We are in the middle of several days of nasty weather here in Southern Italy. What a perfect day to update my blog, right?  However, we did have an absolutely fabulous ,fall day last Monday and I am so glad we were able to take advantage of it.

      I had read about a tour near where we are currently living.  The tour is of a tunnel that runs through a nearby hill.  When I read about this tour I learned that the tunnel is not always open and it can be hard to reach anyone who has access to it.  So, I decided it would be best to just walk down to see if we could get into the tour; since we needed to get out and exercise anyway, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go check it out.  When we got there, we were told we had to have a reservation (prenotazione). So I wrote down the number to call and told the gentleman(signore) that I would call later.  As we were walking away, I was stopped and asked to wait.  Signore made a phone call and then asked us to enter the gate for the tourJ.  It was sincerely nice that we were allowed to stay and the tour was free to boot!

     Our destination: Grotta di Seiano. Grotta is cave, essentially, in Italian. Di means ‘of’ and Seiano is the name of the individual who it was named after.   This cave is located in Posillipo; where we live right now. The original name is Pausylipon meaning: rest from grief or pain.  Posillipo is quite nice with beautiful views so I can understand why it was named as such.   The cave is 770 meters long and leads to a little cemetery that has long been deserted.  Beyond the cemetery is a pleasant path that leads to a large open area and ruins. (Side note: when we visited a nearby park, Parco Virgiliano, we saw a little bit of these ruins and sincerely wanted to figure out how to get down to explore, so it was a fun surprise that the tour led us here!)

      Our tour guide didn’t speak much English but he was very patient with us and spoke slow enough for us to understand most of what he said.   His name: Eugenio and he was delightful!  He was our photographer at each ideal picture spot too.  He also had us take a picture of our shadows in the cave. That was cool!  The icing on the cake, too, was that we were invited to have caffe with the gentleman at the tour. Delizioso! And Eugenio told me I needed to bring my Marito(Aaron) back for a tour. Of course, he told me call first for a reservation J!

      When we got home, Race said he learned more Italian from Eugenio than from what he had learned thus far.  I think he’s exaggerating a bit but I was so glad he got so much from the experience J  We all did. It was really fun!