Megz and Peter in Europe 2004

Italy, Part II

From Rome we drove south to Naples & Pompeii. Peter has done most of the driving on the trip, while I have been navigator. We had some pretty long and slow driving days in France, and by the time we got to Rome he was driving like a local. The locals in Naples have a reputation of being crazy drivers, but Peter managed to fit right in there and go with the flow. The road to Naples was straight and wide, with one lane in each direction. And Peter was quite taken with the local custom of passing the car in front whenever you feel like it, regardless of whether there's traffic coming the other way or not. That's just the way it's done there, and everybody pulls over and you have plenty of room to pass. Also, traffic lights are just ignored there. More than once we ran a red light just because we were going with the flow. I noticed a lot of cars in Italy, but especially in Naples, with dents in the car, but luckily we escaped any damage.

We arrived in Naples from the west and had to get to Pompeii in the east. While we could have (and should have) gotten on the toll road to avoid the city, we decided to drive straight through the city centre. At first it was quite fun - five lanes of traffic flowing down a three lane road and scooters dashing in and out all over the place. But when we got down to two cars trying to squeeze down one lane roads it got a bit frustrating and stressful. Luckily we made it in one piece, although it took well over an hour just to drive from one side of town to the other.

We stayed in Pompeii rather than Naples, at a campground just across the road from the ruins on ancient Pompeii. Didn't think very much of modern Pompeii at all - it is crowded and full of cheap tacky tourist shops, and overpriced overcooked pizza. Ancient Pompeii however is fascinating. While looking at the ruins in Rome we often said we just couldn't imagine what things used to look like. However because the buildings and everything in Pompeii were so well preserved, it was easy to imagine real people going about their everyday lives, in the shadow of Mt Vesuvius. There was everything you'd expect to see in a modern city - offices, shops, takeaways, houses & homes, bath complexes, theatres, temples, sewerage, central heating, graffiti/tagging, and the infamous brothels.

From Naples we drove back north again to Venice, stopping overnight in the town of Assisi, home of St Francis. Assisi is a very pretty hill town built out of pink marble. Most of the town centre is prohibited to cars, which made it very nice to stroll around the streets. There is not much to actually see or do there though.

We spent a day and a half in Venice, staying on the mainland at a campground frequented by Contiki and other tour groups. Unfortunately this meant we didn't get any sleep the first night because of all the music and yahooing coming from the bar.

Venice was really lovely. So clean and open and quiet, and best of all no cars. We wandered all around the islands, over the canals, did lots of window shopping. We visited the island of Murano and learnt all about Venetian glass making at the glass museum. We didn't visit any glass factories, although we did see one but didn't have time to stop. It is amazing how much they can do with glass, from drinking glasses and plates to beads to figurines and nik naks. And to think the process hasn't really changed much in 2000 years.

Another highlight of the trip to Venice was having dinner at a restaurant alongside the Grand Canal. I tried one of Venice's speciality meals - Cuttlefish (Seppie) a la Veneziana, which came with an intriguing black sauce that turned out to be "squid juice" as the waiter called it.

Finally our last stop in Italy was at Lake Como, just on the border with Switzerland. The lake was very pretty, surrounded by tall hills. We arrived in town nice and early, and then spent a very frustrating two hours driving round and round trying to find a campground. The instructions we were given said to follow the signs which quickly disappeared. The first campground we found appeared to be shut. And there was no tourist information that we could find. Eventually after driving round for hours we accidentally stumbled across the campground we were looking for. I don't think they get many foreign visitors. We ate at the campground restaurant, of which the only other patrons appeared to be the camp workers or the family of. There were no written menus, and nobody spoke English. They told us what the three options for dinner were and we said what we wanted. At least our Italian is good enough to do that. But for all that, Peter raved about his spaghetti and reckons it's the best he's ever had. It was certainly authentic.

And that brought our two weeks in Italy to a close. I found Italy more difficult to get around than I expected, and we had several frustrating incidents. We found the people in the north to be a lot friendlier than those in the south. Unfortunately we encountered lots of (what I'd consider) rude service in the south - in Pompeii definitely and also to some extent in Rome. Being ignored by waiters and other service people is the main thing. Or something as simple as not being greeted when entering a store, as is the custom all over France. Ok, so we don't understand everything people say to us in Italian, but we do understand the basics. But often they just wouldn't speak to us at all. So that was quite a shame.

Other than that we had a good time. Plenty of good food and good wine. Although we we're getting a little of sick of pasta towards the end. It rained every day we were in Italy, apart from the very last day. Venice was definitely my favourite place, as I'd been to all the other cities before. And now we head back to Paris to return our car in a weeks time.

posted by Megz @ 4:10 pm