Here are Iona and Rachael as they were about to set off on holiday to Greece. They have a self catering appartment in Faliraki on Rhodes. She's rung a couple of times and it sounds like they are having a great time. When she last rang they were about to go to an all night beach party. Sounds alright to me!

Ischia Ponte

This is our hotel that we stayed in during the first half of the week. Our room is the one on the top floor, furthest away. I have also put on the view we had from our room, and the pool as it was filling up in the morning.

Sant Angelo

Sant Angelo is a really lovely, bright, colourful south facing narrow streeted seaside town. It doesn't have any cars so everything is delivered by small electric buggy type things.

ferry back to Naples

This is Grace sitting on our ferry, waiting to return to Naples

Positano

Here is a narrow street coming down from the top level of

Positano, plus the view from above Positano.

tiles

Here are some more tiles, set into the top of a wall, at Sant Angelo.

view from Epomeo

This is the view from Mount Epomeo, in the centre of the island. I went up early one morning, setting off at 5am so as to avoid the worst of the heat. As I have already mentioned, I got lost on the way up and on the way down. This was mainly due to the fact that the mountain was covered in dense forest almost all the way to the top, and paths I was following seemed to disappear. It was interesting as some of the way up the paths were following "hollow-ways", dug out of the volcanic rock. it was quite hazy so i didn't get a distant view to the mainland.

Capri

Here is Capri, as we left it to travel on to Positano

Bench

The whole island of Ischia is well known for ceramics, and in Sant Angelo, alot of things seem to be made of scraps and waste of tiles. On one of the beaches we went to, there was even alot of water-worn ceramic waste in amongst the sand. This bench is made of scraps of old tiles.

Amalfi again

Here is a picture of one of the narrow passages in Amalfi. There were alot of these in the little that we saw of the town, a bit like the closes up in Edinburgh, but narrower, usually with no doors or windows and often more like a tunnel so in actual fact nothing like the closes in Edinburgh, especially when you take into account the boiling sunshine. Both Grace and I, with our vast knowledge of these matters, thought it was Moorish architecture.

restaurant

This is one of the restaurants that we ate in at Sant Angelo. It was partly built into the cliffs, which are made of a strange volcanic rock that is almost exactly like concrete in appearance. There are a lot of of houses built into the rocks on the island. Up in the hills there are a number of grottoes that nuns used to live in, which are really just open fronted hand-carved caves.

Last morning

This is the last photo for now, of our breakfast terrace of the Sant Angelo Hotel on our last morning, not long before we left.

Positano again

Here is a panorama of Positano from the boat. It's a very dramatic place the way it rises up steeply from the sea, but the picture doesn't really capture it. I quickly walked up to the top of the town on the left hand side during the time we were there. We also got moved on by a policeman while we ate our focaccia panini outside a church. It's a bit annoying because they were the best panini we had all week.

Amalfi

A panorama of Amalfi, which was a really attractive town on the Sorrento coast. That whole area looked really beautiful from the boat as we travelled along.

Positano

This is Grace sitting at Positano, where we came on our last day cruise

Fumerole

Here is a fumerole where I hoped we would come across bubbling volcanic water, pouring out and causing the sea to steam. Unfortunately there was none, but the sand was too hot to stand on, which is why it has a little fence. Apparently water does soemtimes come out.

Swimming pool

This is the swimming pool at our Sant Angelo hotel, with Grace having a bathe.

Sant Angelo

Here is Grace on the balcony at our second hotel. It was a lovely place, but a bit quiet (the hotel)

slashed feet

Here is my lacerated foot following my adventure getting lost in the mountaintop forest. I was about to start wittling a blow pipe to shoot poison darts into passing tourists so that i wouldn't starve, but fortunately I found my way back before that became essential.

Negombo

This is one of the volcanic spars in a thermal park that we visited one day. There was a variety of pools of different temperatures from sea water temp. up to 38deg.C (which felt very hot). There was also a Turkish bath, and we got an umbrelloni and two lettini on the nearby beach (aren't you impressed with my Italian).

View from Castle Aragonese towards Ischia Ponte

Our hotel is about half a mile up the road leading away from the bridge

Ischia Ponte

This is the sea just down a little lane next to our hotel

Approaching Ischia

Here is Ischia as we approached from Naples