EUROPE WEEK 4: EAT DRINK DRIVE...UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN (Part 1)

Buon giorno! I am definitely having a travel chick lit moment since our arrival in Italy and dragging Justin down with me. We left Barcelona and flew to Napoli (Naples), picked up our rental car and stayed for one night just to have pizza where it originated. We were told by our B&B host to try both the Pizzeria Da Michele for dinner (the original L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele was made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert / Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love) and Pizzeria Di Matteo for lunch. You have to get your own pie and eat with a knife and fork, because it is too sizzling hot and oozing with sauce and cheese to eat with your hands. The marinara (tomato and garlic but no cheese) and margherita (tomato, cheese, basil) pizzas were not only just 3-4 € each, but it was also hands down the most delizioso pizza we have ever tasted in our lives. Other than the pizza, we also genuinely enjoyed Naples itself as a very real and old city, not touristy like Rome and Venice. Just watch out for your valuables and don’t leave anything visible in the car.

We made our way north from Naples to Pompeii, the fascinating ancient Roman city destroyed by Vesuvius volcano in 79 AD and frozen in time for visitors to see what life was like. Then we drove along the spectacularly beautiful and spectacularly nausea-inducing windy road on the Amalfi Coast, touted as the most scenic coastal drive in all of Europe. Although it was pretty dead this time of year, we spent the night anyway at the old but grand Hotel Lloyd’s Baia and woke up to the sounds of the sea. We left Amalfi Coast to our next stop, Roma (Rome) the capital where we feasted our eyes on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel at the Vatican Museums, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Fontana di Trevi, and blah blah blah. (Oh who the f*ck cares? I am not going to pretend I am some artsy fartsy type who can distinguish between a Botticelli and a Raphael or a Doric and an Ionic column – memories of Art History 201 give me a headache.) Everyone says you need a week in Rome to see everything, but we cruised through it in one day and realized we have had enough sightseeing. After two nights at the Sheraton Golf Resort where Justin used his points for a room and expired Platinum status to get upgraded to a suite, we continued driving.

And driving we did. These Italians zip around the windy roads in their little Ford Fiestas like they’re driving a Ferrari; either that or they are auditioning for a guest spot on Top Gear. We learned that stop signs actually mean “go,” because when we obey the law and brake at a stop sign, cars behind us drive around to pass us. We don’t understand what the rush is! How can the same Italians who live by la dolce vita be in such a rush when they drive? My guess is to get to their five hour dinner sooner.

But do you know what is even harder than driving in Italy? Navigating in Italy. I was never good with directions or maps and lack an internal compass that most people seem to be born with, but even Justin admits finding our way around is quite a Herculean feat. This is coming from someone who can look at where the sun is shining and tell in 0.3 seconds that we are headed northeast which means we are going the wrong way, while I am still thinking out loud, “so the sun rises from the east and it is now slightly above our heads…” Italian road signs do not say “north” or “south” but only city names like Roma and Firenze. This means you have to know the geography of where these cities are (in Italian) and determine which direction you need to go – easy to do when it is just Rome and Florence, but usually it is a list of seven different obscure towns that are so hard to find on the map. The tricky and nail-biting part is to find it in two seconds before the road splits, something I have failed time and time again, resulting in much arguing and paying too many unnecessary tolls, not to mention wasting very expensive gas (at 1.62 € a liter converts to over $9 / gallon). C’est la vie! (Wait, wrong country.)

To be continued…