You Wanna Freak Out

“You wanna freak out? Hey, c’mon,” Jim James sings on the this song from My Morning Jacket’s 2011 Circuital, and on Tuesday my answer to that question would have been a resounding yes. 

But first we have to go back to a moment frozen in time where, oh, about 20,000 people were probably doing some freaking out of their own and for much more legitimate reasons than mine. 

I traveled from Rome down to Salerno on the Amalfi Coast. It was a choice between Salerno and Sorrento mainly because both had train stations and allowed me to reach anywhere in between by bus easily. (Hahaha you’ll get the joke later.) Salerno seemed to be the cheapest place, and I found a great Airbnb with yet another fantastic view of the sea so there I went. Because of travel follies on both days, I never really got to enjoy it. 

On Monday, I headed by train to Pompeii to visit the ruins of the ancient Roman town that was preserved in such a manner as to delight visitors nearly two millennia later, but as you likely know, that was only made possible by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the fall of 79. 

The view of the still-active volcano from the archaeological site is stunning, and even more so when you realize how much of it was blown away when it blew its top and sealed Pompeii in a time capsule for us to now explore. In the photo below, imagine the area between the two peaks filled in. That, my friends, is what the mountain would have looked like back then. Without the scientific knowledge we possess nowadays, it’s understandable why the ancients thought that only gods, angry at them for some transgression or giving them some sort of a sign, could do something that honestly is still quite unfathomable. 

I’m not even sure where to start with highlights of my visit. 

First off, the couple hours I allotted myself were not even close to enough, and I gave strong consideration to going back for a second day. If you go, plan at least half a day. If you really want to dive deep, spend the whole day inside the ancient city and take advantage of the food offerings they have inside the ticketed area. 

I’ll start broadly and say that you get a much greater appreciation for the ingenuity of the Romans than you do even at say the Forum in Rome. There are a couple high points in the town that allow you to look out and see the road network spread out in front of you, in a perfectly logical grid format. The main square is blocked off by three tall blocks to prevent chariots from entering, and there are even signs indicating that it is a pedestrian-only area. The roads are substantially lower than the level the buildings are at, and at intersections you find stepping stones that you could use to cross the street while also at a height at which chariots could pass over them. On a more micro scale concerning the roads, it’s also incredible to see the grooves in the large rocks that make up the thoroughfares, worn into place by the chariots rolling over them over and over, reminiscent of old wagon trails you can see out west in America. 

Nearly every building is preserved to the point where you don’t need to have a vivid imagination to picture the residents moving in and out of them, from homes to restaurants to baths, and some of them are substantially still in tact, even featuring the original frescoes decorating the walls. 

“In the doorway, spot the huge erection.”

THE WHAT I exclaimed in my head to the voice of Rick Steves in my ear. For a moment, I was looking for something built up… erected… denying to myself that he could mean *that* type of erection. 

“The penis and the balance symbolize…” 

OH MY DAYS I exclaimed internally once more, realizing he meant it exactly as I tried to not believe he meant it. 

And sure enough. There in the doorway it was. A huge erection indeed. The following content may not be suitable for all audiences. 

Wow. So yes, apparently the big penis and the money that is equal to its weight represent the supposed fact that if you have money and fertility, you will bear fruit, which you also see pictured. Uh-huh, okay then. 

But in all seriousness, the fact that the artwork — and the rest of the uh, rather graphic images that adorn other rooms in this house — still exist is incredible.

Other things I found to be amazing were the marble countertops in buildings that made up a restaurant row of sorts, the incredible mosaic tile  work in the tavern, and intricate details like the slots in the concrete where the accordion-style doors would have been. 

I only explored maybe a quarter of the town as it exists today, and I look forward to returning sometime to check out much more. 

To get to the site, it required a short bus ride from the train station which the train company sold as a bundle. It worked perfectly on the way there, but after leaving the gift shop with some… interesting gifts (including something special for devoted blog reader cousin Rod), the bus to go back to the station was nowhere to be found. I wandered around for a while to no avail and after asking a taxi driver how much it would cost and trying unsuccessfully to withdraw some cash, I decided to just hoof it. The station was only a mile away, and the only thing this really impacted would be my plan to enjoy the sunset from the terrace. 

The next day, however, would be prove to be much different. 

If you’ve been as an avid consumer of my journaling as Rod, you have no doubt noticed that I have developed an immense enjoyment of limoncello. That totally makes sense as I’ve always enjoyed lemons more than limes, so the limoncello spritz has surpassed the margarita as my cocktail of choice in just a matter of weeks. 

And so now we have the real motivation for my visit to the Amalfi Coast, the native home of the best liqueur known to man. 

I bought the bus ticket for the hour-long journey to Amalfi proper after finding a particular supposedly quite authentic retailer of the drink, and then somewhat enjoyed the longest rollercoaster ride of my life. Up and down, around sharp bend after sharp bend, with the bus having to honk its horn to indicate it’s coming around the impossibly tight corner to any car who may be on the other side, often clinging to a cliff hundreds of feet up with the rocky shore of the Mediterranean down below. 

The views were amazing, but I wasn’t prepared for all of the jostling about as the (hopefully) experienced driver pushed it to the limit, speeding up quickly whenever he could even if only for the briefest of moments. 

When we arrived in Amalfi, the shop I wanted to visit was closed, a harbinger of things to come persons. Thankfully there were plenty of others, and o found the cutest little hole in the wall with the sweetest older Italian lady who offered me a sample, and one sip was all I needed to know I wanted her limoncello. 

I took three bottles of it, one to enjoy while on the rest of this leg of the trip and two more that I shipped home (one as a gift for my dad and one for myself, of course), and then I wandered around through town briefly before heading back to the stop. 

The lady who sold me my ticket had warned me the last coach out of Amalfi would be at 16:00 because of carnival, so I was ready to get on board and head back well before. And yet none of the buses were showing they were going to Salerno. I waited another hour, thinking maybe she had given me bad information. No buses to Salerno. 

I started to feel the same dread that I had on the platform in the Cinque Terre earlier, but I was at least comforted by the fact that I could easily get a hotel in Amalfi if need be. The only problem with that is that I was leaving early the next morning to get to Venice, and the first bus back to Salerno would not get me there in time to get packed up and make the train. 

So I finally asked one of the other bus drivers how I could get to Salerno, and he told me to take the bus to Maiori, walk two kilometers to the next town, and take the bus from there. “It’s easy,” he said in his thick Italian accent. 

A quick glance on Google Maps made me skeptical. 

But I took the next bus to Maiori (which actually stopped in Minori), followed the crowd up the road along one of those aforementioned cliffs and then back down into town, emptying out into a fantastic scene of revelers, floats, bright lights, and loud music. I kept on walking through the crowd, taking in what I could but wanting at the same time to just get home. Though I did pause long enough to snap a couple great pictures using iPhone’s Night Mode. 

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At this point, I forgot the name of the stop, and it seemed like I had gone two kilometers so I waited after climbing back up to another curve along the now-dark road. I was at a stop but no buses were there and none came. Wearily I opened Google Maps after watching a few people walk past me, and there was another stop up the way, but it was straight uphill, around two more curves, and with no lights at all and the Mediterranean lashing out below. 

Nuh-uh. Not a chance. 

I tried to get a taxi and one accepted my ride… and he’d be there in 50 minutes from Naples! I had come to terms with a substantial cost, but not what that would’ve ended up being. 

I couldn’t help but laugh and then decided to just head back down into town. Surely there were folks from Salerno who had come from the party like the crowded bus-fulls I saw leave Amalfi, and SURELY they aren’t all going to walk up Everest to get the bus back. 

To my delight, I saw a group of folks with suitcases standing around near a parked bus, and I did something I never would do: I walked right up to them and asked where they were going. 

Amalfi. 

Well, great. Thanks. Glad I overcame my fear of talking to new people for that. 

Inside the parked bus sat a driver so I walked up it, knocked on the door, and asked him if he spoke English. He gave the universally-understood shrug of his shoulders and bounced his head from side to side so as to indicate a very little bit. 

“Salerno tonight?” I asked. 

“Uhh … si (that one I knew) … uh … 7 (oh good!) … uh … [mumbles and holds up four fingers].”

What? Seven four? Seven forty? What do you mean? Oh it doesn’t matter, don’t ask. Just find out where. 

“Where?” I inquired, obeying the voice in my head. 

“Here.”

OH THANKS BE TO APOLLO! Or whoever is the Roman god of travel. 

I went and sat down for a bit, wandered back into the festivities for a while, and shortly after 19:00 I went back to the place I had found the bus, and I saw the most glorious sight in lights I’ve ever seen. 

S A L E R N O

It was honestly the sexiest thing I have ever seen. Yes… sexy. So, so pretty. 

And so I climbed on board, limoncello somehow not yet consumed in tow, and sighed the biggest sigh of my life. And then I smiled. 

Sure, seeing the huge erection in Pompeii was cool, but this is the night I’ll still be talking about years from now. 

“You remember that time I got stuck in the middle of carnival in some random small Italian town and almost climbed a mountain in the dark to get home?” I’ll ask in my most southern accent (because all of my grandest tales are told in that accent). 

I almost broke a couple times, but really it wasn’t that serious of a situation. I could have gotten a room. I could have found a later train to Venice. It all would have worked out fine. Deep down I did know this, and so I didn’t have as much as a freakout as pre-adventure Taylor would have. 

It might seem to be in insignificant ways, but when all combined, during these nearly two-months so far, I think I have changed more than I actually know. I came looking for one thing (and nothing both at the same time), and yet this journey is giving me things I didn’t (and to some extent did) know I needed. 

But all that being said, I am very much looking forward to not growing at all and just relaxing on a lovely ride along the canals in Venice. 

If you ask me, I earned it.