Up the Blue Grotto without a Paddle...or a Boat

It's the seventh wave that'll get you.

Oceans and seas across the world all craft waves the same way. They come in a simple sequence: each wave is larger and more powerful than the last. This sequence builds in a set cycle: the number of waves in each cycle is seven.

And it's the seventh wave that'll get you.

I've been counting waves for a good ten minutes now, and my arms are aching from hanging off the precipice so long, peering into the darkness of the tunnel. Is it my imagination, or is the sea getting rougher? I know the sun is getting lower and lower, and I can't hang around forever—nor, for that matter, can I hang on all that much longer, physically.

I can't figure out whether I'm psyching myself up or psyching myself out, but there is one thing the tiny rational portion of my brain is sure of: this is easily the stupidest thing I've done in quite a while. It's even stupider than two weeks ago, when I followed a goat path several hundred feet above the Grand Canyon floor past the point where even the mountain sheep were looking at me as if to say "Uh, dude? Even we don't try to go that way."

And to think, the emergency €20 bill folded up in my zippered pocket could have bought me the easy way into the Blue Grotto.

When most people arrive at the mouth of the Grotta Azzurra for the first time, few actually realize they're at the entrance to the world famous Blue Grotto of Capri. They're expecting to motor into a vast sea cave filled with unearthly blue light. Instead, the boat that brought them around the island from Marina Grande (€8.50) has stopped dead in the water, in the shadows of a high rock cliff, and is being swarmed by tiny rowboats. The tourists are then divided into small groups and genially forced overboard to clamber into one of the rowboats bobbing in the waves, where they are told they have fork over another €8.50 per person to the oarsman.

Each rowboat, loaded down with fleeced tourists, starts pulling toward a tiny gap in the cliff where the rocks meets the crashing water. Just to the left of this gap, a thin metal chain is anchored into the rock. The chain runs, horizontal to the water, into a dark hole no more than three or four feet high. As each wave crashes against the cliff and is funneled through the hole, the open space between the surface of the water and the ceiling of the dark tunnel shrinks to under three feet. Then, with the next wave, two feet. Then one foot.

When the seventh wave hits, the water claps together, spurts back out from the top of the tunnel, and the hole disappears completely.

At this point, the tourists in the rowboat look at one other nervously. If they knew that a trip to the Blue Grotto was going to entail threading such a dangerous needle in a frail little rowboat, they probably would have stayed back in Capri Town and spent that €17 on gelato and cappuccino.

As it is, the sequence of waves cycles back down, the tunnel reappears, and suddenly a series of rowboats comes shooting out of the hole, each oarsman leaning way back--almost flat on his back--and hauling on that chain to pull his boat through quickly. As soon as the hole is clear, the boats waiting outside paddle quickly up to the entrance. The oarsman in each grabs the chain, and shouts to his little clump of tourists, "Please to lie down flat on you backs so you don' bump-a you head." And with no further warning, he begins hauling on the chain, sweeping the boat through into the dark tunnel.

At least, that's how I assume it still works. I haven't actually been inside the Blue Grotto for years. I did it with my parents back when I was 11 or so, and again 12 years ago when I came to Capri with a group of friends. It was fun, it was neat, and I saw no particular reason to waste another $20-plus on it again—especially as you have to tip heavily in order to stop the oarsman from singing (poorly) Neapolitan folks songs while you're in there for the whopping two-minute audience that each rowboat is granted.

That's why I'm here now, clinging to two convenient handholds in the algae-slicked limestone, my bare feet balanced on a shelf of rock just under the water, leaning out to peer into the Blue Grotto's dark entrance, counting waves.

It's around 5pm, but that's just a guess. I left Villa Eva some time around 4:30 for the half-hour walk to the Blue Grotto, and I left everything, including my time-telling cellphone, back at the hotel. All I brought was a towel, which I left back up the path piled atop my shirt and shoes, into one of which I stuck a business card (to help identify the body—see? I'm a responsible guy). It's early October, the very tail end of the tourist season, so the rowboats have knocked off early for the day, and the entrance to the Blue Grotto is empty. Empty and quiet—except for the crashing of waves.

There's no one else around, which makes it that much spookier to be leaning out over the pitch-black mouth of a sea cavern. The solitude also makes it seem that much more bone-headed of an idea to think I can swim into the grotto, especially with such a strong current sucking in and out—I can feel it against my calves—and with every seventh wave swallowing the tunnel whole.

The main problem is that I'm on the right side of the tunnel, and that anchored chain is over on the left. It can't be more than five or six feet from where I'm balancing on the underwater rock ledge, but there's the whole sucking current/crashing waves thing going on within those five feet. I'm wary of trying to shuffle across on the bit of rock ledge, as once I were to leave the safety of the wall I would have nothing to hold onto, plus I know from past experience that black sea urchins nestle into the rocks of Capri just below the waterline, and that their five-inch spines can pierce right through your foot and come out the other side.

Distracted, it suddenly registers with me that the last set of waves nearly kissed the top of the tunnel, so I brace myself for that seventh wave, which sure enough comes along and swells the green water up to my chest. First it tries to force me toward the tunnel, then—after the splashback of water closing off the tunnel washes over my head, it changes its mind and tries to drag me away towards the sea.

Shaking water from my eyes, I suddenly gasp and let go of my left handhold, a piercing pain throbbing in my pinkie. I look into the hole where my hand just was, and see a mottled dark green crab with thick yellow hairs on his legs is waving an outsized pincer claw at me as if to say, "Go ahead! What are you wating for? Just you try to stick your hand back in my hole, buddy, I've got plenty more where that came from!" I hiss at him, and yell at him, and puff my cheeks to blow on him as hard as I can, and otherwise try to get the bugger to budge. He just fixes me with those beady, dead black eyes and waves that claw menacingly, refusing to back down. Grumbling, I find another, far less stable handheld, and turn back to the tunnel to start counting the waves again.

'OK, was that wave two or three of the new cycle?' I think to myself. Then, cross at the crab, and at myself for being so damn analytical about the whole thing, I say out loud "Ah, the Hell with it," and, during a trough between waves, launch myself through the air towards that chain on the other side of the tunnel.

It isn't until I'm about halfway across, a new wave surging up behind me and my fingers reaching toward that dangling chain, that the thought passes through my mind: 'I wonder if there are any sea urchins where I'm about to land?'

I splash into the water, my left hand closing about the chain, the forearm slamming into the rock behind it. As I vaguely register with relief that no urchin spines seem to be piercing my body, the incoming wave sweeps me along and helps carry me into the tunnel, the chain slipping rapidly through my palm.

Funny thing is, once I get inside, it's all much easier. I haul myself all the way through the tunnel and into the grotto itself, which starts to take dark, shadowy shape above and before me. I avoid looking back toward the bright entrance so as to better let my eyes adjust. I still can't see the far walls, but I can hear the scattershot echoes of the water splashing against them, under the constant, cycling roar of incoming waves, their sound amplified by the tunnel.

Ten feet or so in, the chain swoops up, away from the water, to anchor somewhere into the rock at much higher level, so I can no go no further and still use it as a lifeline. I tread water, clinging to the chain that's now a good arm's length above my head, and let my eyes continue to adjust to the darkness. I can begin to make out the pale stone of the ceiling soaring away from me and the walls widening to each side. The water, though—that famous glowing azure water—is dark. It's blue alright, but a shade of blue just shy of black.

Damn. I tarried too long. The sun's too low in the sky. The effect of the Blue Grotto has been turned off for the night. All that silly fear and senseless bravado for nothing.

Well, might as well get a little swim out of it. The current that was so concentrated by the narrow tunnel isn't nearly as strong even this short distance inside, so I steel my fears and let go of the chain to paddle a few feet further into the cave. Just so I can gauge how strong the current really is, I turn to look at the only fixed point of reference I know of, the tunnel entrance.

Which is when the true extent of my own idiocy finally hits me.

The famous glowing effect of the Blue Grotto is created by the daylight from outside refracting through the entrance tunnel and filtering through the limpid water. That is to say, you cannot see it if you're staring toward the cave-dark of the back walls. You gave to be looking towards the entrance.

As soon as I turned around, I realized I was swimming in liquid lapis lazuli. My arms and legs were windmilling around a field of pale blue so intense it looked fake, like the light from a neon sign. The effect was so shocking, it actually made my jaw drop (didn't know that jaw-dropping happened for real; though it was just a metaphor), whereupon, of course, I started shipping water down my throat. Once I get the coughing and sputtering out of the way, I scramble to unzip my pant's pocket and yank out the waterproof camera I had bought earlier in the day, and started snapping a few giddy photographs.

The waves and current weren't strong, but they were definitely present and persistent. After so much time spent hanging around at the entrance, and all that adrenaline wasted on worrying and getting myself in here, I realized my out of shape bod wasn't going to permit me to swim about and fight the pull of the sea for too much longer. Besides, the eerie, intense, impenetrable blueness all around my pale, flailing limbs was starting to creep me out.

Unbidden, the words "Monster of the Blue Grotto" floated into my mind—a local legend I managed to conjure up, just now, out of thin air as I treaded the glowing water, spooked by being alone in this sea-filled cavern. I could almost feel my invented monster grabbing my ankles and jerking me under the water. All they would find would be a shirt, towel, and shoes with some travel writer's business card in them. Silly, I know, but YOU try putting that sort of thing out of your mind when you're swimming around a giant, echoing, sea cave all by yourself, a place as sinister and dark above the water as it is bizarrely opaque and bright below.

I paddled back over to the point where I could lunge up and grab the chain again, and that helped calm me down a bit. I took a few more pictures, then treaded water, hanging off the chain, facing the tunnel, and started counting the waves again.

The seventh wave came. It filled the entire tunnel, blocking the air and the light, and then rolled over my head, raising me higher than the chain for a moment. When the tunnel reappeared and the water level fell to a deep trough, I started hauling myself along the chain, through the tunnel and toward the setting sun.

I passed the territorial crab, who set to waving his claw again when he saw me, and scrambled over the rocks to the little rowboat landing platform at the trail's end. As I hauled myself up to the platform's railing, I scared the hell out of a young French mother and her little blonde girl, who were leaning over to peer towards the tunnel entrance. They stepped back to let me slither up and over the rail, and I stood there, dripping and grinning like a maniac.

"Ehh… Bloou Gra-TOH?" The woman asked, hesitantly. Yes, I replied, wiping water off my face, this is the Blue Grotto. "The boats?…" She asked, and I explained that they left around 4pm. "No boats?" She asked again, seeking confirmation.

"No," I replied. "No boats." Then I smiled mischievously. "But you can swim in!"

She laughed a bit nervously, and stammered something about how the water was probably too cold. I was already bouncing up the trail toward my towel and little pile of clothes. No, I called back, the water was really just right.

Useful Tools

• The fine art of packing light (a.k.a.: always know where your towel is)

Outside Links

• Capri Tourism
  
• Hotel Villa Eva

The Saint & the Sea Monster

The man could hold his own against sea monsters, so they say. He could also exorcise the possessed like nobody's business. His name was Saint Antonino, and he gave up life as a hermit to tend to the spiritual well being, demonic possessions, miracle granting, pirate attacks, and general carpentry needs of the people of Sorrento.

Antonino didn't even want the job. He would have been perfectly content to continue living his isolated life of prayer up in the mountains, building hillside oratories on the orders of St. Michael the Archangel, with whom he chatted regularly. But when the Lombards came rampaging through the region—remember, before they settled down in Milan to become industrialists, the Lombards were one of those Barbarian hordes from the wild side of the Danube who helped bring down the Roman Empire—the saint hustled down from his hermitage at Montecassino for protection on the plains. He took a cell in the Benedictine Abbey of St. Agrippinus, was soon named its Abbot, and set about performing miracles—though in his down time, the saint was far more fond of tending the abbey's vineyards, and puttering about town doing odd carpentry jobs.

Sorrento's adopted saint died on February 14, AD 626—must be rough, sharing your feast day with a Big Ticket saint like Valentine—but he didn't let a little thing like death get in the way of his ministry. He's been watching over Sorrento ever since, saving the town from everything from Saracen attacks to the Black Plague, as well as answering the panicked prayers of many a Sorrentine sailor caught in a tempest.

His real specialty, though, is exorcisms. Whether you're possessed by demons spawned from the depths of Hell, or by a mild skin ailment, Antonino's your man. With such power residing in the venerable bones, it's little wonder that, when Turkish conquerors made off with the saint's arm in1558, a Sorrentine merchant made the journey to Constantinople to buy back the relic.

The appreciative locals in return have given him, not one, but two statues in prominent squares (Piazza Tasso and, of course, Piazza S. Antonino). In both statues, the saint is shown treading victoriously upon the neck of a sea monster that looks a bit like a toothy porpoise. It's not. It's meant to be a whale.

Details on the legend of Antonino's most famous miracle differ, but the upshot is: a distraught mother came running up to the abbey, wailing that whale had swallowed her child whole. Antonino wasted no time. He strode down to the sea, called the monster from the depths, and with the force of his oratory forced the cetacean to spit out the boy, alive and well (though presumably covered in whale slime). Jonah really coulda used this guy in his corner.

You can still see what are said to be the monster's actual bones—they are certainly whale ribs of some sort—mounted high on the wall to the right of the main doors in the vestibule of S. Antonino. The town built this grand—but unfortunately baroqued—church around the saint's tomb so as to have room to leave ex votos of thanks in return for their patron's intercession on matters ranging from saving foundering ships to helping survive breast cancer.

Floor-to-ceiling glass cases surround his tomb in the crypt under the unfortunately baroqued church of S. Antonino, and these cases are wallpapered inside with silver talismans. One case is devoted entirely to legs; another to images of be-suited men and women in long dresses that look as if they were copied from the cover of some 1940s Madison Avenue Better Villas and Vineyards mag. Many are labeled simply "Per grazie ricevute"—in Italian, the word for 'thank you' (grazie) is the same as the word for 'grace', so this double-meaning message it thanking the saint "For grace received."

Other cases are a motley arrangement of body parts cured, the thin silver ex votos shaped and stamped with graphic anatomical detail—backs, chests, throats, lungs (one or both), breasts (one or both), heads, hands, eyes, mouths, hearts, and whole torsos opened up like a cadaver in Gross Anatomy 101 to show the GI tract in exacting detail.

Several cases behind the altar are stocked with silvery babies, some alongside blurry snapshots—many neonatal—of the miraculously cured infant in question, and a letter gushing thanks and grace—"Grazie! Grazie! Grazie!"

As you turn to leave the crypt, you see that the entry wall is lined by more than 30 prints and paintings of 19th century shops tossing in stormy seas, with S. Antonino popping out of the dark clouds in an aura of light to raise on arm and save the devout mariners (as in foxholes, there are no atheist sailors during a tempest). The paintings were donated by grateful captains and crews. The most recent one is a photograph, dating from the 1950s, and clearly that captain was taking no chances on the Sorrentine seas. The name of his motorboat: the "S. Antonino."

The Dangers of Dinner in Sorrento

Sorrento is one of the very few places in Italy where it is easier to eat badly than well.

Mark it down to a constantly changing clientele—why bother putting yourself out to cook a great meal when the tourist you're making it for is going to be gone tomorrow, never to return? The food at Hotel Loreley was just a step above Boyar'dee. The grub at Taverna dell '800 was only decent. And there's one place, tucked into a cave halfway down the switchback road to the Marina Piccola docks, where I once got food poisoning—though my traveling companion, J, got it even worse; started throwing up on the ferry over to Capri.

This time, I'm wary, so I've reverted to an old habit picked up in seventh grade in Rome: scooping up the hard little pellets that have shaken out from between the tough petals of umbrella pine cones, staining my fingertips black with the layer of sooty dust on their shells. After I've collected a good handful's-worth, rattling around in my pocket, I find a quiet corner and a good sharp rock. It's a delicate art, cracking the thick shells of pine nuts without squashing the tender pinoli within. It's laborious (no wonder the suckers cost so much shelled), but the meat tastes so much sweeter when you have to work for it.

Since a man cannot live solely on pine nuts and fruit filched from low-hanging branches, I do have to find restaurants for dinner. The only place in town where I've ever had memorable meals is the massive La Favorita O' Parrucchiano—and even that one is quite touristy. Green waist-coated waiters keep up a brisk two-way traffic on the terraced staircases between the kitchen and the dining patio up top, carrying laden platters up and empty trays down, calling out table numbers and orders to a woman sitting at a lonely table to one side, scribbling furiously at an array of still-open restaurant checks spread out on the table to keep them up to date.

The food, at least, is of very good quality, and the jungle-like dining patio is lovely, hung heavy with vines, pomegranate and lemon trees, and other signs of Mediterranean lushness. Shame I can't do anything about the inevitable guitar-mandolin duo—though it's a sight better than the piped-in schlock at most Sorrento restaurants—who are strumming their way through the Play List of Approved Sorrento Songs for Tourists: O Sole Mio, Funiculi Funicula, My Way, Tu Vo' Fa L'Americano (a weird mambo number from the 60s poking fun at a Neapolitan who pitifully apes everything American), and, of course, That's Amore!

I swear to God, if the moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie one more time, I am going to go Audrey Hepburn on one of these guys and smash the guitar right over his head. Plus, I keep catching myself whistling Funiculi Funicula, which must be annoying not only to me but to anyone within earshot. Little wonder that one gets stuck in my grey matter; it was one of the world's first successful commercial jingles, commissioned to inaugurate the funicular (cable car) up Mt. Vesuvius.

Given how fully Sorrento has been given over to the mass tourism machine, I'd argue that it's really a place for folks who really don't want to be in Campania in the first place. They just want to check the region's Big Ticket sights (Pompeii, Capri, Amalfi) off their list, and Sorrento is the most convenient base from whcih to do it. Sorrento also happens to save folks from many of the little inconveniences of being in a foreign country.

This place is no tourist-friendly it's boring. English is without a doubt the first language in town. A ridiculous number of English-style pubs try to entice people in with blackboards promising to screen upcoming rugby and (British) soccer matches. Even the tourist office is installed in the entrance to the old Grand Tour-era Circolo dei Forestieri—the Foreigner's Club. OK, so I admit I always repair here in the late afternoons, in some pale imitation of Grand Tour style, in order to catch up on my notes and sip a Campari-soda while watching the sunset fire the surrounding cliffs, the night slip over the triangle of Vesuvius across the way, and the lights twinkle on around the Bay of Naples.

Sorrento is bursting at the seams with giggling German schoolgirls, Americans and Aussies teetering along under their impressively large backpacks, and British package tourists letting down their hair for a Mediterranean holiday—the women donning spangly skirts in showy colors, the men opening their shirts to the sternum to display pale or sun-reddened pecs. I don't mean to poke fun at any of these people. I just wonder why they came all the way to Italy, to one of its most beautiful corners, and then all ended up clumping together in this relatively uninteresting town, spending time in each other's company at the pubs, rather than seeking out some place more genuine, more Italian.

Instead, everyone congregates here to sip overpriced cappuccino or catch gelato drips with their tongues while having the same five basic conversations, with slight variations:

"Did you see that brothel at Pompeii? [giggle]"…"Oh, you simply HAVE to do the Blue Grottto. The boatmen even sing for you! (I know; the trick is getting them not to.) No, it's on Capri; you can just catch the boat over and be back in a few hours."…"Did you hear, Fred got pickpocketed at the Naples train station!" (Sadly, a likely story. Even more sadly, that's the one bit of Naples most of them ever see—and it serves Fred right for not keeping his valuables in a moneybelt). Then there's in inevitable debate on whether to ride to bus down the Amalfi Coast and back, or just relax in Sorrento tomorrow.

Oh, and: "Where are you headed to next?" (Most common answers: "Home" and "Paris.")

Not me. I'm in Sorrento for two days, largely to give myself a chance to recover from jet lag in a place where I won't be tempted to sightsee, go sniffing around for odd and interesting things, or otherwise try to get any work done.

Yeah, sure. That plan only lasted until my second morning.

Sorrento: Equidistant from Everywhere You'd Rather Be

Sorrento is a turnstile town, a gateway to other, far more interesting places. It's the place to catch ferries to Capri, trains to Pompeii and Naples, buses down the Amalfi Coast. It's a stopover to pick up your rental cars to get to your rental villa further out on the Sorrentine Peninsula, or hop the orange-topped launch back to your cruise ship docked in the deep waters off the headland marking the east end of town.

There's very little to the town itself other than the general Mediterranean lovliness that it shares with most towns in the area—citrus groves and grape vines, that clear and rich seaside light, fresh seafood, and warm welcomes. There's nothing wrong with Sorrento per se (other than a thick tourist veneer of souvenir stands and pricey cappuccini), but very little that's special, either—especially considering its massively more intriguing neighbors. In fact, a phrase we once used to describe Columbia, Missouri is just as apt here: Sorrento is equidistant from everywhere you'd rather be.

Sorrento is close and convenient to many great things, but it manages it without being all the great in of itself. It exists mainly to absorb the region's tourist influx, and it's been making a living off that role for nearly two millennia. This has been a middle-class resort ever since Imperial Roman times, when wealthy Romans built villas out here in pale imitation of Tiberius' imperial pleasure palace on the nearby island of Capri, barely visible in the smoggy haze today.

Sorrento, sitting in a pretty clifftop position 165 feet above the sea, became a fixture on the Grand Tour of wealthy Brits. In 1843, a sensory-overloaded Mary Shelley proclaimed "This is Paradise" and claimed to have found Italy, the real Italy, for the first time at Sorrento. Later, it became part of the scene for Italian celebrities (Enrico Caruso was fond of the place), and throughout, Sorento remained the favored regional base for tour packages and groups from Cook's to Rick Steves'.

But Sorrento has no great cathedrals and no great museums—just the usual small-town collection of second-rate baroque paintings and ancient artifacts, plus a new center devoted to the local artisan craft of wood inlay. It's not a charming fishing village or hill town, and it boasts no truly ancient quarters, just a grid of narrow lanes following the ancient Roman plan.

The city's most famous son, the poet Torquato Tasso, made his name in Rome, and its biggest cultural endeavor would appear to be the local "folk show" of costumed folks dancing the tarantella (about which I heard one American coo to her husband, "Ooh! Let's do that. I hear it's, like, the Italian flamenco!").

This town is on the Med, and it doesn't even have a decent beach, just a string of $10-to-walk-on piers built out on the breakwaters surrounded by green waters. There are a few scraps of black sand at the base of the cliff, but those get no sun and as such are ignored, left to collect the refuse tossed overboard by ferry passengers and folks crisping on the breakwater piers.

Sorrento does have a trio of churches providing a mild diversion (more on those later). But most visitors spend their time washing back and forth along the narrow Via San Cesareo—the old decumanus maximus of the Roman city—shopping for trinkets that aren't even local, like ceramics and lace, and scoring free hits of limoncello. These come from dueling purveyors on opposite corners of the cross street Via degli Archi, where young employees sling plastic shots of the lemony liqueur to a chorus of "Please, to take a taste," and proclaiming "No problem, is included in price!" When a browser knocks a bottle off the shelf and it shatters.

The bottles themselves are a riot of shapes and sizes: globes, mermaids, sneakers, pagodas, grapes, anforas, male torsos, pulcinellas, fluted columns, prancing ponies, the Italian "boot," violins, sailing ships, hearts, smiling suns and grinning quarter-moons, pineapples, beer barrels, and all sorts of geometric shapes. And what's in them isn't just straight lemon liqueur. There's the even tastier crema di limoncello creamy variation, as well as alcoholic infusions of peach, walnuts, fene3l, melon, mandarin orange, liquorice, chocolate, and bay leaf. (Yeah, I've had that last one before, and believe me, there's a reason you've never heard of it.)

Tipsy on free booze and wired from its high sugar content, the parade wanders on to the Sedile Dominova to take furtive pictures of the old men playing inscrutable and eternal games of cards at little wooden tables surrounded by 18th century frescoes. The men are members of the Worker's Society of Mutual Support—Italy, especially in the south, is full of these union-like clubs for retirees. Their communal living room is a high porch, raised above street level and open on two sides, built in the 16th century as the seat of power for one of the two ruling noble families in town. If you step to the far side of the little square and peek over the café umbrellas, you can see the 17th century cupola, tiled in shiny ceramic dragon scales of green and yellow and sprouting weeds.

That's it. A few hundred feet later, the trinket shops peter out, and most folks turn around to wander aimlessly back up the street again until it's time to go in search of dinner.

The Road to Sorrento

Delta did exactly zero things to impress me on my trip from JFK to Rome. The total waiting time from getting out of the car to striding up to my gate was 90 minutes, including 18 minutes shuffling up the sidewalk jut to get up to the front entrance.

Then, they stuck me in seat 42E, the very back row of the plane (the check-in desk never asked me "aisle or window?" just gave me a boarding pass). Problems with the back row? Noise from the galley behind you, folks waiting for the bathroom (also behind you) abusing your personal space and leaning on your headrest, and the seats only recline about 1.5 inches. Also, Delta hasn’t yet invested in those plane seat headrests with the little adjustable wings that help sandwich your head in an upright position for a slump-free and crick-less nap.

The only saving grace was that I had the whole row to myself. Huzzah! I never manage to sleep sitting up on planes, so for the first time in about 40 overnight flights, I would be able to stretch out across three seats and actually doze off a bit. Then, just before we taxied onto the runway, some guy got out of a middle seat ten rows up. As he picked his way down the aisle, the already strapped-in flight attendants sternly called out (apparently not for the first time) "Sir, you have to stay in your assigned seat until after take-off. Once the captain has tuned off the seatbelts sign, you can look for another seat."

"Screw that!" He spat at them in a self-important tone, settling into the other aisle seat of my row. "I’m not about to sit in a middle seat!" He then proceeded to arrange all his worldly belongings in fussy piles taking up the entirety of the empty seat between us.

I sent hate-vibes at him during the whole, sleepless nine-hour flight.

Fiumicino had, in its infinite wisdom, decided to open only four passport control windows to handle the dozens of incoming morning flights. The line stretched the length of the immigration room, around the corner, and down the corridor to the base of the escalators down from arrivals. It took nearly an hour to get through.

Then, the doors on the shuttle train from the airport to Termini closed on my foot as I put it on the first stair in order to clamber aboard. I yanked out my abused shoe, the doors snapped shut, and I watched the train pull away. Damn. Half an hour until the next one.

Luckily, at Termini I managed just to make the InterCity train to Naples, and was delighted to discover it was one in the old compartment arrangement. In this era of straight-through carriages that always make me feel more like I’m commuting than traveling, I revel in this throw-backs where you get to investigate a microcosm of six people crammed uncomfortably close for a few hours.

Across from me, in the other window seat, sat a hulking teenager with a do-everything cell phone permanently attached to his right ear by an umbilical earbud. Like a first true love, he ignored the world to pour all his attentions and devotion into this slab of plastic and microchips. First he played video games on it, then used it to chat with friends, and later fell asleep listening to tinny mp3s. In the seat by the door, a raisined little Italian man in a salt-and-pepper beard and cheap, threadbare, but scrupulously clean clothing carefully worked his way through four different newspapers over the course of the ride to Naples. Across from him, a dumpy Korean tourist clutched her purse on her lap and darted her eyes constantly for the full two hour trip, as if she suspected us of being the pickpockets she had been warned about.

Just as we pulled away, a nice older couple from the South Island of New Zealand arrived, panting and sweaty from having dashed for the train (which had switched arrival tracks at the last moment), and collapsed across from one another in the center seats. They were clearly excited to be in Italy, en route to Pompeii, and had a remarkable knack for looking out the wrong window at the wrong time—staring at a bleak suburban wallscape, for example, when the Mediterranean was glittering out the other side of the train.

I took it upon myself to catch the woman’s eye periodically and silently point to the other window at appropriate times so they wouldn’t miss things, starting with those oh-so-Romantic broken, weedy stretches of ancient aqueduct arches that parallel the tracks through farmland of the Castelli Romani. (Unlike the Acqua Vergine and other Imperial Age aqueducts that still run fresh water into Rome from the Appenine foothills to the east, the aqueducts south of the city weren’t kept in good repair by the popes, and long ago gradually crumbled to create scenes straight from a Piranesi print, complete with milling sheep.)

By the time we were in the Campania heartland, the woman broke our compartment’s silence, first to ask politely if I spoke English, then why we kept passing water buffalos? I explained about the mozzarella, and they broke into delighted grins. A bit later she asked "And are those olives?" No…but those are, with the dusty silver and dark green leaves. As we fell to chatting, they bemoaned having spent so long waiting in line at the Vatican, so I told them about reserving Uffizi tickets, and later, in Paris, to buy the Carte Musées et Monuments in order to save money and skip lines.

Occasionally, the little red cart with from the bar car would slide past our compartment, its pusher tinkling the bell occasionally and merely glancing quickly into the compartment to see if anyone showed interest. Much more proactive was the Old School itinerant drinksman. I thought these guys had disappeared, chased off by the now for-profit railroad and its exclusive license with Chef Express to provide crappy food and overpriced drinks on all the trains. But no, here was a small-time entrepreneur, trolling the corridors, swinging a heavy plastic bag at the end of each hairy arm, calling out a patter of "Caffe, caffe…bibite, aranciate, coca, acqua, birra…bibite!" Later, a barrista in Sorrento confirmed that the only bit of the entire national railways he knew of that still featured these bibite (drinks) guys was the Formia-Napoli stretch, where they were so entrenched and so much a part of tradition that no one seemed able to get rid of them.

At Napoli Centrale, I wished the Kiwis luck and hauled my bag down the station platform. I was about to take the stairs down to the basement and the long, twisting corridor leading to the private Circumvesuviana train line strung along the Bay of Naples, when I thought, "Damn. They’ll never find this on their own. No one does." Grumbling about the continued short-sightedness of Neapolitan authorities in not putting up a big sign for tourists saying "POMPEII"with a giant arrow pointing down the staircase, I backtracked until I found my Kiwis—looking, as expected, vaguely lost. I accompanied them down into the warren of underground tunnels, showed them where to buy tickets, and warned them about not accidentally getting on the Metro—the turnstiles for which are, confusingly, directly across from the Circumvesuviana ticket windows even though the Circumvesuviana tracks lie several hundred yards away, down more twists and turns of tunnels.

Waiting on the platform, I extended my adopted circle of tourists to a quartet of backpacked Americans by stopping them from hopping on the first train that came along, as it was headed for Sarno and they (as I) wanted the one for Sorrento. They squinted at me, unconvinced by this stranger offering advice. I shrugged and explained that, on this train, they’d end up clear on the wrong side of Vesuvius, wondering where the sea went and what all the buffalo were doing here. (I left it to my Kiwis to explain the buffalo-mozzarella connection.)

Aboard the correct train, I pointed out the gypsy family working its way through the car—mamma with an infant slung at her breast and small child in tow, little girl squeezing an accordion in a semblance of music as a distraction—and motioned everyone to keep their hands on their wallets. Then I left the tourists alone and got to finishing off my mystery novel as the ancient train shrieked and clattered its interminable way along the southern crescent of the Bay of Naples. It stopped every two to five minutes in identikit suburban towns to disgorge loud packs of schoolchildren sausaged into too-bright, too-tight clothing. I bid the Kiwis goodbye at the Pompeii Scavi stop, advising them not to miss the frescoes in Villa dei Misteri, and stayed on until the end of the line: Sorrento.

I shuffled along with everyone else down the platform stairs—the last line I’d have to stand in for the trip, hopefully—and muscled myself and my bag through the turnstile. I jounced the bag along narrow, red-cobblestoned sidewalks to the eastern edge of town and a small pile of dusty pink cubes clinging to the cliff's edge 200 feet above a little swimming pier. The black paint of the sign at the top of the main building's walls was flaking so badly it was almost impossible to make out the words "Albergo Loreley," the full name continued on the next building "et Londres."

I dropped my bag in room 15—hideous pea-green modular furnishings, no TV, A/C, or phone, but drop-dead views—and, while the light was still good, snapped a few pics of the room and its bougainvillea-lined balcony with the panorama of the sea and busy Marina Piccola port below. Stuffing the camera into my waist bag, I quickly soaped my hands and face to wipe away the grime of the road and weariness of a sleepless night, and headed right out the door again before the bed could tempt me to crash.

As I turned the simple skeleton key twice round in the lock, a smile spread across my face. Somehow, that did it. Sliding the deadbolt into place on the first of dozens of new hotel rooms that would crop up every night, that slid me into the groove. I was back. Back on the road and back on the job. Pocketing the key, I trotted down the stairs, poking my head in the slightly ajar door of room 6 for a peek and some mental notes on the decor, wondering if I'd make it to the curving, bamboo-shaded terrace in time to get an antipasto misto and plate of pasta alla Sorrentina before the chef knocked off for riposo.