05/02/2025 – Driving in Italy
Yes, we are getting old, yes, we are creatures of habit, and yes, we had our usual breakfast (or Dave did). Kathy, being more young at heart, tried something new at the usual place across the street. After breakfast we packed up and walked to a cab stand nearby to begin the next stage of our journey. The 58 Euro fare was not bad, considering the drive into Rome cost twice that. The driver spoke little English and tried to ask Dave which airport terminal we were flying out of. Dave could not answer him, since we are not flying but going to the airport to pick up our rental car! Dave used Google Translate to translate that into Italian. The driver had stopped driving when Dave showed him the translation. Unfortunately, he started driving again before he was finished reading it and we narrowly missed a head-on collision by inches! Fortunately, we made it to the airport and picked up our car without having to utilize the fire, rescue, or police services of Italy.
Dave was a tad nervous about driving in Italy. Kathy had had a vision of driving the Amalfi Coast with the top down on a convertible, her head scarf blowing in the breeze, a la Audrey Hepburn. So, we rented a “convertible”. All convertibles for rent in Rome were manual transmissions. Dave hadn’t driven a stick since we sold Kathy’s Saturn coupe back in 2012. Prior to that, both Kathy and Dave used to drive manual transmissions all the time. Dave had several patrol vehicles in his Park Ranger career that were stick shifts, and he had to drive them fast, on winding, mountainous roads. But – it had still been a while. And with recent rental car snafus (“How do you shift into reverse in this automatic transmission?” in Germany, and “Why won’t this car’s engine start?” in Norway? PS The Norway car was a hybrid and the engine doesn’t “start” like a gas engine…. You just drive it away without hearing the engine roar to life.), we were a tad edgy. This edginess was compounded when we looked around our “convertible” Fiat 500. All the good feelings we had about Italians vanished! If a country’s citizens don’t know what a convertible is, they should be ashamed. This car is NOT a convertible. There are two buttons to retract the roof, but the car still has all of its sides. That is not a convertible, it is a large sunroof! Phooey on the Italianies! The car though is small enough that if we are unsure of driving it at some point we can just pick it up and park it somewhere. Yep it is the size of go cart.
We made it out of the parking lot like pros, but, Houston – We had a problem! The GPS unit we brought from home (like we have in many other countries) failed to turn on. Bummer. Dave is not as familiar with the roads of Italy as he would like to be. The device finally came on – Yea! – but did not recognize Italy – Boo! We had to resort to Google Maps on our phone. This system had worked exceptionally well in walking around Rome. The system had some major flaws when using it outside of Rome. We followed the prompts and directions and arrived at our destination. We found a paid parking lot, parked, and walked to find De Maria’s House – our lodging for the next 2 nights. It was nowhere to be found. Turns out, there are several roads with the same name and numbers in the area and Google Maps picked the wrong one. We were still an hour and a half away. Back in the car, we tried to pay for our 5 minutes of parking. Dave placed the ticket he received when he drove in, but the machine kept spitting out something in Italian at us. We tried several times, having to back up out of the way to let others get out. Kathy finally walked around and found the place where you have to pay BEFORE you try to exit. We eventually found our way to the lodging and settled in. It had a FREE parking lot. Yippee!!
Feeling that we needed to stretch out legs we decided to walk around town and do some exploring. The roads are narrow and winding cobblestones, but cars could still pass us pedestrians. Dave saw a cool, old stone arch up one road and wanted to walk underneath it. We kept walking up the road and the roads kept getting narrower and narrower. We figured the narrowing roads would be free of traffic. Nope. Many motorbikes – and even a few locals in cars and trucks – went by us on the 6 foot wide roadways. We finally made it down to the other side of the ridge and Google Maps said there was a restaurant nearby. Unfortunately, the restaurant didn’t open for another hour and a half. We hoofed it back up and down the ridge before picking up our car and looking for a place that was open. Google Maps did find an interesting way back to our car. Since we were in walking mode, it picked a concrete path that was about a foot wide and went in between some homes. It was a nice treat. Once in the car, finding an open restaurant wasn’t too hard. Finding parking was. We finally parked on the side of a narrow road, behind a bunch of other cars parked there. I guess that is life on the Amalfi Coast. We knew we were in for a good meal when the server did not speak English. After a few miscues, our Neapolitan calzone and caprese salad were awesome. We headed back, full and satisfied and ready for another exciting time tomorrow. The Ruins of Pompeii!
