The Amalfi Coast...and another day in Salerno After a day in Pompeii we were ready for some time in our own home town, so after a well deserved sleep-in, we spent our day getting a little more familiar with Salerno. The town has a long history - it was already a Roman colony at the end of the 2nd century A.D. When the Roman Empire fell, the Goths ruled - followed by the Normans who conquered the town in 1077 and made it their capital. During the medieval peri...

Pompeii and Salerno The lovely city of Salerno is often overlooked on the international tourist radar - which for us is a bonus. The occasional cruise ship docks here for a few hours and it’s a popular place with Italians....but with only a small beach, this historic place on the Tyrrhenian Sea is neglected in favour of others on the nearby Amalfi Coast. The city suffered a lot of damage during World War II, but today it boasts one of largest seaports in the...

Arrivederci Roma...and on to Salerno. Our last day in Rome was a Saturday, so we decided to take advantage of a market that I’d read about in a great little book about the neighbourhoods of this city. Big thanks to Linda for lending us this book which we used quite a lot during our time in Rome. Situated close to the Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus), the Mercato di Campagna Amica was a wonderful find and one we’d recommend to anyone who has the time to visit...

THE FORUM, PALATINE HILL & ST. PETER’S Here I go again....but how to describe The Forum and Palatine Hill? We were there on what was a perfect sunny day, with temperatures in the low 20s, it was a day to remember. By pure dumb luck, we bi-passed the long line-up, where people with a variety of different pre-paid ticket options were shuffling their way in through the main entrance. We had no ticket, so we had to go around the block to a side entrance to ...

SPANISH STEPS, TREVI.....and more Rome Keats, Shelley, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron are just a few of the literary foreigners who enjoyed the neighbourhood around the Piazza di Spagna.....there is, in fact a house right next to the Spanish steps where Keats lived for a year before his death. Shelly lived nearby, but the house - now a small museum - is named for both of them. The square took its name almost 300 years ago from the Spanish Embassy that overlooked i...