Amalfi Adventures (Part 1): Caserta Palace Gardens

Greetings from the beautiful (but rainy) Amalfi Coast!  

View From Our Rental Apt (before the rain came in!)

As I write this, I'm sitting at the kitchen table in our rental apartment and sipping on some vanilla tea (which I successfully asked for in my broken Italian at the market!) while taking in the views across the Bay of Naples to Mount Vesuvius. Seriously, if I were a superhero, my (lame but very useful) super power would be my ability to find awesome accommodations at ridiculously reasonable prices.  The way I pulled this one off was by planning our trip for the most off of off seasons (November is generally the rainiest month in Italy), but the views from  our apartment are so great that I would seriously be content just to hole up here for the next four days if necessary.  Fortunately, though, we've already seen some pretty cool stuff, and with any luck, we'll still get to do some more exploring.  

Rome (A) to Caserta (B) to the Amalfi Coast (C)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, the Amalfi Coast is a peninsular region in southern Italy, a bit south of Naples (and about 180 miles south of Rome).  Actually, neither of us had even ever heard of the Amalfi Coast until after we started telling friends and acquaintances about our upcoming move to Italy.  Once we did, though, we were told on several occasions that we absolutely had to come here, and, after plugging "Amalfi" into Google Images, we couldn't have agreed more.  Tom also had a couple museums and sites in the general area that he needed to see, and so that gave us extra justification to come down here and spend a few days.  

Our "To-Do" list for this trip includes a visit to the Palace of Caserta gardens (which we did yesterday), trips to Pompei and/or Herculaneum (hopefully to be featured in a future blog post), and exploring various towns along the Amali Coast (rain or shine).  Also, as I write this, Tom is at the Naples National Archaeological Museum checking out some Latin inscriptions (but since this is a rather technical subject, I elected to hang out here instead).  

View of Palace of Caserta From the Gardens

In any case, I wanted to use this post to share with you a bit about our visit to the Palace of Caserta gardens yesterday, which has to be one of the coolest places I've ever been.  Okay, I realize I've been using that term a bit loosely lately, but they were at least the coolest gardens I've ever seen! Once again, we had never heard of Caserta before seeing pictures on Facebook that one of Tom's friends had posted of the Palace.  Once we realized it was so close to Amalfi, we made plans to fit it into our trip!   

So, I suppose you're wondering what exactly this Palace is, right?  Basically, Italy didn't become a country until 1861, and so before that time various regions were ruled by different dictators.  The Palace in Caserta was built in the mid 1700s, and served as home of the King of Naples.  (After visiting the Gardens, Tom now very much pines for this job.)  Today you can tour both the outside gardens and various indoor apartments, although we elected to just visit the gardens. 

Looking Down the Length of the Gardens (the strip that looks like
mowed grass in the hill is the fairly dry waterfall!)

To say that the gardens are big is quite the understatement.  However, they're designed in such a visually interesting way, that you're really able to take it all in with one glance.  In total, the length is something like 1.5 miles, but when we arrived Tom was sure we'd be down and back in about 20 minutes.  (Despite my lack of depth perception, I was skeptical of his assessment.)  Part of what makes the distance misleading, though, is the fact that from a distance the various structures in the gardens fit together to create the illusion that they are all part of one monument instead of various fountains, pools, and green space.  If you can believe it, there had once been plans to stretch the gardens out another 20+ miles in the other direction all the way to Naples, but this goal was never realized.   

Fountain at End of First Section

Basically, the gardens span from the Palace on one end to a waterfall on the other, and are divided into three main parts.  First, there's a large grassy square area that probably consists of several city blocks.  At the end of that area, there is a cute little fountain surrounded by lush foliage.

After that point, the gardens narrow dramatically- perhaps to just one city block.  The second section contains various little pools, which are full of fish and often adorned with sculpture.  This section ends with a large fountain containing many sculptures.

The final section of the gardens contains a series of small waterfalls/pools leading up to the large waterfall running down the hill (which, unfortunately was fairly dry this late into the fall), and lots of small water falls. The pool at the bottom of the last fall also has elaborate sculptures representing the myth of the goddess Diana turning Actaeon into a deer.  (As Tom tells it, Actaeon, a hunter, was out in the woods with his hunting dogs when he accidentally stumbled upon Diana bathing naked.  Diana then changed him into a deer, and so he was then killed by his own dogs- rather rough punishment for an accident if you ask me, but perhaps there's more to the story).  

I'm sure the gardens would have been even more spectacular with more water running down the falls, but I think you'll agree that, even without it, it's pretty darn cool looking!

Tom Enjoying the Gardens (looking back toward the Palace)

In the Second Section  (looking toward the waterfall

Fountain at End of Second Section

Third Section (there was a little bit of water running down those falls)

At the End (looking back toward the Palace)

Waterfall with Diana and Actaeon Sculptures

Successful 10 Second Timer Shot

One of the Inner-Courtyards of the Palace

During this time of year, there weren't many tourists in Caserta, but there were a surprising number of local runners taking advantage of the long stretch of green space.  As you might imagine, I was pretty jealous of their running route, and am even more jealous after attempting (and failing miserably) to go for a long run today near our apartment (not only were there no paths, but I was constantly gawked at.  I might as well have been walking down the street wearing a giant chicken costume-- clearly no one runs down here!!).

Well, I'm off to work on dinner (our kitchen has an immersion blender so I couldn't resist the idea of making some creamy soup), but I look forward to sharing more of our trip with you all very soon.

Alla Prossima,
Erin

--------
Fri. Nov. 16:  Highs in the mid 60s and cloudy/rainy (although it was nice and sunny when we were in Caserta!