Potential Double Travel Disaster Adverted



For the record I am a a fairly seasoned, somewhat savvy, well researched, experienced, intrepid traveler.  Started young, and did it so regularly for work and fun that not a lot throws me.  I have lost suit cases and survived for days, arrived in foreign cities with no hotel reservations during peak holiday travel, missed planes, driven the wrong way down one way streets, been spit on by camels, survived high fevers alone in countries where few spoke English, been thrown off mopeds, broken multiple bones on an island with only a vet/doctor and a 1954 X-ray machine, slept nights on the local train that that stopped every fifteen minutes, been thrown out of youth hostels for being too loud, found enough cash on the street in France to live for three weeks, out bargained an Egyptian bazaar owner and gotten a lost suitcase back while I was naked.

So far this trip things have gone fairly well.  I made everyone pack in just a carry on bag so there was no chance of the airline loosing our luggage.  The hotels I picked from online reviews have been incredibly nice and the strong dollar that keeps getting stronger while we are here helps a lot. The tours we have taken have been great.  Carter says that Pompeii was the best so far.  The food we have eaten has been, well Italian, need I say any more?  Of course I will be paying for that part next week.

Today, two things happened that could have been huge disaster.  The first was this morning in Positano we wanted to get an early start on our three and a half hour drive to Tivoli to visit the Villa d’Este and it’s incredible gardens with the hundreds of fountains built over five hundred years ago.   

The hotel bellman went to retrieve our car from the hotel parking, where space for cars is at a premium.  He pulled it up in front of the hotel on the skinny space barely wide enough for our car and the huge busses driving both ways on the street.  After he put our luggage in the way back I got in the driver’s seat and he stood in the street to stop any traffic coming in either direction so we could pull out.  As we did a funny sound went off in our rental car, but stopped as soon as we turned off the flashers which the bellman had turned on.  

If you have never driven on the Amalfi drive let me give you a small description of what it is like on a good day.  The road, singular, is a thin strip of asphalt carved out of the cliff with a sheer three hundred foot drop to the sea on one side and a solid rock wall on the other.  It is either climbing uphill or dropping steeply down hill with a hairpin turn every few hundred feet.  The natives drive fast and close, the German Buses are too big to pass side by side with one another, the tiny three wheel workman’s wagons don’t have enough power to make it up the hills at any reasonable speed, people pass cars going the same direction with no where near enough space to see if anyone is coming towards them, but they don’t care, often if a large bus or truck is coming toward you, especially at a curve you have to stop and back up to make room so that someone can go.  

This morning as we were trying to get out of Positano we encountered at least two big busses coming at us that gave us pause, a couple of slow work men’s vehicles and a native or two who passed us.  We had gone about five kilometers when suddenly we noticed a fast motor bike starting to overtake us on the drivers side.  I looked over and noticed it was the bellman from the hotel.  We stopped as a big lorry was blocking the road and the bellman reached out his hand to my window and passed me the key fob to our rental car.  “Sorry,” he said and then turned the motor bike back the other way.  Since our car was keyless and the bellman had started it we were able to drive off without it, but if we had stopped the car we would never have been able to start it again.  We decided that was the alarm sound the car had made as we drove away and it was just coincidental that the alarm went off when we turned off the flashers.  It was incredibly lucky that we had two big busses block our progress as we got out of town, and that I had told the desk clerk where we were going.  The most lucky part is that motorbikes are able to make greater progress since they skip all the traffic by driving in the middle of the road, passed stopped traffic.  Disaster one adverted.

The second potential disaster came after a wonderful visit to the Tivoli and the successful return of our rental car.  We got an uber car to bring us to our hotel,  Since the road was being worked on that the hotel is on we got out and walked with our little rolling suit cases the two blocks to the front door.  As we walked in the tiny boutique hotel Carter said she got a feeling something was wrong from the look on the desk clerk’s face.  Apparently I had booked the hotel for two nights starting tomorrow, not today.  Rookie traveler mistake.

Amazingly enough they happened to have the suite of rooms I had booked free tonight and only our rooms.  The sweet clerk showed us our rooms with a lovely outdoor terrace and Carter announced it was a strong finish to a great vacation.  Lucky day all around.