San Cassiano: Farming in Italy!

Hi there, it’s Laurika!

I’m excited to be making an extended guest appearance on the blog, and also to tell you about our first week traveling together in Italy! Ray and I met up at our hostel in Rome and spent the evening wandering around and taking in the sights. 

It’s true what they say - that you can’t turn a corner in Rome without bumping into some sort of ancient archeological treasure. And look what we found!

The beautiful Trevi Fountain - it's built into the wall of a palace and powered by an ancient aqueduct

The next morning we departed for San Cassiano farm. For those who don’t know, Ray and I decided to spend our first few weeks in Italy working on a farm through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farmers). The program matches up organic farms around the world with travelers (or WWOOFers) who work on the farm in exchange for free room and board. Our farm is called San Cassiano and is located in the small town of San Potito Sannitico, about 45 minutes from Naples.

The journey to San Cassiano started out with us sprinting through the streets of Rome in the rain with all of our luggage, and just barely making our train. In the course of all this we met our first friend in Italy, Maurizio, who turns out to be a tour guide in Rome, but was on his way home to visit his parents in the small town where we were going to make our bus connection. After discovering that our bus wouldn’t arrive for another hour and a half he invited us over to his parents’ house for lunch! The food was delicious, his family was incredibly nice and we can’t wait to link up with Mauritzio again when we return to Rome and hopefully take one of his tours!

We have really been enjoying our stay at San Cassiano. The farm is a small family operation: they grow wheat, barley, various other fruits and vegetables, make wine, olive oil and have a small number of animals. Most of it is for their own consumption, but they also run a restaurant and have WWOOFers and other agrotourism guests coming in and out throughout the year.

The farm is run by the mother and head cook Rosanna, her two sons Vittorio and Andrea, Andrea's girlfriend Valentina, and their adorable 3-month old baby girl named Ginebra. There are also 2 other WWOOFers here from Maine, Dillon and Katie. The food here is fantastic and I’m hoping that after a while they’ll let me help out with the cooking, although Rosanna runs a very tight ship and is constantly correcting us about how things should be done (“The coffee makers get rinsed, but never with soap!” “Bread should be toasted over the hot embers, not the open flame!”). In addition to Rosanna’s cooking, Andrea used to work as a chef in Spain, which has meant that we speak to him mostly in Spanish, to each other in English, and to Rosanna through a mixture of gestures and the few Italian words we know - its been a multilingual experience, to say the least.

The awesome paintings on the guest house, where we stay

What do we do all day on the farm?

Mostly chop, stack and bundle wood

Our favorite night so far has been pizza night, which unbeknownst to us turned out to be a huge party!

Playing Napolitani cards

The oven - our chopped wood was put to good use!

Chowing down on some delicious pizza!

We spent this weekend hiking around and exploring the nearby mountain towns. We’re excited to see more of this beautiful countryside in the next 2 weeks before we leave the farm and head to Naples.

Ciao a tutti!

Laurika (and Ray)

FLORENCE - Definitely not in Egypt anymore.

Ray here.  Sadly, I had to say arrivederci to my family in the Rome airport so from now on I'll be posting without them.  It feels strange to think that I won't re-Unite with Dave until I go out to Washington for his graduation in May.  But I'm sure he'll keep us informed with blog posts about kombucha and maybe the rest of his life as well, if we're lucky.  Anyway I left the airport and somehow found a train to Firenze. 

Italy!

Florence’s famous Duomo.

Not surprisingly, I found Italy very different from Egypt.  Most noticeably, everyone here is white.  Since I too am white, this means that no one comes up to me on the street and tries to sell me things.

But there were similarities.  Italy and Egypt both have awesome markets.  

Mercato Centrale. I bought dried kiwi.

And ancient ruins.

Roman Theater at Fiesole.

Exploring ruins in the rain with new friends, Meg from Minnesota (!) and David from Paris.

Proof that I was here and didn’t just steal these photos from the internet.

Love and the Ponte Vecchio

View From the top of the Duomo

View #2, a sliver of sun!

This is the low-season for tourism because it is colder and rainier.  But the tradeoff is there were no lines; sometimes we would have world-famous tourist destinations to ourselves.

One of the best things about Florence was the sites I’d stumble upon by accident

All roads lead to the Duomo...and then to Rome!

The Baptistery of San Giovanni

Apparently, this city is really into its art.  I took some in for good measure.  Check these two contrasting depictions of hell.  Personally I prefer the man-eating monster.

Fresco on the ceiling of the Duomo

Mosaic on the ceiling of the San Giovanni Baptistery

Now that I have checked Florence off my list, I head to Rome to rendezvous with my friend Laurika before heading to the Naples area to work on an organic farm.  Ciao!

Sinai and Goodbye

The final chapter of our Egypt saga takes place on the Sinai Peninsula.  To make Dave happy after his whining about the beach in his Cairo post, we booked a resort hotel in the touristy town of Dahab—something we’ve literally never done before as a family.  

Our hotel view. Okay, not bad.

The idea was to relax and for the first 48 hours, we did just that.  

While Mom and Dave did this...

Followed by this...

I did this...

And saw this! Also not bad.

But by day two we were ready for an epic adventure.  And in Egypt, these are very easy to come by. 

Naturally, when people come to the Sinai Peninsula, they wonder about its eponymous mountain.  You know, the one that Moses climbed?  At the summit, he communicated with God and received…hmmm…either the 10 Commandments or the Bill of Rights…I, like much of America, keep getting them confused.  

Dahab’s promenade with its enticing mountains in the background. 

So we asked our hotel concierge, what about Mt. Sinai, can we go there?  Oh no, he said.  After recent “incidents” our hotel no longer organizes trips.  

Interesting…

Luckily the travel agencies in town didn’t seem to worried about these incidents.  They were more than happy to take our money and plan a trip for us. As we prepared for the excursion the next morning, a different hotel employee told us “Mt. Sinai, there’s ice up there!”   Well the McGaughey-Huntington Clan has never been intimidated by a little ice.  

We hopped in a microbus, speeding up vacant highways towards the center of the peninsula. As we gained altitude, the air thinned and the temperature dropped.  We received clearance from military checkpoint after checkpoint.  Bare mountains towered over us like skyscrapers as we passed miniscule Bedouin villages.

The road less traveled...

A shepherd keeping watch over his flock…very apt.

Just to be even more cliché… there were actually unmanned camels roaming around in the desert

Dave is forced to remove his Babushka scarf and wrap it around his body for warmth.  Note the SNOW in the background…

Presently we arrived at the St. Katherine Monastery, one of the world’s oldest Christian institutions.  It was built in the 6^th century around an even older chapel that marked the place of Moses’ Burning Bush.  Today there is actually is a bush here that might be a “descendent” of this scriptural shrubbery.  Sounds tenuous, but it sure helps to sell postcards.

4^th most famous Bush.  After the two Georges and the British 90’s band.

Dad passes the St. Katherine Monastery as we begin our climb of Sinai.

The path up Mt. Sinai begins in St. Katherine’s backyard.  Our guide Mohammad (I would estimate that half of the people in Egypt have this name) pointed to the approaching clouds and said “rain.”  But I think he too, like the hotel receptionist, didn’t know the word for snow.

Uh oh...

Dave returns to Babushka mode, this time with a Mexican poncho as a twist.

Soon the flurries began to fall and the wind picked up. How could I scuba dive by a coral reef one day and hike through a snowstorm the next? 

Sadly as we neared the top—a rugged section of some 700 steps—our guide informed us that the final leg was now closed due to snow.  Why didn’t he inform us when we hired him?  Probably because that would be terrible for business.  But he did invite us into a nearby hut/tent for some oregano Bedouin tea and crackers.

It seems this colorful tent is as close as this family will get to the summit of this legendary mountain

Ray and Mom on the way down as the sun peaks out for a few seconds…

Safely back at the hotel, we rendezvoused with our new friends, Jess, Jonathan and Anne from England.  In just a few days we became close with this family even got to enjoy a snorkeling escapade with them out on the Red Sea.  Jess works in the art world and lived in New York all fall, perhaps our family’s paths will cross again!  

It turns out Jess, like Dave, likes to dress up in giant scarves.  Since they are both practical people, here they have chosen to assemble here at an official Hotel Assembly Point. 

All travels must end at some point and work and school commitments finally called us back home.  At our layover in Rome, I parted ways with my family in order to go explore Italy.  What a trip Egypt was!  And yet, as with all travels, we are leaving unfulfilled, knowing that there is still so much more to see in this diverse country.  

Brothers Unite! To raise one eyebrow each.

Until next time, Egypt!