Evening
When I got back to my room last night I decided to check into my question about why the Costa Concordia was so close to the shore. Not only wasn't it supposed to be that close, it wasn't even supposed to be there. For reasons that apparently still remain obscure, when the ship sailed from Rome a few hours before, its routing was changed. Instead of going its familiar route up the west side of Giglio, it was given a sudden change that sent it up the east side. The large cruise liners never go up this side of the island. While the captain's behavior after the ship ran aground is inexcusable, some of the fault must lie with the company or whoever it was that changed the orders at the last minute.
Two things to consider in light of this: First, can anyone possibly imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and find a beached mega cruise ship in your front yard, especially given that you would not be used to seeing one in those waters under any circumstances? Second, (and this comes from the perspective of someone who has now been there) the captain deserted the ship as soon as it went aground. It's well documented that he immediately called for a cab. Where in God's name was he expecting to take this? The town is three blocks long and, not to put too fine a point on this, it's an island! And a damned tiny one at that.
But that was last night. This morning I got up with the intention of getting the train ticket to Montevarchi tomorrow then heading off to Porto Santo Stefano. I wound up waking around 6:30 so went online to check my email. There was one from Jack telling me how a screening of the Haiti doc trailer went at Kartemquin the night before last. Apparently it went well enough for us to consider some changes in our funding strategy. I decided to get some breakfast and respond before heading off to the train station.
The breakfast music this morning was the same Beatles CD followed immediately by Van Morrison. My guess is that these are on a loop that starts at the same time each morning since "Yellow Submarine" came on at the exact same point in my breakfast as it did yesterday. There were no large American women to sway to it this morning, but I did notice a pleasant German couple who were on the same bus as mine yesterday afternoon. We smiled a good morning to each other.
I finished up an email to Jack then headed off to the train station. My plan was to get my ticket for tomorrow then take the bus from the station to Porto Santo Stefano.
A note on Italian buses: They are not like any other buses in the world. To begin with, they are incredibly small. I got an eight-seater on the way to the station and a whopping sixteen-seater on the way back. Rome and Milan are the only two Italian cities that have what we might consider normal-sized buses. Even in a city the size of Florence, they make do with these Matchbox toys. They are also preternaturally flimsy, feeling more like a tin box than a legal street vehicle. Worst of all, they have zero suspension. The result is that attempting to move around on one of these while the bus is in motion is as disorienting as walking in zero gravity. No one, not even the Italians, have ever quite figured out how to keep their balance in one of these crates. And it doesn't help that the seats are made of very slippery plastic. It is not abnormal to see one or two people slide out of their seat on a tight corner.
I managed to keep both my balance and my seat - barely - for the short hop to the train station. When I got there, I discovered that the ticket window was closed. The sign assured me that it was open, but the metal drop door and the locked chain in front of this spoke to a different reality. This meant using the ticket vending machines. Normally this is fine, but today the two machines kept freezing up at the same point. It wound up taking ten minutes to do something that should easily have been done in two.
I went out front to wait for the bus. After a few minutes, the bus to Porto Ercole showed up. According to the sign, the next one to Porto Santo Stefano wouldn't be coming for another twenty minutes. What the hell, I thought. I'd been to Porto Santo Stefano yesterday and the Porto Ercole bus was already here. I made the executive decision to head to Porto Ercole and got on the bus.
The bus bounced and rattled back into Orbetello. It stopped in front of my hotel where the German couple got on. We smiled to each other then braced ourselves for the ten minute roller coaster ride to Porto Ercole on the east side of Monte Argentario.
Like Porto Santo Stefano on the other side of the island, Porto Ercole is a C-shaped sheltered harbor for fishing boats and personal craft. Part of the sheltering comes from the mountains that surround it on all three sides, but a more practical sheltering comes from the massive castles that top the cliffs on either side of the marina. Both appear as though they were carved directly from the promontory of each. Most of the town's buildings rest along the base of the mountains rather than the Italian custom of scaling their cities directly into the slope. Certainly there are buildings crawling up the sides, but the overall feeling is more ground-level than elevated.
We took the bus to the turnaround point about halfway up the southern slope. This afforded a nice view of the city, but unfortunately the sky was quite overcast. Once again, weather.com promised sunny skies and a 10% chance of rain. Once again, the Italian weather gods laughed. The problem with this kind of climate is that the lighting is very dingy so photos never quite come out as well as one would wish. My solution is to look for colors and concentrate on these. And avoid shooting the sky unless it looks interesting (as in threatening).
I walked down a long decline to marina level. At the base of this walkway sits a small shipyard where the workmen were fixing up two dry-docked pleasure craft. I wanted to shoot some people so I looked around for interesting faces. I saw a couple sitting on a bench so took up position on an opposing bench. It was the German couple. We caught each others' eye. We didn't have a common language so all we could do was shrug and laugh.
I went for a walk along the boardwalk. Porto Ercole is a quiet town. I doubt that it is much of a tourist destination. There is a decided lack of souvenir shops and overpriced coffee bars. It feels very much like a place where real people live and work.
At the far end of the boardwalk is a small merry-go-round with various little amusements for kids. What I liked about it was the chutzpah of it. As everyone must know, Disney does not take kindly to copyright infringement. This little park skirts the issue by changing the names just enough to keep Disney from suing. The Jungle Book becomes The Jungle Boat, the Magic Kingdom is now the Magical Kingdom, and Captain Nemo is here miraculously transformed into Captain Neptune.
Once I reached the end of the marina I sat for a good long while next to an Italian woman who was engaged in an intense conversation on her cellphone. I simply used it as an opportunity to listen and attempt a translation. I'm getting to that point in the trip where I'm anxious to start using what little Italian I have.
I debated for awhile about ascending the southern slope and going into the fortezza. There was no signage for it so I didn't even know if it was open. God knows that I would hate to go up that mountain on foot and find out that it was closed.
After a long meander around the marina I reached the incline that leads up to the bus stop. As I started to walk up, I spotted the German couple coming down. They had a map. We greeted each other. He was brandishing the map while she was telling me in an extremely halting combination of Italian, German and English, that they had found the turistico office and were told that the fortezza was open. I somehow conveyed the question, "Did you go up?" As soon as they both processed what I was asking, they shook their heads. "No," he said, "scala." He then made a sharp incline of his arm to demonstrate that the scala, the staircase, was too steep for them.
For reasons best left unexplored, I did not take this as a warning. I decided to go for it. I finished the walk up the ramp and went past the bus stop by about 100 feet and saw the staircase. I started to climb.
The first 150 or so steps were fine. It was a stone staircase with fairly even tread and a consistent height from step to step. It was also one of those staircases that twist around so that you always think that you can see the top but are invariably fooled.
After the second turn, the staircase began to get a little uneven. This is to say that now the heights of each step varied from one to the next by several inches. Some steps were as little as three inches high while others as high as ten. And there was no rhyme or reason to the placement. I started to get very winded and twice had to stop. Still, I went forward. After this obstacle course came a new one. Now, the walkway was raked with each step a few inches high but several feet long. Just as before, it was impossible to establish a rhythm because there was no rhyme or reason to the depths of each step.
I had certainly gone too far to turn back. Every so often there would be a clearing and I could see that the view from the fortezza would be spectacular if I could just survive the trek to see it.
Finally, huffing and puffing like the Little Engine That Could, I rounded a corner and saw the iron gate to the castle. What really stood out was the little red and white sign with black letters. It read, "Vietato Accesso." That's Italian for "do not enter." The gate was padlocked. And the walls were too high to get a look at the vista.
I wish I could say that I was unhappy or disappointed or even mad. At that moment, I was just impressed to have survived the climb.
The trip down was almost as bad as the trip up, but it got easier once I was past the two sets of uneven tread. By the time I hit the bottom, I was ready to go back. I walked over to the bus stop and plopped down on one of the stone benches. The next bus wasn't due for another fifty minutes, but I was fine with that. I could use the break.
When the bus finally did come I poured myself into seat and hung on. We stopped at the bottom of the hill and picked up several passengers. Just as we were about to start up, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the German couple. I took the opportunity to show them a photo I had surreptitiously taken of them when we were facing each other on the benches. This seemed to tickle them. They howled over it for several seconds.
A few minutes later, the bus dropped us off at our hotel. I went in while the German couple took off on a walk. I went up to my room and Skyped with Bridget for a while then did a little writing. At some point, I realized that it was 5:30 and I hadn't eaten since a very early breakfast. I decided to go to a place whose sign declaring it "an English Pub" caught my attention two days ago. I have, after all, eaten enough Italian food in the past few days to crave something a little different.
I walked the three blocks down the street to the sign. I was hoping that they served food just like any other "English pub." After all, there is nothing else in this neighborhood that even remotely resembles a place where one could get something to eat.
I should have started out by hoping that they actually existed.
When I got to the sign I noticed an arrow pointing across the street. There was an alley and, at the end of this, another arrow pointing down another alley. When I turned that corner, I could see nothing but the backend of an apartment building, two big dumpsters, and a one-eyed cat tied to a stake.
After another block or two, I found a little pizzeria where I could get a ham calzone. I followed this with a selection of small sweets from the bakery next door,
And, oh yeah, on the way home? I ran into the German couple.
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