big sign for Paestum was more than we usually get.  We grabbed our bags and jumped up, moving forward several rows to make sure the bus driver could see us.  When the bus stopped, he signaled to us.  “No.”  We weren’t there yet?  Wow.  Our fool-proof method had failed us.  How many stops could there be in Paestum?

20 minutes later, we were still driving.  Whoops!  I was starting to like our bus driver more and more.

I consulted the pages I’d torn from my trusty Rick Steves book; we tried to find our location on the Ant’s smart phone.  No use.  Rick said the bus would let us off outside the old city walls.  I peeled my eyes and kept them on the horizon for city walls of some kind.

When we finally rumbled up to a lonely gelato shop at the intersection of two country roads, I was a little surprised to hear the driver bellow, “Pa-ace-toom!” and wave us forward.

“Qua?”  I wanted to make sure.  “Pa-ace-toom.”  He just nodded again, but this time smiled.

“Ciao, grazie!”  we smiled as we climbed off alone.

The city walls were there, low, thick, and old.  We smiled at the folks under big umbrellas outside the gelato shop,  and walked inside the ancient city walls.

“That’s a good sign,” I said, jerking my head in the direction of the trees and columns.

We located the ticket office, purchased our combo ticket for the temples and the museum, and headed out into the fenced field bordered by vendors selling trinkets.

We spent the next two hours walking through the tall, flowing grasses, looking up at the temples.

It’s amazing how much I find myself affected by places like this.  I find I could sit on a hunk of rock and contemplate my ancestors for hours, days, ever maybe.

The Ant read a sign about the destructive lichen eating away the ruins, and decided she’d come back with a toothbrush to volunteer her time and rid the temples of the beast.  I thought it was pretty.

As we walked, we talked absentmindedly about the Greeks and their superiority, and I thought about the first time I’d seen Greek ruins up close.  It was on a trip to Greece with my family when I was a teenager.  We were looking for family, but taking in some sights along the way.  I spent the day at Olympus with my dad, Greek grandfather, and uncle.  I remember clearly the feeling of disgust I had for the people of Greece.  How could they let their precious temples be ruined like this?  Why didn’t they stand the columns back up?

Hilarious.

In Paestum, I was amazed at how intact the temples were.  So much so that we could do side-by-side comparisons of architectural changes over 500 years.  Brilliant.

At the end of two hours of strolling and thinking in the sun, we were starving.  It was most assuredly time for pizza.  After a ridiculous episode whereby we unknowingly tried to enter a restaurant from the back side, left in a bit of a huff, walked 4 blocks and unwittingly ended up entering the same restaurant from the correct direction, we were seated with 2, count them 2, huge bottles of water in front of us.

Note:  the Ant and I carry our own water bottles with us wherever we go.  By this time we had consumed every drop.  The only way to really get water in a restaurant in Italy is to buy it.  From a bottle.  Or to fill in the restroom, which we do regularly.  Today, we bought water.

On our first attempt to enter the restaurant, we’d spotted a menu and scoped out the pizzas.  We already had our favorites picked out:  cherry tomatoes and rocket for the Ant, squash blossom for me.

One bottle of water already in our stomachs, we scarfed these heavenly pizzas down.  Most pizzas come served whole in Italy, with a knife and fork.  You get to cut to size and eat however you see fit.  Some people cut pieces and eat with their hands.  Some cut slices and then cut them into smaller pieces to eat with a fork.  Others eat the center, and leave the crust (I consider this a great crime).  On days like today, we start with big pieces folded and stuffed in our faces, then cut smaller and smaller pieces, packing the dough and cheese in.

Whatever water was left, we poured into our empty bottles and prepared for the second half of the day:  the museum.

The second great historical site at Paestum is the tomb of the diver.  Dating back to the Greeks, this sarcophagus is rare, maybe unique in its preservation (thanks, mosquitos).  The insides of the box were painted with scenes to entertain the dead.  The lid of this one was painted with an image of a diver, gracefully leaping from a great height into the unknown, a peaceful look and feel about him.

The walls of the box were painted with scenes from a party.  A very festive party.  Perhaps even a very gay party…

As we stood and looked at the panels, a tour group of British school-kids came through with a tour guide.  I stood nearby to catch a free lesson.

“The panels depict a typical party.  The first man sits on a sofa, beckoning for more wine, waiting in anticipation.  The second grouping shows two men playing a game in which a plate is balanced on a stick, and the last drop of wine is flicked from the glass in an attempt to hit the plate, knocking it to the floor.”

He paused.

“The third group shows one man playing an instrument, and engaged in a show of affection,” another pause, “more than just enjoying each other’s company.”  The kids looked closer.  The guide continued:

“Now I’m not one to say whether this is a scene of homo-eroticism, but that is the prevailing view of the experts.”  I chuckled a little.  The musician was all but pinching the other guy’s nipple.  Maybe I should consider a career in ancient Greek art.

Feeling like we should make use of our museum tickets, we cruised through, checked out the super-old bronze vases, and penis-shaped pots.  Gay.

Leaving the museum, we praised the gods and goddesses for the lack of present-day mosquitoes in Paestum.  We’d commune with our ancestors later.  For me, I’d found other connections with my ancient brothers and sisters.  Any people who celebrated ceramic sexuality, squash-blossoms, and leaps into the unknown were my people.