Southern Italy

Campa­nia has a much differ­ent appear­ance and feel than the central or north­ern Italy. You can see the shift in the vegeta­tion, more tropi­cal and lush, the changed geogra­phy, a combi­na­tion of volcanic and limestone forma­tions, and the differ­ences in the people — more heavily-built, somehow more Mediter­ranean, whatever that means. Many Sorren­tines say they are descended from Saracens.

As for the cooking, there is more sauce and larger portions than in either Tuscany or Rome. Restau­rants play music, not the Ameri­can pop ballads that blast from bars up North, but mandolin, accor­dion, and stringed instru­ments more typical of this place. There’s less English, spoken except for the ever-present merchants ready to cater to the tourist. The regional trains, like the Circum­vesu­viana line between Napoli and Sorrento, is more like the subway, an unreserved free-for-all during board­ing, a commuter service that trans­ports workers and students to and from their homes and places of occupa­tion. Tourists are indulged, by some, but for the most part, the locals ignore or regard tourists like us with a certain disdain, porbably think­ing of us as an inter­fer­ence and nuisance. Unlike other parts of Itly we have visited, here it seems that not every­one is 100% depen­dent on the tourist trade.

Not that the tourist trade doesn’t exist. In Sorrento, perhaps more than anywhere we’ve encoun­tered in Italy, street after street is lined with store­fronts and sidewalk displays of merchan­dise, mostly imported, but occasion­ally locally-made: ceram­ics, purses, shoes, lemon-products, cloth­ing, souvenirs, knick-knacks. All manner of goods fill doorways, line shelves and spill onto the sidewalks. Large cruise ships, sail in and out of these coastal towns, disgorg­ing shoppers and day-trippers into town and onto tour buses that barrel down the narrow twist­ing roads to the regions attrac­tions — Pompeii, the Amalfi coast­line, even as far south as Salerno and the Greek temples at Paestum. Ferries and tour boats constantly take visitors to Capri, Ischia, and other desti­na­tion in the Tyrrhen­ian Sea and along the heavily populated Bay of Naples.

Vesuvius dominates the north­ern section of the Bay of Naples, where close to three million people still live along it slopes, easy targets for the next inevitable eruption. Today Vesuvius looks benign, but it still remains active. It’s not diffi­cult to see why so many people are attracted to the blue ocean waters of the area and the cool breezes. Water is abundant, despite the latitude. The seemingly endless sun helps to produce a bounty of grapefruit-sized lemons, oranges, grapes, olives and a variety of other produce. The recla­ma­tion and utiliza­tion of seemingly impos­si­bil­ity steep hillsides through terrac­ing has been going on for centuries for centuries and clever practices of protect­ing and increas­ing yields have been long-established. Black mesh fabric both protects the tops of trees and is used to capture falling fruit. Wooden poles driven deep into the volcanic soil provide solid struc­tures on which to spread and hold these nets. Stone walls retain embank­ments, and elabo­rate water systems provide moisture.

The natural beauty of the area and the passion­ate inten­sity of the inhab­i­tants make it easy to see why the region remains a vital part of the Italian economy and a desti­na­tion for visitors from all over the world.

- Posted from my iPad

Location:Via Crocevia,Sorrento Peninsula,Italy