Ischia

I have been keen to visit Ischia during this holiday, partly because I have been reading about it recently in the mysterious Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series. In the second book she vividly describes a long hot summer at a beach in Ischia at the beginning of the 1960s, which is a turning point for several of the characters. But my interest in Ischia also goes back much further than that. There is an old film starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills called Avanti, made in about 1970, and set in Ischia. The film is very dated (among many dubious issues Juliet Mills is constantly referred to as overweight - she isn't, although that's not the point - and the main characters embark on an affair moments after assuring Jack Lemmon's blameless wife that they will not do so!), but the music and the scenery are beautiful. 

Anyway, I was delighted to visit this gorgeous island today. We jumped on a very crowded bus to travel to the famous La Mortella Gardens, designed lovingly in the 1950s by the composer William Walton and his wife Susana. However we overshot our bus stop and ended up in the centre of the resort of Foria. This turned out to be a very pretty little holiday resort and we had a pleasant coffee in the town square before resuming our plans.

La Mortella Gardens are indeed lovely, an oasis of plants and fountains set on a steep hillside overlooking Foria. We meandered around the little paths, enjoying all the hidden corners. There were lots of lily ponds, which I loved, and one of them was full of very vocal frogs which was amusing. We had bruschetta for lunch in the delightful garden café.

Back down in Foria the beach was very busy with Neapolitan families besporting themselves in the sunshine. To make the most of our last couple of hours on the island we took a taxi tour. We thought it was a bit too expensive when we first enquired and decided to catch a bus instead, but the driver followed us along the street and negotiated a price which was acceptable to all of us. It was a great wee tour - the driver took us up to the top of the island from where we could see all around the bay to Capri, Naples, Sorrento and Vesuvius. He was very informative about the geology and development of Ischia, and was telling me about all the celebrities he has seen on the island this week during the annual film festival, including Ridley Scott, Gerard Butler and Jeremy Irons. He told us that the hotel in the film Avanti is called the Regina Isabella - future holiday destination? We sat outside on the hydrofoil back to Sorrento and as the wind swept my hair back James said romantically that I looked like a dog with its head sticking out of a car window!