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Ischia is an island off the coast of southern Italy, near Naples. We had originally planned to spend two or three days in Capri, but after one day we ran out of things to do and headed off for Ischia. There's even less to do on Ischia, but at least they have beaches. When we arrived, we had reservations at a cheap hotel, but as we were walking around exploring, we found a really nice 3-star hotel for only twice as much! It had it's own private beach and everything. We checked in, and after walking around the hotel for a while, we noticed their clientele were exclusively old fat germans. This was a little disturbing. We checked out and went to our original hotel, which was still filled with germans, just not as geriatric (there were germans everywhere, and all the signs were in italian and german). On the buses, it was fun to hear the germans yell "Shtop!" to the bus driver as they missed their stop.


Unfortunately, Naomi was sick for most of the trip. This is in a park in Ischia, taking a break as we go exploring. After we got back, Naomi thoughtfully passed that cold on to Jeff.


As we went through the park, they had different flowers around, so we decided to press a couple of them in our Let's Go book for Naomi's friend, Anna. The next time we opened the backpack, it stunk like a fart. We traced the smell pretty quickly to this flower. Its name in italian translates as "fart flower".


The castle on Ischia was pretty impressive. It looks exactly like you would expect a castle to look: high up on a hill, a foot bridge to get to it, giant walls and lots of turrets. There's a torture museum in the castle, which we headed straight for. Life 500 years ago was pretty painful. They had some really inventive devices to do all kinds of nasty stuff (finger breakers, chest smashers, slow strangulation, etc.). They would put someone in the cage above Naomi's head and put the cage in a very public place and then let the person starve. Maybe we should put Joe in one of these for a few days!


I never knew they had chastity belts for men, I guess it's only fair. In the middle is a device that would keep someone from talking, and to the right is a woman's chastity belt.


Inside the castle corridors. Check out Jeff's tan!