Inch by inch, row by row, time for Rake and Hoeh to go.

iThis morning we said goodbye as the Rake dropped the Hoeh off at Rome Terminale.

It's been a journey that defies simple answers to "How was it?" So instead, may as well just finish the highlights since Thanksgiving.  

At the hostel we met hilarious and fun people, and ended up at Pompeii with them, on a frantic search for the corpses one sees in the textbooks.  The guy with the white glasses asked every workman we saw, "where are the bodies? The dead people? The corpses?" 

We only found "the 2," not "the 11" we'd hoped for, but our friends all had to catch planes and we had to get the bus to Amalfi.

We returned to our awesome Hostel of the Sun in Naples, which we recommend without hesitation.

 Next day we were tourists again, which was a bit disorienting after our weeks and weeks of rural and isolated living.  But Napoli is a really cool place that we enjoyed wandering around.

Finally got enough bones to satisfy us at the Cemeterio de Fontinelle, a huge cave that was filled for centuries with the bones of miscellaneous unfortunates, whose remains were later adopted by locals who formed a cultish system of honoring them, giving them names which came to the caretakers in dreams.

Our final destination together was Rome, to visit Aunt Bamby ( she prefers Nadia but it is hard to drop the family diminutive!), who must have the most central and impressive apartment one can imagine.  For example, the Vatican and the Pantheon and several other things are all a few blocks away.

Elisabeth and Bamby, who is almost 80 but still taking watercolor classes and turning out incredible botanical paintings, writing a novel, addressing the problem of the publisher releasing a second edition of her book Maria Callas Remembered without involving or paying her, looking for a publisher for her two childrens' books, and writing a novel.

Photo from a book on the 1962 sculpture "invasion" of Spoleto, which went on to become the Spoleto festival, all of which Aunt Bamby was involved in and helped design, then worked on the festival for many years.

definitely one of the weirdest and most effective illusions ever.

So that's it.  If I ever find WIFI in Milan, this post will end our trip on the day it ended, Dec. 5, 2013.  It started Sept. 26.  We've had an incredible journey, with so many good people and so few bad ones, so many interesting experiences and not too many boring ones, and just enough difficult ones to give us a few stories to tell! I think we are both really glad we got to spend so much time together, and neither of us would have wanted to do exactly this trip alone - no way! But together, what a team!

Elisabeth's journey goes on, but without an iPad so you'll have to follow her facebook I suppose. Ciao everyone.