Day 31 - Thar She Blows - Ain't nothing happening

My coffee date with Cristian turned out to be a nice conversation about Cristian and how he came to own his property, what he planned to do with it and how hard he's working to keep it.

I spent part of the morning buying a few trinkets to bring back. Not sure just how much or what I'd be able to load into my suitcases. Breakage is the sticking point and pretty much all they have in the way of souvenirs are food stuffs and ceramics.

But I got some done, figured I'd get more in Sorrento, Pompeii and Rome once I see how my bags looked packed and how much they weighed.

I met Cristian at 11 and we went around the corner to a cafe and set outside on yet another gorgeous day. Temps in the mid 60's with far less clouds this afternoon than yesterday.

Cristian had a coffee (expresso) and I had a coke and he explained to me that while he'd like to travel, he's got financial obligations in terms of the house that he needs to pay and so work comes first.  The guy's got big plans, I'll say that for him. He'd like to buy the lot next door, which has a very run down house on it, tear that out, put two apartments and a pool in. He figures that with that rental income stream things will go well for him and the family.

We chatted a bit more about the drainage problem that you saw in Tuesday's videos. While it's the cities responsibility to fix it, Cristian thinks that they won't do anything so he'll have to pay. Evidently this happened a year ago as well and Cristian doesn't want a repeat for fear of an accident on the highway below. I can testify to the amount of mud that ended up on the highway. It finally got cleaned up by the next morning, but cars were coming to a screeching halt to drive over the mound of mud on the road.

Speaking of that mud, I took this picture from downtown of all the sediment that washed out into the ocean on Tuesday, it still hadn't settled in yet.

A lot of work going on here in the last couple days. Shops and restaurants getting ready for the season. Cristian says that the last two weeks in April are big for Italians visiting. Evidently the Italians get two weeks off for Easter so they spend a week vacationing and a week preparing for summer.

Cristian went back to work, I went up the hill to get some sun and that's been pretty much the day.

Oh and Stromboli is passing some gas today.

 

 It's hard to see, a least on my little netbook, but that cloud is actually a steam plume.

(Here's a video that I added after posting.)

I googled Stromboli and found out that there are 3 villages on that volcano. Why anyone would want to live there is besides me. Cristian says that boats leave here during the season for sunset and night cruises to Stromboli and that it's really beautiful seeing some of the vents erupting. Lava surfing. Yeah!!

Hope the weather holds for one more walk around town tomorrow. Am going to say goodbye to the nice folks who've been so kind to me for the past month and I'll share some pictures of them with you tomorrow.

Dinner at Eduardo's pizza heaven tomorrow night then up early on Saturday to head to Sorrento.

Ciao.