Our Felliniesque Vacation
The story of our trip to Pompeii must be told in multiple parts and blog entries for a number of reasons, both weird and wonderful. Here are the first two installments in our story.
Chapter 1 – The Plan
The Feast of All Saints is a major holiday in Italy on November 2 where the Italians primarily remember the lives of all the saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church. Everything is closed – schools, banks, government, etc. Therefore, the kids had a 5 day break from school. It seemed like a good time to go south and visit Pompeii and Vesuvius because the weather would be mild versus the suffering heat of the summer and the crowds would be smaller. I had an idea that it might be fun to stay on a farm as I have seen many “agriturismo” places on various drives out into the country and they looked like quiet, bucolic places to stay and relax. I knew I didn’t want to stay in Naples and thought it might be more fun than your basic hotel. I found a farm, Vivinatura , very close to Pompei that had a 16 room hotel, cows, horses, fields, a “play area,” restaurant, etc. I made a reservation, with some reservations of my own about what I was getting us into, but the kids were excited at the prospect of a farm vacation and Bill was mildly agreeable to the idea. I planned our route using mapquest; approximately 400 miles and an estimated time of 6 hours. (I’m not sure how a travel time of 6 hours was calculated, they must think that you will drive 130 km the entire trip.) We planned on 7 or 8 hours and left about 9 am in our little Fiat Stilo which is comfortable enough but has the kids all sitting much closer to each other than three young siblings should be for such a long drive. I bought a little personal size DVD player to counteract the expected touching, poking and squabbling. We began the drive with our movies, maps of the autostrade and rest areas, lunches to eat in the car and the excitement of GOING TO POMPEII!
Chapter 2 – The Drive
The day was drizzly and foggy and after an hour we driving through the Apennines which is accomplished with a really impressive span of bridges and tunnels, one right after another, right through the mountains all the way to Florence. This slowed us down just a little, but then the sun came out, the countryside was beautifully dotted with picturesque churches, houses and little villages and we easily made it to Rome. So far, so good. The autostrade in Italy is a very nice highway, the rest stops (area servizi) are clean, well stocked with all kinds of food and good coffee (of course), plentiful and easy to get on and off. We ate our tuna sandwiches (peanut butter for Nick) and continued on a good pace. Once we were south of Rome, the sky darkened early as the rain and fog returned, the scenery abruptly changed to large, hulking factories, abandoned ancestral homes and a feeling of general disrepair and geographical ennui. Also, we were approaching . . . (insert spooky sounding minor chord here) . . . Naples. We had been warned about Naples from Aunt Karen, “your car and/or everything in it will be stolen if you park in Naples;” from Federica, our favorite and beautiful Italian biochemist, “before you go on your trip, you must first listen to my one hour lecture on traveling to Naples;” from Andrea, another colleague of Bill’s, “I have been to Naples five times and have seen people robbed twice – one time I saw a woman’s necklace yanked right off her neck;” and ubiquitous warnings about Naples from all the travel books and pamphlets we have ever read. Plus, have you ever read any stories about southern Italy or seen a Fellini movie? When we approached Naples we took the wrong exit to by-pass the city and drove right through it on the eve of the biggest fall holiday complete with lots of construction and confusing signs. However, we found our way back to the correct highway and continued south to Pompeii. It was only about 5:30 pm, but dark and rainy. We exited and while the signs on the highway are great and generally easy to decipher, the street signs in Italy are terrible – well not really terrible, as much as non-existent. We had our mapquest directions but no detail map of the area – that would have required much more planning than either Bill or I are capable of, although we always wish that we were better at it! The kids at this point started to melt down after 8 hours in the car, predictable, but still incredibly unpleasant. We were now on a very busy downtown street in a gritty suburb of Naples, Castellammare, between Pompeii and the famous Amalfi coast. We could not find any street signs to help us navigate our lame directions and could not have imagined that the beautiful (on the website) Vivinatura was anywhere near where we were. There really was no where to ask for help either as the street was crowded only with dark-haired, seedy looking guys, between the ages of 16 and 60 just standing around in front of dingy looking bars, cafés, shops and hotels – there was not a woman, child or family in sight. Finally, we pulled over in front of a closed little café, away from the crowds, to look for the phone number of Vivinatura in our bags in the trunk (because of course we didn’t have it in the car with us and never did find it). However, there was a lone, but nattily dressed gentleman, who was for some reason standing in front of the closed café in the dark and we asked him for directions out of pure desperation. He said something like, “Oh sure, Vivinatura, I know it but I’m not exactly sure where it is” and he sent us in search of a “place” that could help us with the directions. We started driving away and ended up on the beginning of the mountainous highway which spans the coastline. We turned around, the children clattered and complained and we were stumped on what to do next. We decided to drive into Pompeii and look from there and at about this time we actually found the road we were supposed to be on, but to no avail could we find our turn to Vivinatura after driving over the same stretch of under-construction, traffic-filled, dark and rainy 2-lane highway/street for about an hour. During all this, we did stumble upon the Pompeii ruins and the tourist district. The kids were also freaked out enough by this time that they decided to be quiet and only piped up with a helpful or thoughtful comment every once in a while. What to do? At about the same time, all five of us (well, maybe not Isabelle) decided to just blow off Vivinatura and go into Pompeii and find a hotel. We pulled into a place right next door to the entrance to the ruins, Hotel Vittoria, and Bill sent me in to get a room (normally his job because his Italian is so much better than mine). He should be sorry that he didn’t go in, because I walked right into my childhood imagination of what the game Clue would be like, come to life. I had to be buzzed in, the lobby was lit but all the hallways were dark (was there really anyone staying there?) and the man behind the desk was a mole that had been magically transformed into a human being. He looked like a character out of the Little Bear books and cartoons. He was also wearing the thickest glasses I have ever seen which made his eyes look enormous behind his fashionable Italian frames. However, he was a nice enough mole, albeit in a creepy kind of way and did speak enough English to help me. He sincerely tried to find out how to get to Vivinatura – “It is out in the country,” he said. He tried to call them from a phone number in a brochure but it was the wrong number – that was surely a good omen. He then made another call, but no luck. At this point, I knew we didn’t want to stay there and just continued the pretense of asking for directions versus a room, so he told me to turn right, make two lefts and then stop and ask someone else for directions. He also told me it was near the Auchan (Italian version of a Wal-Mart/Costco-ish kind of place) which we had passed a couple of times in the middle of an industrial neighborhood right off the highway. At this point we decided to give it one last try and finally found a sign for Vivinatura and their parking. It was less than half a mile away from where the “nattily dressed gentlemen” had sent us in the other direction about 90 minutes earlier! It was also in the middle of a bunch of buildings with graffiti all over them and the parking lot was sandwiched in between a factory looking building and a dumpy apartment house; we honestly couldn’t even figure out which building it was. Where were the cows? The horse barn? The swimming pool? The little vineyard? There was really nothing to do but laugh and head back into town. We by-passed the Clue game hotel, stopped at another but it was too dumpy and then looked in a brochure I got from the mole for the closest 4-star which had a room. It was 8 pm (11 hours after we had left) and we were all starving at this point and headed out for some well deserved pasta, sodas and wine. We didn’t even mind that the five of us had to sleep in three beds which required Nick to sleep sandwiched in between me and Bill. I’m pretty sure this experience will turn our children into the kind of travelers that have six maps, a GPS with them at all times and a compulsion for planning and organization. Or, nature will win over nurture (at least for Nick and Isabelle) and they will repeat these same shenanigans with their own families. Of course, this would never happen to Sam and we should probably just delegate all future vacation travel plans to our precocious 8 year old.
We did go back and look at it in the daytime a couple of days later and it didn’t look quite as bad as in the dark – while the neighborhood was still very dumpy, you could see a little patch of green and garden behind the walls. We were still glad of our collective decision to stay in a hotel in downtown Pompeii. Here is a picture of the outside of the “farm.” Is there anything else to say? I think not.
What a LONG, strange trip it was . . To come in later installments – Pompeii, Vesuvius and Herculaneum.
Chapter 1 – The Plan
The Feast of All Saints is a major holiday in Italy on November 2 where the Italians primarily remember the lives of all the saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church. Everything is closed – schools, banks, government, etc. Therefore, the kids had a 5 day break from school. It seemed like a good time to go south and visit Pompeii and Vesuvius because the weather would be mild versus the suffering heat of the summer and the crowds would be smaller. I had an idea that it might be fun to stay on a farm as I have seen many “agriturismo” places on various drives out into the country and they looked like quiet, bucolic places to stay and relax. I knew I didn’t want to stay in Naples and thought it might be more fun than your basic hotel. I found a farm, Vivinatura , very close to Pompei that had a 16 room hotel, cows, horses, fields, a “play area,” restaurant, etc. I made a reservation, with some reservations of my own about what I was getting us into, but the kids were excited at the prospect of a farm vacation and Bill was mildly agreeable to the idea. I planned our route using mapquest; approximately 400 miles and an estimated time of 6 hours. (I’m not sure how a travel time of 6 hours was calculated, they must think that you will drive 130 km the entire trip.) We planned on 7 or 8 hours and left about 9 am in our little Fiat Stilo which is comfortable enough but has the kids all sitting much closer to each other than three young siblings should be for such a long drive. I bought a little personal size DVD player to counteract the expected touching, poking and squabbling. We began the drive with our movies, maps of the autostrade and rest areas, lunches to eat in the car and the excitement of GOING TO POMPEII!
Chapter 2 – The Drive
The day was drizzly and foggy and after an hour we driving through the Apennines which is accomplished with a really impressive span of bridges and tunnels, one right after another, right through the mountains all the way to Florence. This slowed us down just a little, but then the sun came out, the countryside was beautifully dotted with picturesque churches, houses and little villages and we easily made it to Rome. So far, so good. The autostrade in Italy is a very nice highway, the rest stops (area servizi) are clean, well stocked with all kinds of food and good coffee (of course), plentiful and easy to get on and off. We ate our tuna sandwiches (peanut butter for Nick) and continued on a good pace. Once we were south of Rome, the sky darkened early as the rain and fog returned, the scenery abruptly changed to large, hulking factories, abandoned ancestral homes and a feeling of general disrepair and geographical ennui. Also, we were approaching . . . (insert spooky sounding minor chord here) . . . Naples. We had been warned about Naples from Aunt Karen, “your car and/or everything in it will be stolen if you park in Naples;” from Federica, our favorite and beautiful Italian biochemist, “before you go on your trip, you must first listen to my one hour lecture on traveling to Naples;” from Andrea, another colleague of Bill’s, “I have been to Naples five times and have seen people robbed twice – one time I saw a woman’s necklace yanked right off her neck;” and ubiquitous warnings about Naples from all the travel books and pamphlets we have ever read. Plus, have you ever read any stories about southern Italy or seen a Fellini movie? When we approached Naples we took the wrong exit to by-pass the city and drove right through it on the eve of the biggest fall holiday complete with lots of construction and confusing signs. However, we found our way back to the correct highway and continued south to Pompeii. It was only about 5:30 pm, but dark and rainy. We exited and while the signs on the highway are great and generally easy to decipher, the street signs in Italy are terrible – well not really terrible, as much as non-existent. We had our mapquest directions but no detail map of the area – that would have required much more planning than either Bill or I are capable of, although we always wish that we were better at it! The kids at this point started to melt down after 8 hours in the car, predictable, but still incredibly unpleasant. We were now on a very busy downtown street in a gritty suburb of Naples, Castellammare, between Pompeii and the famous Amalfi coast. We could not find any street signs to help us navigate our lame directions and could not have imagined that the beautiful (on the website) Vivinatura was anywhere near where we were. There really was no where to ask for help either as the street was crowded only with dark-haired, seedy looking guys, between the ages of 16 and 60 just standing around in front of dingy looking bars, cafés, shops and hotels – there was not a woman, child or family in sight. Finally, we pulled over in front of a closed little café, away from the crowds, to look for the phone number of Vivinatura in our bags in the trunk (because of course we didn’t have it in the car with us and never did find it). However, there was a lone, but nattily dressed gentleman, who was for some reason standing in front of the closed café in the dark and we asked him for directions out of pure desperation. He said something like, “Oh sure, Vivinatura, I know it but I’m not exactly sure where it is” and he sent us in search of a “place” that could help us with the directions. We started driving away and ended up on the beginning of the mountainous highway which spans the coastline. We turned around, the children clattered and complained and we were stumped on what to do next. We decided to drive into Pompeii and look from there and at about this time we actually found the road we were supposed to be on, but to no avail could we find our turn to Vivinatura after driving over the same stretch of under-construction, traffic-filled, dark and rainy 2-lane highway/street for about an hour. During all this, we did stumble upon the Pompeii ruins and the tourist district. The kids were also freaked out enough by this time that they decided to be quiet and only piped up with a helpful or thoughtful comment every once in a while. What to do? At about the same time, all five of us (well, maybe not Isabelle) decided to just blow off Vivinatura and go into Pompeii and find a hotel. We pulled into a place right next door to the entrance to the ruins, Hotel Vittoria, and Bill sent me in to get a room (normally his job because his Italian is so much better than mine). He should be sorry that he didn’t go in, because I walked right into my childhood imagination of what the game Clue would be like, come to life. I had to be buzzed in, the lobby was lit but all the hallways were dark (was there really anyone staying there?) and the man behind the desk was a mole that had been magically transformed into a human being. He looked like a character out of the Little Bear books and cartoons. He was also wearing the thickest glasses I have ever seen which made his eyes look enormous behind his fashionable Italian frames. However, he was a nice enough mole, albeit in a creepy kind of way and did speak enough English to help me. He sincerely tried to find out how to get to Vivinatura – “It is out in the country,” he said. He tried to call them from a phone number in a brochure but it was the wrong number – that was surely a good omen. He then made another call, but no luck. At this point, I knew we didn’t want to stay there and just continued the pretense of asking for directions versus a room, so he told me to turn right, make two lefts and then stop and ask someone else for directions. He also told me it was near the Auchan (Italian version of a Wal-Mart/Costco-ish kind of place) which we had passed a couple of times in the middle of an industrial neighborhood right off the highway. At this point we decided to give it one last try and finally found a sign for Vivinatura and their parking. It was less than half a mile away from where the “nattily dressed gentlemen” had sent us in the other direction about 90 minutes earlier! It was also in the middle of a bunch of buildings with graffiti all over them and the parking lot was sandwiched in between a factory looking building and a dumpy apartment house; we honestly couldn’t even figure out which building it was. Where were the cows? The horse barn? The swimming pool? The little vineyard? There was really nothing to do but laugh and head back into town. We by-passed the Clue game hotel, stopped at another but it was too dumpy and then looked in a brochure I got from the mole for the closest 4-star which had a room. It was 8 pm (11 hours after we had left) and we were all starving at this point and headed out for some well deserved pasta, sodas and wine. We didn’t even mind that the five of us had to sleep in three beds which required Nick to sleep sandwiched in between me and Bill. I’m pretty sure this experience will turn our children into the kind of travelers that have six maps, a GPS with them at all times and a compulsion for planning and organization. Or, nature will win over nurture (at least for Nick and Isabelle) and they will repeat these same shenanigans with their own families. Of course, this would never happen to Sam and we should probably just delegate all future vacation travel plans to our precocious 8 year old.
We did go back and look at it in the daytime a couple of days later and it didn’t look quite as bad as in the dark – while the neighborhood was still very dumpy, you could see a little patch of green and garden behind the walls. We were still glad of our collective decision to stay in a hotel in downtown Pompeii. Here is a picture of the outside of the “farm.” Is there anything else to say? I think not.
What a LONG, strange trip it was . . To come in later installments – Pompeii, Vesuvius and Herculaneum.
posted by Cindy | 10:57 AM
1 Comments:
Cindy,
I am rather impressed with your adventure, of course. But you might want to worry....you sound like your taking after your mother...
Mom
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