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Published: April 4th 2013
Gelato flavour of the day: N/A - no time for a gelato today
Today, we expected, was always going to throw up some challenges what with, getting to the airport by the arranged time, picking up the car, finding our way south and hoping that the GPS would find our hotel in Pozzuoli near Naples.
One isn’t supposed to get stressed on holiday but this isn’t a normal holiday for us more an adventure and with adventures comes the unknown and so the stress levels can rise and so it was to be today, not to a high level, just moderate, letting us know, we had to be on our toes to control the situation.
To start with was the extra surprise of city tax to pay when we thought we had paid an all up cost at the outset. However the paperwork we had wasn’t definitive on this and Andrina, the ‘landlady’ at the B&B was slightly insistent. We didn’t have time to argue or wait for Giorgio to arrive and we didn’t know if he would appear in the morning anyway so we paid up. In hindsight we should have used the travel card as it
would have given us a record as Andrina didn’t offer a receipt and foolishly we didn’t ask for one.
Tip 1 for the day, always have a full record of the deal and get a receipt if you pay any more.
Now you might be thinking we aren’t seasoned travellers, which we feel we are after all of our travels over the last 20 odd years. However we had a bus to catch to the airport and a scheduled time for the pickup as we understood the firm that were the agents were not usually open on public holidays, which today island therefore we didn’t want to miss the connection.
So we paid up and resolved to check it out once we got internet connection later in the day.
We took a different and much easier route to the station than the one we used in our arrival.
Before we got to the Terravision bus depot on the other side of Termini we spotted another bus firm going to the airport and the cost, just Euro4 each. We were up on the deal from arriving when it had been Euro5 !And the bus was leaving 10 minutes earlier than Terravision which would mean extra time to make the car connection.
The trip didn’t seem as quick as when we arrived from the airport and the driver also took some diversion to pick up crates of something, presumably for a mate, at Ostiense railway station which seemed off the usual route.
We still arrived half an hour ahead of the pickup time which gave us time to make our way towards the meeting point inside the terminal where we made the phone call to say we had arrived and they could send the mini bus as the car firm was off the airport but close by.
So far, so good but it was here things didn’t happen as they should have and the blood pressure started to rise when the phone number we had to ring was not answered.
We had arranged the time for the pickup before we left NZ and we confirmed it by email when we arrived in Rome. We were aware that the office was only going to be open until 11am as today was a public holiday.
After trying the number again using the cell phone and getting the same result we sought out some help from the tourist office in the terminal building. At first the woman that served us was a bit surly but once she knew what our problem was she became helpful and after trying the number from her own phone she suggested she take us to one of the minibus companies near the meeting place in the arrivals area.
There she talked to another woman who also tried the number with the same negative result.
She then took us outside to see if any of the minibuses waiting at the kerbside might have been our transport.
By now 45 minutes had passed since we first tried the number and we were starting to feel as though we weren’t going to be picking up the car today.
We thanked her for her help and went back inside the terminal building deciding to ring the Paris number for Citroen Assistance and see if they could help find the whereabouts of their Rome agent. There is a 24/7 number to ring from anywhere if you need assistance. What we didn't realise that the number was only for accidents and trying to make ourselves understood that we were wanting to pick a car up was too much English for the person at the other end of the phone. She gave up and said she couldn’t help any further.
Gretchen was all for taking a taxi to the agent’s office about a 10 minute ride away but I persuaded her to try again and on this occasion an hour after we started trying to make contact, he answered the phone.
I was very impressed by the calm manner she used when she talked to the person given the high stress levels she had endured and that no four letter words were used in the conversation.
Within 15 minutes he arrived in a minibus with 3 Americans on board and we headed for the yard where Cindy Citroen C4 was waiting for us. We were so relieved to have finally made the contact that we couldn’t get angry at the guy although we will make contact with Citroen as we used up half of the credit we had on the cell phone in trying to make contact and they will need to think about reimbursing us.
With the paperwork done it was then time to check over the important points of the car including the rather smart GPS.
So a couple of hours after we thought we would be on the road we turned Cindy Citroen south in the direction of Pozzuoli (near Naples) and we were off.
By now it was well past lunchtime and weren’t only hungry but also thristy.So we went searching for food and water ignoring Victoria, the onboard GPS (she sounds very English) who kept trying to direct us to the fast inland road when we wanted to drive down the coast which we recalled from our last time here four years ago was much more scenic.
Eventually we found a Carrefour Express store open in some obscure little seaside town although we made it just in time as they were shutting up for the day around 2pm.We brought yogurt, juice and what we thought was natural water only to find that again we had been fooled by the label and it turned out to be the water that has had bubbles added which to us is nowhere as quenching as pure natural water. Never mind at least we were now fed and watered and ready to press on southwards.
As the road left the coast the sky started to darken over and eventually light rain started to fall and it stayed that way until we got to our destination.
In the last 50 kilometres or so the traffic became very heavy, mostly going southwards, and drivers started to take what we thought were more risky overtaking manoeuvres by pulling out when opposing traffic was very close. At one point when the traffic slowed to a crawl there were 3 lanes of cars when there was actually only one marked lane. Cars overtaking us on the outside were going much faster than us while the ones on the inside were simply trying to pick up positions ahead of us.
Thankfully once the speed of the traffic picked after we cleared a town things went back to normal with just the cars on the outside to contend with if they sharply pulled in front of us. All of this was happening at speeds of up to 70kph and anything over that everyone seemed to be happy to keep their position.
With all this Italian style driving going on amazingly there were no accidents although there was one particular close encounter on a straight stretch of road where the opposing vehicle flashed lights frantically and the car on our side of the road doing the overtaking had to take emergency swerving action to get back into line in the nick of time. We did pass at slow speed two vehicles stopped on our side of the road with their drivers waving their hands at each other but if there had been an accident such as a nose to tail there wasn’t anything much to show for it.
We eventually made Pozzuoli around 6pm with Victoria taking us directly to our hotel with no problem at all.
However trying to figure out where the parking was from the young woman on the front desk was another matter. She spoke little English and understood even less. We were wondering how we would ever find out where the parking for the hotel was until she intimated that we type what we wanted to say into her computer and then she would use the translator to take what we had typed to Italian.
It sort of worked and we worked out that the parking was across the road in a garage below the roadway although we weren’t actually sure exactly where as there were a couple of places it might have been. An African guy came strolling over as we tried to make out which garage to park Cindy in and directed us to the right one.
Our room was on the second level with a lovely view of the sea and a little terrace,perfect,except....
As one does after a long road journey one needs to relieve oneself. All good until the loo wouldn’t flush.Oh well we would have dinner and then see if it was just being temperamental.
The last challenge for day, not quite!
We still had dinner to get and with the rain falling it meant we had to take Cindy out again and down to the seaside restaurants a couple of kilometres away. After changing a Euro50 note with a local cafe so we hadEuro1 for the parking charge (we had used up all the coins we had) we found an Irish Pub and ordered two beers and burgers for dinner(at this stage of the day we didn't care we weren't eating Italian tonight).
After we got back from dinner the loo still wouldn’t flush so we had to go downstairs again to try and explain to the young woman who understood very little English. Thankfully there was also another young woman there who did understand and after coming up to try and make the flush work she said she would need to find us another room as it was too late in the night to get someone out to fix the toilet. So our sea view room became a rear of hotel room with a view of the hill behind the town, too bad.
It had been a day when the stress levels had been tested at times with extra Euros to pay at the B&B, the need to catch the bus in time to make the car connection, no answering of the phone at the car place, the maniac Italian drivers and finally where to park at the hotel when we couldn’t make ourselves understood.
And not even enough time to have a gelato!
Needless to say we fell asleep pretty soon after returning from dinner thinking that tomorrow will return to normal for us.
Distance travelled today :245km
Distance travelled since Tauranga : 19014km
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Rin
non-member comment
Ahhh travel...
Ahhh the joys of travel....when it takes you well out of your comfort zone ;-)