Italian Odyssey

Few travelers stray south of Rome into the Mezzogiorno, but they're missing some stunning scenery.

ON A SUN-DRENCHED DAY IN SEPTEMBER, I ran along Italy's Amalfi Drive between Positano and Priano. The narrow and twisting ribbon of road seemed tacked to the side of volcanic cliffs that sliced into the sea hundreds of feet beneath me as I ran. So far was the water below that the sound of waves crashing on the rocks failed even to rise to my ears.

This was the same wine-red sea written about in The Odyssey by Homer. Offshore, three tightly bound islands rose rockily from that sea. These are the islands of galli, or roosters. Homer tells us they once were occupied by sirens whose songs lured lovestruck sailors onto the rocks. To avoid this fate, Ulysses bound the ears of his sailors, then had them lash him to the mast. Thus did the Greek hero enjoy the sirens' songs while staying clear of danger.

I too hoped to steer clear of danger, since Italy does not offer a comfortable habitat for runners. It's a great country for pasta; a poor one for training. The roads are narrow. Drivers display a certain arroganza toward anyone who might challenge their right to the road. As I ran, buzzing cars, motorcycles, three-wheeled trucks and tour buses brushed past. Fortunately, vehicles move so slowly negotiating the Amalfi Drive's tight turns, their speed was barely faster than mine.

I had come to Positano on the Amalfi Coast south of Naples on an odyssey of my own. My wife Rose and I visit the land where her parents were born often. This time we brought with us her two sisters: Marion Musacchio and Bea Fabbricatore. Also, Bea's husband Lou and our cousin John Molinaro.

Several years ago, Rose and I published a book titled Falconara: A Family Odyssey. It traced her heritage through Italy to Albania in the fifteenth century. Rose's mother told the legend of seven families who, during a war against the Turks, fled Albania and founded the town of Falconara in the south of Italy. Strangely, 500 years later, the Falconarese still speak Albanian--or rather a dialect of that language called Arberesh. Rose, Marion and Bea spoke Arberesh while growing up in Chicago.

One of our chapters describes the festival of the Madonna of Good Council, somewhat of a homecoming for Falconarese who have moved away. Our reason to return this time was that last winter, Rose's sister Marion retired. As a retirement present, the family gave Marion a free trip back to Falconara, which she had never visited. Rose and I decided to use 120,000 Frequent Flyer points to accompany her. Soon, we were mounting an expedition with stops in Positano, Sicily and Rome in addition to Falconara.

We had other reasons for going to Positano (featured in the movie Only You, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Marisa Tomei). When Bea's husband Lou, was a boy, he spent two years living in that Amalfi Coast village, where his parents were born. Lou had not been back to Positano in sixty years. We carried a lot of memories with us on our trip to Italy.

We flew through New York and London to Naples in the area that Italians call the Mezzogiorno, not an entirely complimentary name. (Mezzogiorno means the middle of the day, siesta time.) Arriving in Positano, we checked into a small motel on the Amalfi Drive owned by Lou's relatives.

The motel was called al barilotto di nonno, grandfather's barrel. Lou's family once tended olive trees that clung to the steep hills near their current property. At harvest time, they crushed olives in a barrel to produce olive oil, thus the name. The motel was small, clean, had a stunning view of the sea and featured in its terrace restaurant some of the tastiest food that I have eaten in all my visits to Italy. Al barilotto di nonno is just down the road from the Hotel San Pietro, dug out of the side of a cliff. With rooms costing up to $430 a night, it is the most expensive hotel in Positano if not in Italy. (One of my friends from Arizona had tried to get rooms at the San Pietro several months before and failed.)

Most of Positano lay beneath the Amalfi Drive with only a one-way street weaving halfway down. From there, steps descend past shops and art galleries to the beach. Our motel was two kilometers south of town, but we preferred walking into Positano rather than brave the traffic. One day, we took a boat to the island of Capri, visiting the famed Blue Grotto. It's something you do if you're a tourist on the Amalfi Coast.

After three days, we headed to Salerno and shifted to the autostrada for the trip south. I had driven the autostrada (or expressway) during previous visits to Italy and considered its drivers wilder even than those on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway. If there is a speed limit in Italy, no one pays attention. After a half-day's drive, we stopped at a hotel near Paola on the coast beneath Falconara. Also staying at the hotel was our cousin John Molinaro from Chicago and his sister Menica from Rome, along with several in her family. That Saturday evening, we drove to Falconara for the festival. Alas, because of rainy weather (unusual for Italy in September), it had been postponed.

The rain cleared the usually hazy air. Driving upward into the mountains Sunday morning, we had a clear view of the Tyrrhenian Sea and several volcanic islands far off shore. Even Sicily was visible on the horizon, a sight I had never seen during previous trips to Falconara.

We arrived at church in time for a parade led by parishioners carrying a statue of the Madonna and the town banner to which villagers attach lire notes. The parade, featuring a marching band, wound through corridors decorated by bedspreads hung from windows and balconies. As the parade began, I was amused that the band's first melody was John Philip Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever!

During previous trips, we had visited relatives, who invited us into their homes for obligatory cups of coffee, cookies, fruits, home-made sausage and meals featuring multiple courses of pasta and meats. Alas, during our twelve-year absence most of these old people had died. Only one relative remains living in the house of my wife's mother. Rose was descended from the Muzaki, one of the seven founding families that came in 1476 from Albania. Today, there is no longer anybody in Falconara bearing the Italicized version of that name: Musacchio.

Monday morning we drove Marion, Bea and Lou to the Paola station where they caught the train north. They would spend the next week touring Naples, Rome and Florence. Having visited those cities many previous times, we headed further south through an area not often penetrated by Americans, who are mostly content to roam the museums and churches of the North. This despite the fact that most Italians who migrated to the U.S. came from Calabria and Sicily.

For much of history, Italy was just a collection of city-states. Sicily was ruled successively by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans and even Schwabians from Germany. For most of Falconara's existence, Spanish kings ruled all of Italy from Naples south, an area called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1860, armies led by Giuseppe Garibaldi (who once worked on Staten Island, New York) conquered this kingdom, creating today's Italy.

As we rode the ferry across the straits of Messina to Sicily, we had no hotel reservations and no plan other than we would tour the island clockwise from Messina to Taormina to Siracusa to Agrigento to Palermo and back to Messina. If we could figure out the ferry schedule, we thought we might spend a day or two in Malta, formerly British, halfway between Sicily and North Africa.

Most of the town of Taormina, like Positano, clings to the side of a hill above the beach. Winston Churchill often visited. Tourists such as Churchill come to Taormina because of the scenery, including the ruins of a classical Greek theater. So jammed with tourists was the town that we had difficulty locating lodging. We finally settled on the relatively inexpensive Hotel Bettuno, rated two stars out of five, but clean, quaint and with a view of the sea--if you leaned out the window.

Siracusa the next day also offered a Greek theater and crushing traffic in its downtown streets. We fled to a businessman's hotel outside downtown and later regretted it. There was nowhere to walk (a favorite post-meal habit of Italians), but I did spot a 400-meter track in a park next to the Greek theater where I jogged a lap. We continued the next morning to Pozzallo hoping to find a ferry to Malta, a short hop. Alas, it was Wednesday; the ferry would not run until Thursday.

We continued along the southern coast to Agrigento, whose Greek ruins dominate the horizon as you drive into town. We stopped at the Villa Athena, only a short walk through an olive field from temples as impressive as any you might see in Greece. A New York Times article about the hotel reported prices of $45 for rooms in 1984. We paid $145 and considered it a bargain.

The next night in Palermo, we found another businessman's hotel near the harbor and walked into the central city to sample pizza at a sidewalk cafe. Although many Americans fear Sicily because of the reputation of the mafia, we felt less threatened wandering its parks and neighborhoods streets than we would in many American cities. The streets usually were filled with people, which increased our feelings of security.

We had planned to visit a museum the next morning, but heavy traffic caused us to reconsider. We fled along the northern coast, stopping en route in Cefalu to shop for gifts for our grandchildren. We stopped in Messina, choosing a hotel near the docks for the ferry, which we planned to take in the morning. Before doing so, we visited the cathedral, one of the most beautiful in Europe with its Moorish decor. A pity more tourists don't come south to see it.

After an all-day drive, we arrived in Rome, rejoining Marion, Bea and Lou. Usually we stay with relatives, but Marion had secured reservations for us at the Hotel Adriano, in the heart of Old Rome. It was within walking distance of the Vatican on one side and the Trevi Fountain on the other. Sunday morning, I rose early and jogged up the Spanish steps and into the Villa Borghesi, gardens closed to car traffic. This allowed me to run freely for the first time in nearly two weeks. In the Garden I ran past pines of Rome silhouetted by the rising sun. We would fly home the next day. It was the perfect way to end our Italian Odyssey.

Getting There: We used 120,000 accumulated Frequent Flyer miles on American Airlines for our flights from Chicago to New York to London to Naples, then home from Rome. (That's the kind of routing you have to accept when flying "free.") Had we booked off-season, the same passage would have cost 80,000 miles. Marion, Bea and Lou flew Alitalia into Naples and out of Rome without as many stops: $1,069, round-trip from Chicago. Alitalia offered the best rate at the time they booked, but one disadvantage of foreign carriers is that they are more tolerant of smokers than American carriers. (Depending on your point of view, that could be an advantage, not a disadvantage.)

Getting Around: An Avis rent-a-car capable of carrying five passengers and luggage cost just under $1,000 for two weeks, but driving in Italy requires coglioni. Hindsight suggests that we might have enjoyed Sicily more if we had booked a standard tour by bus. If you do book a tour through your travel agent, don't select one that bypasses Agrigento. If you can find one that guarantees you a stay at the Villa Athena, you will feel double blessed.

Getting Money: The exchange rate during our trip was one U.S. dollar for roughly 1,500 lire, convenient since you won't spoil your trip by knowing how much it costs until the bill arrives from Visa or American Express. (If this makes you nervous, carry a pocket calculator.) Major hotels, restaurants, shops and gas stations accept American credit cards, but I was most excited when I realized I could walk up to any street bank machine and use my ATM card to claim 300,000 lire. As the Italians say non problema--until you arrive home and discover your account overdrawn.

Getting Dressed: Unless you are traveling mid-winter, or want to impress fellow tour members with a new outfit for dinner every night, pack light. Like most warm-weather countries outside British influence, dress is informal. Because of the dry climate, clothes washed at night in your hotel usually dry by morning. Running shoes can double as walking shoes, although I packed a second pair. Shirts and singlet are sufficient. While women sun-tanning topless on the beach are not considered indecent, a male running shirtless may attract whistles of disapproval.

Running Around: Finding places to run is a problem. Streets are narrow and cluttered with cars. On one trip, we stayed nearly a month in a small town named Fiuggi south of Rome, and I never saw a runner until one day I visited an untravelled side road and spotted half a dozen. Italians know the best areas to run, but you'll find them only by luck, or by knowing an Italian runner. Best advice is to relax, content that all the walking done from church to museum will keep you in shape until you can find the occasional convenient running area like Rome's Villa Borghesi.

Getting Fed: You may know how to eat spaghetti (twirling with your fork), but unless you've visited Italy before, you may not know that Italians eat pasta mainly as a prima (first plate) with meat or fish the secunda platta (second plate). Surround that with antipasto, salad and fruit, and a meal can last several hours. Usually, I skip around the menu, ordering a first plate at one meal, a second plate the next. Italian wines are light. When ordering water, you must differentiate between agua naturale and aqua minerale (the latter with bubbles). Continental breakfasts consist of little more than coffee and rolls, although major hotels sometimes offer more impressive spreads. Italian ice cream (gelati) served at sidewalk cafes can't be beat, but pizza is more snack than a meal and not as good as you'll find in Chicago. One of the great pleasures of visiting Italy is sitting at a sidewalk cafe, sipping a drink and watching everybody prance by. Nobody can prance like an Italian. They call it displaying la bella figura. It's the siren's song that keeps luring me back to Italy.

Copyright © 1996 by Hal Higdon. All rights reserved. Requests to reprint will be considered.

HAL HIGDON is a Senior Writer for Runner's World, and co-author with his wife of "FALCONARA: A Family Odyssey," available from Roadrunner Press for $16.50 (includes postage and handling) at RoadrunnerPress@halhigdon.com.