Mr. Lott, Professor Rosko, John, and I went to Castelluccio today. It was about a 45- minute drive from the villa. On the way there, we stopped in a little town called Norcia (nor-cheea), also known as the pork capital of the world. There was one main street lined with shops, every other one being a pork shop with cheeses and breads. I kept thinking how much Matt Bacon would have loved it!! We walked around the town for about an hour going in and out of shops, touring the church, getting lost in the narrow passageways. Mr. Lott bought us porchettas, sliced pork on the most delicious bread you will ever eat, and. We took our sandwiches to go and stopped for a picnic on the way to Castelluccio. Surrounding the little town are mountains covered in yellow and blue wildflowers. We climbed up a hill overlooking the town from about 5 miles away and enjoyed our lunches. The first bite of the porchetta changed my life. Who knew something so simple could be so amazing. After lunch we drove into the town and walked around, taking in the astounding view of snow-covered mountains in the distance hovering over a seemingly endless valley that will soon be covered in red poppies, daisies, and wildflowers. We walked back to the car and began our windy drive down the mountain and back to the villa. I just finished my first writing assignment for my travel writing class, and I thought I would go ahead and share it with you. While bits and pieces of this story have been slightly changed, the vast majority of it is 100% true. Sam, don’t take any offense J. The prompt was: Describe a disastrous travel experience. It’s kind of lengthy, but here you go!
Three-Hour Tour
My oldest brother, Sam, has never met a stranger. He could go into the deepest and darkest recesses of the world and find someone he knows or at least leave with ten new friends. He also lacks any fear when it comes to trying new things. His motto tends to be act first, think later. While this attitude has landed him in many undesirable situations- some I cannot name for legal reasons- it has also provided him with countless stories of his adventures. That’s why when my parents asked me what I wanted for my high school graduation, I told them I wanted to go on a trip with Sam. I wanted to be able to live the stories he tells me about and be apart of new ones he would tell. My parents were generous enough to send us to Europe for two and a half weeks together to travel through Italy, France, and Spain. I knew it was going to be the time of my life, but then we arrived in Naples, Italy.
We arrived in Naples around 10:00 pm. I had seen pictures of Naples with the sun glittering on the crystal clear water. It was raining when we arrived. We were completely exhausted from traveling and couldn’t wait to get to the hotel, but then Sam’s try-everything-once attitude kicked in. What I once admired so much was about to become my worst enemy. For some reason I will never understand, Sam rented a car for us to drive around Naples, up the coast, and to Rome where we would return it. At first, I was open-minded about it. He told me he could drive a stick shift and that he got directions to the hotel from the guy working at the car rental desk. We learned quickly that in the middle of the night when it is raining, workers in Naples don’t exactly jump up to help you find your car. After thirty minutes of lugging our bags around two separate parking lots, we finally found our car, which was no bigger than the Tonka trunks we played with as children. We packed the trunk and were finally on our way, almost. We must have stalled out at least four times before we actually left the parking lot, but we finally left and were en route to the hotel.
After a few minutes of driving, Sam handed me the sheet that the desk worker wrote the directions on so that I could navigate, but only if he needed it. At first I thought he handed me a doodle. There were arrows and scribbles and what was supposed to be a rough map but actually looked like some of the “art” I made in kindergarten. I asked Sam if he had looked at the directions before we left and he said the guy explained everything while he was drawing, so he was confident he would be able to find the way. “It’s all up here,” he said, pointing to his head, which I guess was supposed to serve as some sort of mental Garmin. By this point, it was about 11:30 pm and still raining at a constant rate. As I tried to decipher the hieroglyphics on the piece of paper, I noticed something that was about to make our journey much more difficult. The streets in Naples do not have street signs. None of them. Anywhere. So, even if I could decipher the directions in front of me, there was no way we could follow them. We had to navigate via various landmarks to make sure we weren’t going in circles. I would say, “I think we passed that pizzeria.” To which Sam would reply, “No. The one we passed had a sex shop next to it and a homeless guy with no legs in a wheelchair sitting out front.” He was right. Another fun fact we learned about Naples is that they do not have a trash system. The streets were covered in trash, and we would sometimes turn down a road only to encounter a wall of trash that served as a dead end. What was this? This was not the beautiful, sunny place that I imagined smelled of pizza and Italian cologne. This was a labyrinth whose walls were made of wet trash and smelled like a sewer- false advertising at its best. I was starting to get a little anxious and asked Sam to stop for better directions. What he should have done was pull over, found someone who spoke English and/or had some level of artistic ability, and effortlessly guided us to the hotel. What he actually did was immediately deny he was lost and kept driving. This was turning into a disaster, and I was starting to think we were going to have to sleep in this tiny capsule of pure evil.
He continued driving/stalling out for the next hour. We were coming up to a police car, and I begged him to stop and ask for directions. He finally stopped, and we told the police man the name of our hotel and asked him for directions. While his face said what his words didn’t have to, he told us in thickly accented, broken English, “Eh, that-a hotel-a is in-a not so nice-a area. There are-a many of the-a prostitutes.” Of course there were. With the way the trip was going so far, I would have expected nothing less. Regardless, the policeman said we could follow him to the hotel. He got in his car, turned on his blue lights, and we began to follow him, or rather chase him. He peeled off of the curve like a bat out of Hell. I imagined him pretending he was Mario Andretti on his last lap of a Formula One race, and we were in the car he was trying to beat. We swerved in and out of traffic trying to keep an eye on the police car like a gambler trying to keep his eye on the queen card being shuffled around. Left, middle, right, middle, he’s exiting! And that’s where our police escort ended. All hope seemed lost, just like we were. I was on the verge of tears from exhaustion and frustration when out of the corner of my eye I saw something glowing like a light from Heaven. It was a bright and beautiful Holiday Inn sign shinning above all the other buildings. I ordered Sam to drive towards the light. Just like the three magi, we followed our “star” to our salvation. We checked in around 1:00 am and passed out on the double bed, the only option available. But at this point, we were so tired that I think we would have even taken our original hotel, prostitutes and all.
The next morning, it was still raining and Sam suggested we cut our stay in Naples short and go straight to Rome. I was completely on board with that plan under one condition: return the car in Naples and take the train to Rome. I think Sam was willing to give driving another try, but he agreed to return the car for my sanity. The hotel clerk told us the hotel could take care of the car for us, so we packed up, called a taxi, and were driven to the train station. On the way, the taxi driver got lost, twice. I couldn’t help but smile thinking even he couldn’t navigate this maze. On the train ride to Rome, I was thinking how terrible the trip had been so far, but then I realized, it could only go up from here, and I now had exactly what i wanted: a story to tell, just like Sam.
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