Sabato - Domenica

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1 – Sabato / Domenica

I left home just before midnight on Saturday and after dropping the car off at the APH secure car park, I arrived at Manchester Airport at around 2.00am. The booking hall was empty – baggage check-in at 4.35 - so I went off to get a coffee and a quick doze in a chair. When I went back at 4.30 of course, I had to join the back of a giant queue. (My first of many that day!)

We boarded the Air France plane on time at 6.10am for the 6.30 take off and fastened our seat belts. We were still there waiting on the runway at 9.00am! Just under three hours stuck on the plane while the pilot telexed back and forth to Paris because he couldn’t get the lock on his cabin door to work!! In the end, he finally got permission for two British Airways engineers to board and fix it (5 minute job!). In the meantime, one passenger had decided to abandon his trip, so more delays ensued while they off-loaded his luggage. You could feel the waves of despair sweep up and down the plane as various groups of people realised that they had missed their connections at Charles de Gaulle Airport. (The lady opposite me was in tears). Fortunately I had a 4-hour wait in Paris, so I could afford to be fairly stoical, (although I had to keep making my way to the front of the plane to get a hostess to repeat what the latest news was, as I was totally unable to make out what was being mumbled into the tannoy by the captain). In fact, during the last message, I caught something about “off-loading luggage” and went to the hostess convinced I was about to be told that we all had to get off the plane and abandon the flight, so I was very relieved to hear that the message was actually “now that the missing passenger’s luggage has been off-loaded, we can take off in five minutes”.

We finally arrived in Paris at 11.00am – 1 hour to make the flight transfer, (never a guarantee at Charles de Gaulle!) I had a quick look round the shops and then set off early for the departure lounge – only to be confronted by a giant queue to get through security, which took a full 45 minutes to pass through. (Why on earth did we ever have to leave the secure area in the first place?) Fortunately, the Naples flight was delayed (!) So, in the end, instead of a lazy shop in the airport stores and a bite to eat in France before travelling on, I had barely the time to ring my parents before I was in another queue for disembarkation. The Air France flight mysteriously turned into an Alitalia plane and crew, so it was cheese and prosciutto for lunch (but no chianti, because of picking up a hire car in Naples).

From then on, all went smoothly. We landed in Naples at about 2.30pm. I collected my hire car from AVIS and set off for Furore.

The car, a blueberry coloured Nissan Micra (and probably the ugliest car I have ever seen – immediately nicknamed “grenouilletta”) actually turned out to be absolutely ideal for the local driving conditions; very light, very narrow and with good power-assisted steering. The aforementioned driving conditions proved to be quite daunting however - narrow, twisting, windy, hairpin-bendy, mountainous roads with coaches and lorries hurtling in every direction. Add to that a rock face on one side and a sheer drop on the other and a sprinkling of maniacs who think that overtaking on a blind bend is quite reasonable as long as you have a St Christopher medallion swinging from your rear-view mirror; mix in the buzzing swarms of scooter riders who are convinced that they take up no room at all and can therefore disobey all rules of the road and overtake anywhere they feel like it, and you have a feel for the coastal roads of Amalfitana. It isn’t what you’d call relaxed driving!

In spite of all this, it turned out to be a fabulous drive and I was delighted to realise that my qualms about taking on such a notorious trip just after picking up a new car were relatively groundless. Vesuvius is very impressive to drive past (and, having watched the BBC Pompeii film just before setting off, not a little intimidating). I only got lost once (thanks to incorrect directions from Cresta) and I met some very helpful locals who put me back on the right route very quickly. I found the hotel itself fairly easily and booked into a room from heaven.

It was spotless and freshly-decorated. Everything looked like it had never been used before. It was all whites and yellows and there was a balcony that looked out over a view to die for. To the left, the coast spread round the bay to Salerno and beyond. To the right were the white buildings and umbrella pines of Furore clinging to the hillside, and in between, over 600 feet below in a sheer drop was the beautiful Tyrrenian sea, deep blue and dotted with fishing boats bobbing around in the in the light of the setting sun. Having once stepped out onto the balcony, it was hard to leave it and go back in to unpack!

I had dinner in the restaurant. It amounted to a bewildering array of freebie courses mixed in with unheard-of local specialities. I picked a mixture, got something rather different to what I was expecting and realised fairly early on that I had ordered more than I could possible eat or drink. In the end I bade goodnight to the staff and went off to collapse in a very comfortable bed and set about making up for having had no sleep the previous night.