A Femgineer’s Adventures in Italia: Part V – Ischia

Day 5:

Up to this point we had only headed east toward Amalfi and Salerno.  Jason and I were curious what lie to the west of Positano.  I pulled out my guidebook and read up on an island called Ischia, which is more than twice the size of Capri and to its west, and southeast of Napoli and northeast of Sorrento.  Ischia has a smaller island off its coast called Procida.  Unfortunately, the ferry schedule to and from Ischia only gave us 4 hours on Ishcia so we wouldn’t have time to explore Procida.

The major sites to see on Ischia were thermal pools.  The island was filled with them.  And there was a really large and famous beach Spiaggia Citara.

We climbed aboard the ferry and headed for Ischia, stopping at Capri briefly to let off some passengers. The ride to Ischia was empty, but we passed the time away taking pictures of coast of Sorrento and Napoli in the distance.  We also spotted Procida as we got closer.  It was a lush little island.

Once we arrived in Ischia I made the stupid mistake of thinking we could just walk everywhere like we had on Salerno.  But Ischia was a large island, and the pathways were not pedestrian friendly.  As we were getting our bearings an older Italian man named Pasquale approached Jason, and handed him a brochure for Poseidon Terme.  It had 22 thermal pools ranging from 15 degrees to 40 degrees  Celsius, and the surroundings were done in a tropical theme that looked more like Hawaii than Italy.  We took at look at the brochure and were sold!  It would be our one and only stop but we figured it would be the most memorable.  We climbed into Pasquale’s open air van and headed for Poseidon Terme.  Apparently Pasquale wasn’t aware of our time constraint and proceeded to guide us through Ischia.  Jason set him straight and then he stopped showing us around and headed straight to our destination.

Pasquale insisted on picking us up in a few hours and returning us to catch our ferry at 4:20pm, he refused to accept our payment until then.  What a sweet Italiano!

We entered the Poseidon Terme, it was even more interesting than we had imagined.  All the signs were in German and Italian, no signs in English!  The entire spa was done in a tropical theme with palm trees and beautiful tropical flowers everywhere.  But we had to follow certain rules: first everyone must wear a bathing cap, second you can only go from a hot pool to a cold pool once or twice, and third don’t stay in the hottest or coldest pool for too long.

The first pool Jason and I walked into was around 36 degrees Celsius.  It was warm and relaxing.  All the Europeans around us seemed to be pretty chill.  After the pool we spotted a stone chair that was set into a wall, and had water cascading down it like a waterfall, it was apparently their idea of massage chair.  We took turns sitting in it.  As the water beat down hard it relaxed all my muscles and relieved the neck pain I had experienced from our stiff bed in Casa Miulo.

We continued to explore.  I saw a steam room at the top of the staircase and thought to myself, I’m a Bikram yogini surely this will be a cake walk.  Fat chance!  We entered the silent steam room and the hot air instantly engulfed us and filled our lungs.  I could barely breathe, after 30 seconds I signaled to Jason to exit!  Whew now that’s what I call hot!!

As we walked through the terme we came upon a large swimming pool that had a very green hue to it unlike the blue pools we were used to.  Out of curiosity we climbed in, it was much cooler than the other pools.  After it we continued to go through the different grades of pools 32, 34, 36, 38, and 40 degrees Celsius.  I wanted to try the 15 degree pool.  Jason was wary.  I noticed a young girl sitting calmly in it and thought it could be that bad.  We slowly walked into it and felt the chilliness of it penetrate our skin.  I forced myself to endure it for a minute purely out of a sense of competition with the girl who was by now in a Zen-like state, crazy!

After exploring all the pools we walked out to the beach.  It was idyllic, with a large mountainous cliff to its left and filled scantily clad Europeans, I felt a bit overdressed…

We finished up our afternoon at the terme and headed out to be greeted by Pasquale.  Since we had a little time to spare Pasquale gave us a little tour of the township and we took some pictures around a famous Roman Catholic Church.

To Jason, Ischia was the highlight of our trip.  I ranked it second to the previous day’s adventures sailing along the coast.

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