Back from Holiday
Jul. 29th, 2005 08:37 amWe're back from Ischia where we rented a small apartment in a residence that I thought was close to the sea, but in reality wasn't all that far from the sea in the horizontal, but quite a bit in the vertical.
Most of the days we went not to the close-by beach of "Citara" which has sand that does not allow the building of castles (a mission critical requirement), but to the beach of "Chiaia" close to Forio. Sometimes the water was a little dirty with algea, but most of the time it was ok. The sand was good to make castles and stuff. One day we went to the beach of San Francesco which is smaller and had cleaner water, but a lot of rocks.
Away from the beach we went to Il castello Aragonese which was nice and La Mortella gardens which was much nicer still. City wise, Forio is nice and buzzy, Casamicciola Terme is boring and depressing, Lacco Ameno is a very pretty and accessible town and Ischia Porto (notice the volcanic lake they connected to the sea to have create a harbour) is also nice but a bit tacky.
The buses on Ischia are very frequent (at least in the day) and some have nice screens indicating present location and the next 3 stops. A 14 day abbonement only costed 22€ which I consider a bargain. The alternative mode of transportation are Piaggo Ape's and Vespa's.
All in all it was a nice trip: cheap cooled wine, swimming with the little one and general hanging out; the only issues we had was the vertical distance of our place to the sea and the city life and the mosquito's which were very eager to bite and too small to detect and destroy. Bring DEET.
Most of the days we went not to the close-by beach of "Citara" which has sand that does not allow the building of castles (a mission critical requirement), but to the beach of "Chiaia" close to Forio. Sometimes the water was a little dirty with algea, but most of the time it was ok. The sand was good to make castles and stuff. One day we went to the beach of San Francesco which is smaller and had cleaner water, but a lot of rocks.
Away from the beach we went to Il castello Aragonese which was nice and La Mortella gardens which was much nicer still. City wise, Forio is nice and buzzy, Casamicciola Terme is boring and depressing, Lacco Ameno is a very pretty and accessible town and Ischia Porto (notice the volcanic lake they connected to the sea to have create a harbour) is also nice but a bit tacky.
The buses on Ischia are very frequent (at least in the day) and some have nice screens indicating present location and the next 3 stops. A 14 day abbonement only costed 22€ which I consider a bargain. The alternative mode of transportation are Piaggo Ape's and Vespa's.
All in all it was a nice trip: cheap cooled wine, swimming with the little one and general hanging out; the only issues we had was the vertical distance of our place to the sea and the city life and the mosquito's which were very eager to bite and too small to detect and destroy. Bring DEET.