Rome to Barcelona Cruise October 2024 on Celebrity, Constellation.

 

Friday 25th Oct 2024 flew El Al to Leonardo de Vinci Airport Rome, from where we had an organized taxi to the old port of Rome called Citavechia.(old city) Our hotel was a family run place on ground floor above us were apartments.

One of the things you are aware of in most smaller towns in Italy especially the South that their population is shrinking and their are empty protected buildings. Some have a roof around them protecting the pavement from falling masonry.

This old walled city and some of the walls have later been made into parts of new buildings, including a city gate tower and a turret that is part of a  4 story block of flats. Walking along the dockland there are fishing  boats ,   yachts as well as the cruise ship docks. A memorial to those who died in the Great War looks like a statue to ancient dying  Roman legionnaires.  

A statue of Giacomo Matteotti  1885 to 1924  a socialist  politician who was assassinated  by the fascists near Rome. It caused a political crises even thought Mussolini claimed he was not involved.  There is also a plaque to those who died fighting Fascism between 1926 and 1945.

 At the end of the 17C Pope Innocent ordered this area Quatiera de Ghetto to be for Jews even though Jews never lived there but instead local fishermen and workers from Naples.

The restaurant recommended to us was closed and we went to a pizzeria where we had anchovies and salmon potato pizza. Interesting the chef cut the pizza with a scissors. Our helping was so big that we took the left over and had it for lunch the next day. 

Everywhere in Italy are unused churches and some are used as concert halls. The Francis of Assisi

 Cathedral here is a beautiful building was elaborate illustrations.  There is a statue to Hasekuru Tsumenaga the first ambassador from Japan in Italy in the time of Paul V 1615. However afterwards Japan did not want Christian influence and isolated herself.

The sidewalk has an edge of solid white marble blocks so even in the dark it shows up and does not lose its colour. The water here is harder than in Israel and the kettle it covered with chalk from boiling water once.

 Centumcellae, was the name of  the present Civitavecchia  on the Tyrrhenian sea was founded by the Etruscans. Between the years 103 and 110 AD  Emperor Trajan ordered the building of a harbor. Under the period of the Papal states it was rebuilt but bombed again in WW2 by the Americans. The city wall runs along the harbor to stop invasion. There was a model of what the city used to look like.

Seward Johnson has a statue here called Embracing Peace, on the beach here this is based on a well known photo taken in NY of a nurse and sailor kissing. it is based on the photo by Alfred Eisenstadt V-J day at Times Square. Dozen so people photographing and looking up her dress, ones head does not reach her knee .It is metal painted blue of white.  The port here can accommodate. 6 cruise ship and 2 were embarking today.

From here we embarked on a the 10 night cruise of Celebrity Constellation.

On the ship we had dinner with 3 other couples and when 2 of them left the 3rd told us there were Jewish, so Jews keep a low profile. Certainly since Oct 7th 2023

Naples. This city also has large abandoned buildings. It has a royal palace as well as a few castles. I get the impression that municipalities here are minimalistic and it didn't appear that there is a good bus service and everyone uses cars and has lots of areas for car and motorbike parking. The coach took us from the highway to narrow winding roads along the mountains to Sorrento. Serrento means sirens and the myth about that is from here. This is a major tourist attraction and holiday place. We went past a place where Herculean was this was a town completely covered with lava and was completely destroyed and cannot be dug up. Pompeii is on the other side of Vesuvius and instead got layers of volcanic ash and stone falling on it like missiles and this could be dug up. 

We were taken to a farm that grows lemons, peaches, oranges and olives. Here we were given a demonstration on how you take curd's of mozzarella cheese boil the whey and from the whey ricotta cheese is made (ricotta means cheese left over)  Here olives are the tallest trees and nets are put under them. The olive trees are pruned and shaken to get off the fruit. Under these are the other fruit trees and the soil is so rich with volcanic ash that the never need to add fertilizer to the soil, the soil also holds a lot of water.

We went to see Pompeii which is possibly the largest archeologic preserved site in the world. A whole city preserved as it was when the volcanic ash struck in the afternoon  The houses had wooden roofs which collapsed. and burned. The public bathes had a stone roof and survived. The city had plenty of brothels and used slave women in them and a phallic symbol pointed the way to them. A lupa or she-wolf is a prostitute in Latin and it comes from the Story of Romulus and Remus who were suckled by a wolf..

This was  a city of 20,000  but 17 years earlier an earthquake hit the city and it was now being reconstructed. when the tragedy occurred.

Historically Southern Italy was wealthier than the north. The first train built in Italy was from Naples.  Perhaps the very big agriculture kept the South this way while the north developed industry.

La Specia port. This is in the state of Liguria and we were driven from here to the state of Tuscany, you see white rock quarries in the hills and dozens of factories that cut up this pure white Carrara  marble. On this plain we see olive trees planted in straight line and poplar trees grown for paper making.

We arrived at this truffle farm and were taken to the oak wood forest where the farmer had a small mongrel dog trained to find truffles. The dog usually next to a tree and the farmer stops him and takes it out the ground, so as not to damage the it  A few times the dog brought his master a truffle and received a reward. It is a lot of work training a truffle dog, and they are very valuable and often get stolen. Ripe truffles give off a smell that lasts a week then goes if the truffle rots. You have a week to eat the ripe truffle and they are sent to NY and arrive the next day. Truffle hunting was discovered in Italy in about 1820 and from there spread to France. Pigs can be used but the eat the truffles dogs don't. The forest has to be about 22 years old when it produces truffle till about 40 years old. Truffles are valued by size and if the shape is regular. They are available in certain seasons. These were black, white ones are deeper in the ground. They have a symbiotic relation with the oak roots. We were given a lunch of pasta in cheese with thin flakes of truffles as well as a fried egg with these flakes. Probably the most expensive snack we have ever eaten. Tuscany and Lugera are more prosperous than the south and we saw no abandoned buildings.

La Specia the 2nd day here we went to see the city of Parma. This has a cathedral build in 1095 Of Romanesque style. This City State was well designed and has enormous city buildings which is an architectural study. The roads of the old city are all paved with stone blocks. Giuseppe Verdi came from this area and there is an enormous freeze to commemorate him and his opera's and his role in Italian independence. Garibaldi piazza near the city centre has a statue of Garibaldi.

Every time you want to use a toilet you need to have a snack at a coffee shop as there are no public toilets. We visited a Parmesan factory and even though it uses modern equipment has to make it the original way that monks did. The milk that arrives in the evening is left to stand and the cream is skimmed off for butter. The morning milk is is full cream and added to the skimmed milk and rennet is added.. The curds are taken off and the whey is turned into ricotta. The milk is never pasteurized so this cheese cant be marketed in the USA. The cheese is then compressed into a mold that has the factory number and date on it. The massive wheels are put to soak in salt solution and then stored on shelves about 4 stories high. An automatic machine turns the wheel over every day. Only factories in Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena are  allowed to use the word Parmesan.

On the way back we were stuck in a traffic jam a one of the tunnels was closed for repair and both sides had to use a one way tunnel. Parma does not attract foreign tourist so it was mostly Italians  touring or doing their shopping.

Santa Margarita is on the Italian Riviera.  The cruise ship was anchored in the bay and we  were taken off by the tenders that are used as life boats. The sea was quite rough till we reached the harbour.

This is the area where the rich and famous of Europe have holiday homes and come to the beach but to me even though the main summer  season is over it was too crowded for a holiday. The houses and hotels are all well painted and maintained and spread along the sides of the bays. The bus took us to the town of Rapallo.  

1922 The Treaty of Rapallo between Germany's Walter Rathenau and the Soviet's  George Chicherin established normal relation between the 2 countries after WW1.  Frank Sinatra and Hemingway spent time in this town. 

We then went on to Lavagna another beach town where Hans Christian Anderson wrote the story of the Little Mermaid.  Many buildings have facades that  are painted in a way that they look like they are big blocks of stone and not just a plaster surface. Our lunch here was 2 different pastas one with pesto sauce and the other with walnut source. There is always good  wine that I would taste but never drink. With no public toilets we had to wait in line at the restaurant with only 2 toilets for  over 300 people having lunch.

 Lavagna is known for its vizcacha.  There was a Chocolate Festival on and you could buy every type of chocolate in every possible shape.  Because of tourism here everything is very pricey.

This area is in the region of Genoa and the word jeans comes from that,  Garibladi wore pants with many pockets before Levi Strauss's jeans developed in America.

  Villafranche, Nice on the French Riviera.  From here one can get to Cannes of Monaco but I just walked around the town, while Astrid relaxed on the ship. Savoy and Nice used to be under the control of the Counts of Savoy and architecture is Italian . Under the  1860 Treaty of Turin this area was ceded from Sardinia to France. So its the same as the Italian Riviera but they speak French here. Henry Matisse and Scott Fitzgerald both lived here.

The ship was anchored in the bay and the local boat company provided large boats to take us to shore.  The older part of the city is build on a steep hill without roads in between and you have to be very healthy to get your shopping home.  There was a place where there was a display of silverware for sale. Valuable stuff that nobody uses today and you have to keep polishing. I also took a walk to a citadel that has well kept gardens. Fortresses to guard against pirates in the old days.

 Marseilles, Provence .  This is the 3rd  biggest  port in the Mediterranean and the  2nd biggest city  in France. The city stretches from the coast to the mountains so can only extend upwards.  The port has place for 6 cruise ships, then there is a ferry port, a container port as well as a marina full of yachts.   We were taken on a road train around the coast and taken to the top of a hill where the basilica is.  From there you had a view of the coast on  the one side and the whole city spread on the other to the mountains.  The local football team Olympia  Marseilles pray at this basilica before every game and you can see the soccer stadium from here. A cathedral can be a basilica if it is a place of religious relics or a miracle happened there, the Pope declares that status.

Historically this city was started by Greek settlers. 500 revolutionaries marched from Marseilles to Paris in 1792singing this song and that is why the French anthem is called “La Marseillaise”

Marseilles has  a fish market here that open every morning  and nearby is an "umbrella" a roof and ceiling made of mirror to  shade and you can see yourself in it.  There are buildings build under Louis Napoleon III of the same Hausman style as in Paris in the slum clearing. The main city road has a tram service that runs every few minutes. It does not feel crowded like the Riviera.  They have an average of 300 sunny days a year here. We are already into November and the weather is still warm.  (We just heard that Barcelona is flooded and the airport has closed but hope it will be working when we fly home.)

5rd November was a sea day and I went to stretching at the gym to a class given by a guy from the Cape with a strong Afrikaans accent, who has the build of a rugby player. This was a day we relaxed and had 3 sit down meals rather than going to the buffet. This was also election day in the US. Times are very different as Americans are very wary of politics and you do feel a sense of freedom of democracy in the US.

Palma de Majorca.  This is the capital of the Balearic Islands and these island are visited by 30 million visitors a year.

Mallorca has a million inhabitants.  The bus took us through Palma where you have new tall building as well as old ones. You go past a hill on the coast that was a fisherman's neighborhood and has a dozen old style deselect  windmills.  The bus took us through plains covered with almonds, carob  and fruit trees and then into the mountains with olive trees. We reached Sollen which is a beautiful city with preserved old narrow roads.  When it rains people put planks in front of their doors to stop the rain coming in.  There is a beautiful build Bank of Sollen that was designed by Gaudi.  This city is on the sea and has an old tram system on a single track with bypasses and runs once an hour and attracts tourist.  We tried their almond cake and almond ice cream traditional foods here.

We returned on the old narrow gage  electric train from Sollen.  The tracks are short pieces and you go through a dozen tunnels with the very noisy clickety-clack that I remember on South African Railways. The  push over the seat back  so that you are facing the direction the train is going.

We got back to Palma and were taken to Bellver castle (beautiful view ) which was build in only 11 years in the 14C to deal with the raiding pirates, which was a major problem in in past. The Palma cathedral took 300 years to build. Our problem here was that in autumn the farmers prune their fruit trees and burn pruned branches, so the whole place was covered with smoke.  To me in this day and age this is stupid. This costs of the  health to hundreds of residents and tourists.

On the ship we noticed that over the years of cruising the demographics of the staff has changed. It used to be many East Europeans and Philippines, Indonesians  but now we see more Indians as well as Africans from Kenya, Zimbabwe and many S. Africans, all of them speak a very good English. I think the cruises are a shelter for many gay/ lesbian workers as well.

The day after we arrived home in Israel  we had our first siren, and had to go to the shelter. It reminded us that the war is still on.