But wait, there’s more - Monreale

Roger’s grandson, William the Second, built Monreale in 1184 as a statement of defiance to the Pope, and the walls are covered in shimmering gold mosaics depicting scenes from the Bible, as well as another enormous Christ Pantocrator (Lord of All). 

But it was the cloister that had this quilter’s heart beating fastest, as hundreds of columns with carved capitals depict 216 animals, and there are mosaic designs on almost all the columns, made from the tiniest of tiles.

Unfortunately soldiers during the war prised off many of the gold tiles on one side of the cloister, but the remaining ones are a treat to see and photograph.

Again, I’ve resorted to a collage to give you as much as I can. The squares are only 2 inches!

A treat for quilters!

We’re docked in Palermo for the weekend, and yesterday’s excursions to the Palatine Chapel in the Palace of the Normans in the morning and Monreale Cathedral in the afternoon were an absolute treat for me as a quilter.

The Norman King Roger, who I mentioned yesterday, was responsible for conquering Arab-held Sicily in 1072 and ushering in an era of prosperity and harmony as Arabs and Christians lived together. The Arab-Norman style of architecture that resulted is very beautiful, and so different from that of Rome.

Here’s a collage I created of some of the mosaic designs on the floors and walls in the 12^th century Palatine Chapel built by King Roger.

Cefalu Cathedral, glorious as it was, is overshadowed by the opulence of the decoration in these two churches on our tour itinerary today. The walls of both are covered with Byzantine mosaics in gold and precious stones like lapis lazuli in the most intricate designs. I didn’t know where to point my camera first and I had a hard time capturing everything I wanted to.

 

These palm tree shapes run all round the walls and each one is filled in with a different design of mosaic tiles, representing the common humanity of many races living in harmony.

There several quilters like me, drooling over what we saw!

Herculaneum

[Sorry, this post should have gone after the one about Pompeii]

Herculaneum was a complete surprise. Sydneysiders will understand the kind of town it was if I describe it as the 1st century equivalent of Palm Beach, with expensive houses by the sea and lovely gardens.  Yes, that is Hercules doing something you wouldn’t expect a nice Roman god to do in public :-)) That area looking like a moat in the photo is actually where the seashore was, so you can see just how deep the excavators have had to dig in order to reach the ruins.

But all the Herculaneum citizens’ creature comforts didn’t help them when the town was submerged in a 16 metre thick sea of boiling mud in AD 79. Sadly 300 bodies were found huddled together on the beach where they died trying to launch their boats. 

In contrast to Pompeii, which was bustling with tourists - like us! - Herculaneum today was pleasantly quiet.

Come aboard

Let me show you around the MV Aegean Odyssey, beginning with our humble, but very comfortable cabin which our steward, Manuel, keeps immaculately tidy.  I think I’d like to take him home :-)

I haven’t tried out the swimming pool yet.But the jacuzzi is wonderful. There are two restaurants, but this is where we prefer to dine, on deck so we can enjoy the splendid scenery.

This was our lunchtime view of Palermo on Saturday.

The Charleston Lounge is a very comfortable place for sitting with a long, cool drink at the end of the day.

And this is the Library, where there are wonderful reference books on history and travel for all the sights we’re seeing.

When we have some free time I like to plug my computer in here and work on my photo editing, labelling and blog posts here, where I can watch the sunshine and deep blue sea out the window.

Cefalu

Cefalu, where we landed on Friday – peacefully and smoothly! - was our first port of call in Sicily.

Here we were taken to see the Cathedral with its huge Byzantine mosaic of “Christ Pantocrator”.

Sicilian architecture clearly shows the influence of the Arabic people who came from North Africa in 831, as well as the later Norman invasion under King Roger – now there’s a name right out of Monty Python!

It’s also the first time on our cruise that we’ve seen these brightly coloured marzipan sweets loved by Sicilians.Not for me, thanks. I’ll have one of these!

A few waves

We’re currently doing quite a bit of tendering from ship to shore, but you need to be reasonably sure-footed, even with the strong hands of the crew holding you tightly, and there’s a definite technique to boarding. Timing is everything as you wait for the sea swell to bring the tender closer to the platform then take that first step - before the sea pulls the tender away and opens up a deep blue, watery gap. To us landlubbers the sea this morning looked fine, but apparently the swell was just too dangerous to safely transfer passengers, many of whom are quite elderly, without risking losing a few overboard.

So there were murmurs of disappointment all over the ship when the announcement was made that the morning in Amalfi, and the excursions to Positano and Ravello, had been cancelled - particularly from the poor woman who actually had her foot raised to step onto the tender when the announcement came over the PA.

Of course I regretted missing out on seeing Amalfi (and its shops!) and Boak regretted the chance to get a proper Italian coffee, but it meant a ‘bonus’ morning to spend trying out the jacuzzi on the aft deck and relaxing on a deck chair with my appliqué and audiobook as we steamed south towards Agropoli.

Who could complain about that?

We anchored off Agropoli at lunchtime and in spite of the continuing big swell the organizers decided to go ahead with our planned afternoon excursion – rather than risk a mutiny, I suspect!

Since this is only the third voyage for the Aegean Odyssey there were bound to be teething problems, and getting passengers off the ship with plenty of time left for the excursion to the ruins of Paestum was not smooth sailing, culminating in an earnest, if lighthearted, attempt by some passengers to storm the tender where the “concierge class” passengers were being boarded before “all other guests” (that’s us).

Everyone was in a happy holiday mood, so it didn’t get ugly, but it was a wake-up call for those in charge to organise the disembarkations a little better.

We were all meant to have left the ship at 2.00pm but it took so long to transfer all the passengers to shore that some of us – the patient ones! – didn’t leave the ship until 4.20pm, consequently having the lightning-fast version of the guided tour of Paestum and not arriving back on board until after 7.30pm.

I couldn’t praise the catering staff enough, though. In spite of the fact that dinner was almost over, they not only extended the dinner time for the 60 or so of us involved, but allowed us time to change and debrief with a very necessary pre-dinner drink. I think there must have been some anxious talks behind the scenes because later that evening there was a note under our cabin door telling us we’d been allocated to a colour-coded group (in our case brown! - don’t they know I’m a pink lady?) and disembarkation will in future take place in these groups.

It’s certainly improved the people-moving, and all seems calm for now.

The Voyage Begins

We were welcomed on board the Aegean Odyssey on Tuesday afternoon (with a long-stemmed red rose for me!) and enjoyed dinner on the deck as our ship sailed from Rome’s port, Civitavecchia, at 7pm . Early next morning the ship anchored off Sorrento and the crew began the slow task of transferring more than 300 passengers to shore by tender, where we were joined by our tour guides and whisked off in buses for a full day excursion tramping round Pompeii and Herculaneum.

This is our third visit to Pompeii, and this time it struck me just how “modern” these ancient Romans were.

They had pedestrian-only precincts, created by road-blocks like this one near the Forum.Fast food outlets and  public drinking fountains.

Double storeyed houses (those square holes were where the wooden floor joists went).

Water features in their gardens.

   Even graffiti!  The writing near this sketch says “This is Rufus”.