This was the 1st leg of my first frequent flyer “score’”. I had some miles on American and somehow I got a buy-one-get-one-free promotion on TWA. I don’t remember the specifics but we flew from Washington – Rome on American, took a ferry to Greece, and then flew a local airline from Athens to Cairo where I met up with friends. Flew TWA back to USA.
Rome
After getting settled and taking a nap, headed out in Rome. Of course the first thing you do in Rome is buy a 15 lb statue to haul around for the next three weeks. We still have it 25 years later – we hoped it would make us rich but the artist isn’t on the google. It was a lesson learned that we continued apply – don’t buy stuff the first day of the trip.
We then hit all the famous sites and when we got off the metro at the Colosseum – exactly as the book predicted kids would came up to sell us newspapers while older kids lingered behind to attempt the pick-pocket – we survived. Colosseum is very impressive and the Roman Forum is right next door.
Roman Forum
Over the next couple of days we went to the Spanish Steps, Vatican, Parthenon, Trevi Fountain, and Tivoli Gardens. The highlight was when I invented the selfie – I didn’t know I was suppose to smile.
From top of St. Peter’s Basilica 
Top of Spanish Steps 
Vatican
Tivoli Gardens was on the way out of Rome heading south to the Amalfi Coast, it was very nice with a set of gravity-powered fountains that used n elaborate set of pipes and channels to work. Of course, it was offseason and no water was flowing.
Should be water in the channels on the sides 
Amalfi Coast – Ravello, Sorrento, Capri, and Pompei
Sharon had a recommendation from a co-worker to stay in an old castle. It worked out pretty well and they had a fax machine – very important technology at the time to communicate back to USA where we were closing on our first house.
The drive along the Amalfi Coast was awesome – can’t believe I have never been back and it has always been one of the top of the “places to go back too”. The primary places to stop are the town of Sorrento (where we bought stuff, but learned to mail it back at this point), Capri (had to take a ferry to the island), and Positano. Below is a picture of the Rick Steves guidebook that we used, along with pictures from the area…Ravello is Rav.
We left Ravello and did our Pompei tour on the way to Bari on the east coast of Italy to catch our cruise (ferry). Pretty much farm country after you leave the coast. I remember showing up in plenty of time, dropped the rental car off, and were killing time and boarded the cruise ship when we figured out it was a ferry without a lot of amenities. Then we realized we might want some anti-nausea for sea-sickness and left the ferry and went back to town to find some – took a while to communicate how to find a pharmacy and ended up running for the ferry. But we were off to Corfu, Greece!
(This was written during the Great Shutdown of 2020. My memory isn’t this good, used internet searches to fill in a lot of holes. If there’s huge fat foot below me, it not my fault – that an advertisement I can’t control).
Leave a Reply