Italian Cars, Roads, and Drivers (Some of which is common to Europe)

After driving for a few days in Sorrento, some of the most intense driving of my life, I thought I’d share a few observations.

First off, cars in Europe are much smaller than in North America and much smaller than North Americans would regard as compacts cars.  There are many models of cars in Europe that we never find out about and even Smart Cars – which I think we regard as small- are not small by European standards.  Our car, a Peugeot 407 Station Wagon (SW) is one of the larger cars on road and is only just able to squeeze through the tighter spots.

European roads are much narrower than I expected – this isn’t only a comment about the streets in the old town areas of European cities – it applies to other types of streets, roads, and highways also.  I see many cars with dangling side view mirrors and I have no doubt that they got to this condition through a close encounter with the side of an narrow street or another car’s mirrors that was passing in the opposite direction.

In Italy, scooters are everywhere.  Not only parked but in transit.  They flit from side to side on the road and will often pass cars on the middle part of the road – in both directions!  Just to make this a bit clearer, picture a two lane road with car and truck traffic going in both directions.  Now add another two lanes of scooter traffic passing between the two lanes of car and truck traffic.  You get the idea.  However, in spite of traveling over 11,000 kilometers in all types of driving conditions, I have yet to see an accident, although I saw a few close calls.

Outside the cities in Italy, it pays to drive with half your car on the shoulder, if one is available.  This is because Italian drivers assume the centre line is for passing (both directions)and will pass in the most unlikely spots.  So, in Italy, a two lane road, assuming it has shoulders, becomes a four lane road and engenders a few white knuckles if you decide to drive in one of the two middle lanes.

Nov 26 – 29, 2009 – Sorrento, Italy – Our hotel and the off-season

As we have done many times on this trip we used Internet sites – in this case www.booking.com – to find a hotel in Sorrento.  The benefit of using the web sites is they will confirm your reservation immediately so if you’re booking at the last minute as we often are, you don’t have time to go through the e-mail exchange that is the usual pattern of confirming a hotel room in Europe.

So we booked three nights at the ‘Hotel Villa Giovanna’, sight unseen, and arrived late from Rome – Zagorolo because we’d left late and stopped enroute to visit Hadrian’s Villa.  At this time of the year the sun sets relatively early, around 5:30 – 6:00 pm, so you don’t have to be too late to arrive in the dark.

So we arrived in Sorrento in the dark and our GPS took us to the Via Nastro Verde, alleged location of  Hotel Villa Giovanna.  As it turns out Via Nastro Verde is long and windy and one of the primary routes between Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast so after one trip up the hill we decided we needed more specific instructions and headed down the hill to ask for directions at a hotel in Sorrento.  They confirmed we had been in the right area so we headed back up the hill, stopping at a hotel before finding someone who spoke excellent English and told us that the Villa Giovanna was the ‘annex’ of the Hotel Johanna Park, for which we had seen a sign on one of trips up and down the hillside.

So we headed further up the hill and turned in at the Hotel Johanna Park and we assured by the proprietress that we had come to the right place.  There was one other guest at this hotel, an Australian family the father of which happened to be having a beer in the lobby when we arrived. 

According to the proprietress the previous week they had been full and the following week they were due to be full but in the week we planned to stay, we were to be the only guests as the Australian family was checking out the following morning.

Anyhow, the photo below is of the Hotel Johanna Park and it was shut for most of our stay as it was without guests due to the season.

 

Down below this hotel by about 50 meters was the Hotel Villa Giovanna, the main building of which Charlotte is posing in front.  This was where we stayed and we were the only guests in this building for our three nights.  It also was a very nice building; beautifully finished in different colored marble and with nice public spaces around the main floor.

It had its own office and one of the people that worked there was a young man named Giorgio.  I think he had adopted an Italian version of his real name because once we got talking it turned out he was a recent immigrant from Georgia whose long term plan was to get to North America, preferably the US, alternatively Canada.  An interesting guy who obviously liked North Americans he told us about some of the sights in the area and how to get access to the hotel’s wireless Internet connection.

This is a picture of Charlotte doing some school work on the balcony attached to our room.  It overlooked a grove of olive and orange trees.

This is the view of the Bay of Naples from the same balcony we could easily observe freighters and ferries passing through these waters.

Here is a picture of Jean-Pierre Peugeot, all by itself in the hotel’s parking lot.  I was trying for a bit of an artsy shot, showing our car through these palm trees.  This picture shows a different species of palm trees than what we most commonly see.  I think these, particularly the one on the right, look like giant pineapples with their squat trunks and fronds on top.

Nov 26 – 29, 2009 – Sorrento, Italy – Amalfi Coast

Sorrento is at the north end of the Amalfi Coast.  We took a day trip on the intercity bus (which picked us up right in front of our hotel) south to the city of Amalfi on the highway that is about 500 ft up often sheer cliffs from the ocean.  Follow this Google map link which is centered on Positano,  the city in the middle of the Amalfi Coast.

This photo is taken from the bus and gives an idea of the steepness of the Amalfi Coast mountainside. 

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Another photo from the bus showing a typical view with houses attached to the sheer cliffs of the Coast.

 

This is the main street of Amalfi.  The light colored building on the right of the photo is its church.  To the left in this photo was the bus depot where we arrived and from which buses were coming and going at a great rate.  We paid about 14 Euros for all day passes that allowed us on and off privileges on the local buses.  However, we couldn’t really take full advantage of the passes because Allister had the flu and was a good sport to come along.

 

After we arrived in Amalfi we saw that some of the waves had a chance to get the pedestrians and cars passing by on the road protected by guardrail wet.  We didn’t have to wait long before it happened.  Allister has a good video of the trophy wave.

 

This turtle lived in tank located in an Amalfi square.  We have a soft spot for turtles so we hung out with this one for a while.

This picture was taken from facing south from Amalfi and shows the incredible ruggedness and beauty of this coastline.

On the return trip, I took this picture of Positano from the bus.  On my next visit to this area I’m going to get out and walk around Positano for an afternoon.  It looked incredibly beautiful.

This photo shows a stretch of the highway attached to the side of the mountain.  I make no secret of the fact that my stomach was doing a few flip flops as our bus trip progressed.

The buses (and possibly cars) are equipped with special horns that are used to signal an approach to the many one-lane corners on the highway.  Some of the cities along the Coast have put up these signs to try to control the noise of these horns.

Laura-Lyn took this picture of the bus driver talking on his cell phone as he navigated the one-lane roads, oncoming buses, sheer cliffs and blind corners.  The bus driver on the return trip was talking with another passenger for much of the trip and in true Italian fashion, using one or both hands while doing it.

Nov 26 – 29, 2009 – Sorrento, Italy – Pompeii

One of our reasons for staying in Sorrento was its proximity to Pompeii.  Both are south of Naples (see this link to a Google Map showing Pompeii, Naples, and Sorrento) but have their own distinct driving challenges.  More about that later.

Our day at Pompeii was cloudy and off-and-on showers that steady rain by the time we completed our visit.  In between, we took these images of the site. 

Many of the Pompeii artifacts (that were uncovered with the structures) are in a Naples museum and the archaeological site was out of stock of the English language brochures that described the site so we relied on our guidebooks to work our way around a part of the very large site.

The lava from the volcano that buried Pompeii entombed its citizens and then, as their remains decayed, left these solid shapes of their bodies.

 

We had learned about Roman cities and their typical features during our visits to Arles and Orange in France and Pompeii had many things in common with those cities.

Pompeii also had an integrated water system, like other Roman cities we had studied (see our posts on the Pont du Gard in Avignon, for other examples) and one of its applications was to flood the streets to clean them of debris and wash them clean. 

In the photo below, the blocks of stone that cross the street acted like a raised crosswalk when the streets were flooded, allowing pedestrians to cross the street.  We were also told the grooves in the pavement on either side of the centre stone were created by ox carts that passed through the streets (in apparently large numbers and with great frequency).

 

There wasn’t a day that we were in the Naples-Sorrento area that Mt Vesuvius wasn’t covered with cloud.  Here is a picture, taken from the car, that shows Vesuvius in its usual state.

Nov 26 – 29, 2009 – Sorrento, Italy

As mentioned in other posts, we stopped at Sorrento (see this Google Map link for its location)because its is a scenic place that is a good base to visit both the Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast.  You reach it by traveling south from Naples over a narrow two lane road that is packed with traffic.  Sorrento is not a large city and is located on the bench between the ocean and  the mountains in the photo below.

This is a view from the town down the cliff to one of the two Sorrento harbors.

As some may know, Sorrento is quite touristy and has apparently been a favourite of those in colder Northern European climates and the jet set for many years.  The following photo shows one of a number of quite swank hotels located along the edge of the cliff with a view of the ocean.

I suppose the way to describe Sorrento’s climate is ‘Mediterranean’.  This is one of a few palm tree species we saw and an orange tree. 

On the subject of palm trees, Sorrento was the first place we saw evidence of Christmas decorations.  In its main town square there was an evergreen and a palm tree and one night while walking after dinner out for dinner we saw both illuminated with Christmas lights.  The illuminated image of both trees were a striking contrast – the lights for the evergreen were uniform from top to bottom in an inverted cone shape.  The palm tree Christmas lights, on the other hand, were attached to the tree’s fronds and only illuminated the very top of the tree.

Just up from the street from where the above picture was taken was a hotel whose outside wall contained this plaque, a tribute to one of Sorrento’s famous citizens – Enrico Caruso, the famous tenor.

We saw these parking lot signs throughout Europe (Germany, Spain, France, Italy) and thought they were a great idea.  The parking lot sign gives directions to the lot and whether it has available spaces.  The night this picture was taken we were on our way to the Pollio parking lot, the lot referred to in the top sign below.

 

Another night we were walking Sorrento before dinner we came upon the local soccer team practicing at their field.  We were fortunate that when we arrived the team was scrimmaging – playing an intra-squad game – and the quality of play was quite high.  We weren’t the only ones watching the practice there were probably 100 others scattered around the field doing the same.