Bill-on-the-Hill

This was the day when, by way of our choice of excursions, we surely convinced our British traveling companions, D and Z, that Americans, or at least the ones from small towns in the Southwest, are a little ... odd. Well, we probably are, but there's a reason for what we did. Read on ...

Before getting to the outing, one minor warning about Stromboli. While it's a marvelous place, you're pretty much a captive audience while you're there, and the locals, to whom tourism is the only significant source of revenue, know it. This, combined with the fact that facilities for the visitor are still fairly rustic, means that you can sometimes be put in a position of having to pay an arm and a leg for relatively routine services. That caught up to us today, when we tried to get some laundry done while we were out enjoying ourselves. We'd packed light for this trip, and between the normal perspiration, etc., that accumulated on our frequently-reworn clothes and the distinctly odorous "atmosphere" of Vulcano, by today we'd reduced all of our apparel to evil-smelling masses that really needed washing. The (otherwise excellent and well-appointed) Hotel Villaggio didn't have laundry services themselves, but knew someone in town, a cheerful Australian expat whose niece was a manager at the hotel, who could do it for us. And so she did, and we appreciated it -- but it cost. Haven't paid that much for laundry since my last extended stay in a grossly overpriced business hotel in Washington, which is not a flattering comparison. If you travel to Stromboli, try to find a way not to need clothes washed until you leave the island. (OTOH, if you must get it done there and are staying at the Villaggio, the proprietress' auntie is probably as good for it as anyone, and she's a very nice lady.)

So back to the itinerary ... You'll recall that we had already done both the first and the third day's outings for a usual Volcano Discovery trip, but couldn't do the second day's outing (the featured climb to the crater of Stromboli) because of the abnormally restless state of the eruption. The consensus was that it really wasn't worth the effort to hike back up to the 400-meter platform, so Marco came up with a non-volcanic alternative: a trip to the nearby island of Panarea. Panarea is an "upper-end" resort island by Aeolian standards, with nice beaches, sailing, etc., but we were there for something altogether different, the explanation of which requires first revealing a bit about our traveling companion WGMIL, the World's Greatest Mother-In-Law.

Remember that I gave "Friends of Bandelier" as yesterday's Web Site du Jour? Well, WGMIL is the founder of this group, probably knows as much about Bandelier National Monument as just about anyone alive, and even has a ruin(!) in the park named for her. She is a serious authority on the natural history of northern New Mexico, where we live, with several books on the area to her credit. When she -- and the rest of us, who've joined her in many of her New-Mexico-natural-history capers -- heard that there was an unexcavated Bronze Age ruin on Panarea, the chance to compare that to the Puebloan ruins of our own home just seemed like something we couldn't pass up. Marco made the arrangements, and we roared off on the hydrofoil to Panarea for the easy (at least compared to climbing the volcanoes) hike out to the ruin. It's scenically located on a promontory, largely unexcavated and very sparsely visited. A couple of pictures:

Panarea ruins WGMIL and Marco

(Incidentally, our British friends D and Z thought we were mildly insane for wasting a day in the Aeolians going to a place like this. They're probably right on principle; we really are nuts. However, they also turned out to have a perfectly good reason for this view rooted in their own experience, because as we would learn later, they've been to many of the world's great archaeological sites -- which this one isn't -- and D has even made a few archaeological discoveries of his own. Anyway, we did drag them along.)

After walking back to town, we took the hydrofoil back to Stromboli for a dinner celebrating our last night in the Aeolians -- and this was special. Let me recommend a restaurant that Marco had found on previous trips: Trattoria Ai Gechi, perched on a hillside above the center of Stromboli village. Words alone can't do justice to the dinner we had that night. The proprietor had managed to snag a good-sized tuna from the fish market, and not only did he turn it into a tremendous main course for a mob, it also contributed to appetizers that those of us who partook unanimously proclaimed the best way to prepare tuna that they'd ever experienced. (Philistine that I am, I settled for pasta with sepia ink, something I hadn't had before -- but you know what? I think I had the best appetizer at the table.) If you're hungry, stop reading now, because I'm about to show a photo of the main course that will leave your stomach growling, if not demanding something similar:

No faces, just fish

And so, sated, back to the Villaggio for one last night in the islands. No Web Site du Jour today; the one that's coming tomorrow will be interesting enough for two days, however...