May 25
For some reason I’m awake in the middle of the night (how irritating; not jetlag, just awake) so I thought I’d tell you what we did yesterday. Still can’t upload pictures but I’ll catch up with those later.
The drive from Gaeta to the Abbey at Monte Cassino was uneventful so we got there early enough to beat most of the tourist busses. We’re finding that this is a great time to visit Italy, at least so far. Other than a few spots in Rome, we really haven’t dealt much with crowds.
Anyway, the Abbey was amazing. It was first built in the early 6th century by St. Benedict and was the first house of the Benedictine order. It was sacked by invaders several times but managed to survive, at least until 1944. In an attempt to break the German Gustav Line, the Abbey was bombed. The Allies thought it was a German observation post (it wasn’t) and not only were 230 civilians killed, but the Abbey was totally destroyed. It so sad that what had stood for almost 1400 years was destroyed in only 3 hours. Luckily, the artwork, archives and library had already been moved to safety. The Abbey was rebuilt after the war.
The museum was incredible. Not only did we see the usual works of art, but there were also pieces of the original building. We’ve got some great pictures that we’ll upload as soon as we can. Our host is coming tomorrow (well actually today) to see if he can fix the internet. I was going to just reset the router but couldn’t find it.
After the Abbey we drove a short distance to the Polish Cemetery. It was a large group of Polish soldiers attached to the British Army that finally broke through the Gustav Line on 25 May 1944 (exactly 75 years to the day of our visit). Over 1000 of them were killed so there is a very nice Polish Military Cemetery near the Abbey.
Then it was back in the car for the hour drive to the Palace of Caserta which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was the home of the kings of Italy and is one of the largest palaces in the world. As European palaces go it’s fairly new, constructed in the mid-18th century. Not only did we visit the palace, but we took the shuttle the 2 miles through the park to the gardens. While the Palace itself wasn’t very crowded, the gardens had about a million school kids. Well, probably not, but it seemed like it…. they were everywhere.
While at the gardens we enjoyed lunch before heading back to the Palace. By this time, we had walked almost 15,000 steps and were exhausted so we decided to head to our flat.
Our host met us with his girlfriend, who speaks a little English. Between her English and our Italian, we were able to communicate without too much difficulty. The apartment is beautiful, only about a 15-minute walk from the train station which we’ll use on Sunday for a day trip into Naples. The flat has a washer but no dryer. Since we’re pretty much out of clean underwear, we did a load before going out to get groceries. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy, humid day and nothing dried well out on the line. So, we have underwear hanging all over the house. Hopefully some of it will be dry in the morning.
Speaking of morning, it’s now about 3:30am and I’m going to try to go back to sleep as we have a lot of walking to do today. Hopefully Daniele can get the internet working a little better so I can upload pictures. Talk with you again soon.