26-Day Greek Odyssey & Mediterranean Romance

The airport for Puerto La Cruz in northeast on the Caribbean. Isla de Margarita is off the coast.

Today the port of Civitavecchia has the advantage of being the Italian “stepping stone to the Mediterranean” thanks to its excellent weather conditions and ideal geographical location.

From Civitavecchia it is a train ride to almost anywhere in Italy and a quick jaunt to Sardinia. Its position has helped make it the main national coastal shipping port.

Kérkira or Corfu, island (1991 pop. 105,043), 229 sq mi (593 sq km), NW Greece, in the Ionian Sea. Its industries include agriculture, fishing, and tourism. Settled c.730 B.C. by Corinthians, it later concluded a rebellious alliance with Athens that helped to precipitate (431 B.C.) the Peloponnesian War.

Livorno (also known as Leghorn), is situated on the Tyrrhenian coast at the southern edge of the Arno alluvial plain and is an important commercial and industrial center and port. It was founded on a former auxiliary Pisan port between 1576 and the early 17th century, on the orders of the Grand Duke Cosimo I who made it Tuscany’s main outlet to the sea after the Pisan port was filled in. Originally constructed to a pentagonal design and with a still visible orthogonal street system, the town grew in the 19th century; it suffered serious damage during the last War and now has a modern appearance.

Ah, the French Riviera…is yours for the taking, for a few hours anyway, when you leave the town of Villefranche to tour Monaco, Monte Carlo,St.-Paul-de-Vence, Cannes, and the Grand Corniche.

Monaco is one of the smallest nation’s of the World and Monte Carlo is its city with the Palace place on top of a high rock overlooking the city, the quaint port and the Meditteranean Sea. The small town and Palace area are a must. Plan to spend at least half of a day exploring the many shops along the narrow streets and enjoy the views from the Palace grounds.

Monte-Carlo was founded in 1866 during the reign of Charles III,who gave it his name. This area includes the world famous Casino, great hotels and the recently completed recreational centers consisting of the Centenaire gardens, the Larvotto beach and the Monte-Carlo Sporting Club.

Lava, spewing from a live volcano–no, you won’t see this in Naples, Italy, and you’re lucky, because the last folks in these parts who witnessed such an event were the natives of Pompeii, who were buried under 30 feet of ash and pumice stone in AD 79. You can, however, visit the beautifully preserved remains of this unfortunate city on a short tour from Naples.

There’s much more to Naples, of course. This picturesque city is one of the great cultural centers, full of extraordinary works of art and architecture in the classical Greek and Roman styles.

Naples, on its justly famous blue bay, is the great city of the south. Located on the southwest coast of Italy, south of Rome. The Amalfi Drive to the south arguably is the world’s most scenic motor route. Naples enjoys a very dry and warm climate year around.

Visit Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California.

As you approach the city over the bridge from the Italian mainland, you leave behind terra firma and, with it, earthbound notions of how to see and experience a city. Venice is not solely the spill of churches and palazzi on either side of the Grand Canal, but rather a city of islands, 118 in all, some of which are little more than the weedy, humps you see in the Lagoon of Venice. And yet these mud flats provided haven for the people who fled here (without benefit of a bridge) from Huns, Visigoths, and other marauders in the fifth century. And those refugees gave birth to a culture that ripened into a thousand years of greatness.

As you near the end of the bridge, you see at first only the back side of the city itself. But in the time it takes to walk through the train station, you begin to hear sounds peculiarly Venetian–the low rumble of boat motors, a humid incubation of voices, water lapping insistently against wood and stone. And then Venice confers her greatest gift: No matter how many times you’ve been here, it always seems, in that first glimse, like the first time.

If you are smart, you will immediately start a tour down the Grand Canal by hopping on a vaporetto (water bus) or gondola or water taxi. If you are lucky, it will be during those few hours before sunset when the light shines most kindly on the venerable facades that line this liquid boulevard. If you are particularly observant, you might even notice that neither the light nor the colors are quite Italian, not like the tawny earth tones of Florence or Rome.

The canal is a murkey green, the palazzi a mix of faded, grimy sherbets–watermarked mint and sun-blanched apricot and deep overripe peach. Sunlight shatters into spangles on the water, gondolas knife bach and forth, the Rialto Bridge looms overhead, and then, beyond one final curve, the Palladian church of Santa Maria della Salute and the Campanile (bell tower) of San Marco come into view.

Piazza san Marco is Venice’s grand salon–expansive, familiar, picturesque, pigeonesque. It is anchored at its eastern extreme by the Basilica di San Marco, which is not only the spiritual seat of Venice’s patron saint but also one of the most glittering monuments of Christendom.