Driving Along the Sea

May 24

Note: I wrote this on Friday except we had a lousy internet connection, so I had trouble uploading pictures. It’s not much better at our flat in Caserta so I thought I’d publish what I could and do the rest of the pictures later. Thanks. L & P

After an hour-long drive in Friday morning rush hour (luckily, we weren’t driving) we picked up the car at the airport. In the past we’ve gotten small to medium sized cars which were great, but this time Peter wanted something smaller. So, we ended up with a Lancia Ypsilon. It’s not exactly a tiny car but it’s pretty small. There is just enough room in the trunk for our two carryon size bags, a backpack and Peter’s CPAP machine. Driving in southern Italy, we absolutely don’t want to have anything in sight of the Vespa bandits so luckily everything fits. Peter says it drives well, though, so I guess that’s a good thing. And the small size will be a benefit later in the day.

From the airport we headed south to the Sicily Rome American Cemetery in Nettuna, just north of Anzio. Like the other military cemeteries in Europe, it was beautiful. We were almost the only ones there but later in the evening they were celebrating the 75th anniversary of allied forces breaking through the German Gustav Line on 23 May 1945. Unfortunately, we weren’t staying that long but it would have been nice to see.

We wanted to find a nice place on the beach to eat our sandwiches but ended up driving around the tiny streets of several small villages without finding a beach. So, we decided to just head to Gaeta and have lunch there. We didn’t have a place to stay so I took a shot at booking.com and found a nice place for a very reasonable rate ($69/night). But….I wasn’t able to book it because the site wanted to confirm my phone number by sending me a text. Since we no longer have our U.S. SIM cards in our phones and our Italian cards don’t allow texts, we decided just to head to the hotel and hope for the best.

Have you ever driven into a small Italian town? Well….it certainly is an adventure. We set the GPS to the first place I found, and it took us to an apartment building. It’s possible that what I thought was a hotel was actually someone’s apartment that they were renting (like Airbnb) but without reservations it was a no-go. Strike one!

Plan B was a bed and breakfast that was only 0.5 km from the first address. I’m not sure what the GPS was trying to do but we ended up on a couple of tiny streets that were dead ends. Peter ended up either backing up down the street or making a 3-point turn to get out. Thank god for this teeny car or he would have never made it. We finally found the street the B&B was supposed to be on, but it was barely wide enough for the 2-person bike we rented at Villa Borghese earlier this week. To make matters worse, there were a couple of workmen on ladders that made the street even more narrow. On top of everything, we didn’t find the B&B. Strike two!

I went back to the booking.com site to look for a hotel that didn’t cost a fortune and found Hotel Gajeta right off the sea. It was a short drive from our second address, and we found it with no problem. Even though the booking site had a room for under 100 euro, the price quoted was significantly higher, but we didn’t want to push our luck trying to find something else. So, we spent much more than we usually spend for a hotel but have a beautiful sea view.

Ironically, the hotel is right across the street from the U.S. Navy base. Gaeta clinic was on my “dream sheet” my entire Navy career but I never got stationed here. Now that I’ve been here, I’m glad I went to Sigonella instead. This really is a small town and there’s not much to do here.

After having skipped lunch, we were both starving. The hotel clerk told us about a great pizza place so off we went in search of pizza. Except, we’re no longer in a big city so restaurants don’t open until 8pm. We went to a bar with outside tables and decided we’d have a drink (and the chips and peanuts that came with it) and go back out later for pizza. After spending a little time on our roof top deck, we’re back in the room until it’s time for pizza. We’ll let you know how it tastes. (Note from Lynn: It was delicious.)

Tomorrow we head to the Abbey at Montecassino which has a museum that, in part, covers the WWII battle that took place there. Then it’s on to Caserta where we’ll stay for 4 nights while we continue our exploration of Naples.

Talk with you tomorrow.