Bettona, Asissi to Pompeii

Most people have probably heard of St. Francis of Assisi. From the house—Ben’s Breakfast—where we stayed, we could look down into the valley and see Assisi. We left the house about 1 pm with about a 5-hour drive in front of us.

While planning our trip, I had called the Pompeii Youth Hostel several times using Skype and made a reservation for the day after Maura flew into Rome from Spain. The boys and I were going to drive to Naples and meet her at the train station after she rode the train south from Rome. Then we would all drive to Pompeii. After experiencing difficulty driving in Italy, I decided we should get to the area a day earlier. This way we wouldn’t have look for the hostel AND see the ruins of the famous volcano eruption during our ONE day in Pompeii. I called the hostel from Bettona—they said they would be waiting for us. So I would get to the hostel on the same evening that Maura flew into Rome.

I naively thought that I would be able to use the directions from Yahoo maps to find my way to the hostel. These directions are great if you find EVERY landmark and signpost. “Drive 57 miles, turn right onto ramp” is pretty clear; but “Drive 40 meters, turn left. Drive 8 meters, turn right” does not leave much room for error. After asking six or seven people directions, I discovered that we were not even in Pompeii, but about 4 km north of Pompeii on the outskirts of Naples. The narrow two-lane road that lay between us and our destination was a cross between a New York Marathon for vehicles and a Cash-For-Clunkers graveyard.

Once I got to Pompeii, I had the address, which didn’t turn out to be much help. I would ask someone, drive until the end of their directions that I understood and ask someone else. Sometimes only 100 meters away. One time I stopped the truck in the middle what I thought was a deserted street. By the time I got back, six people were standing around my truck, annoyed that some stupid foreigner had parked his car in the way.

What were the boys doing while this transpired? Oskar was sleeping and I luckily had an excellent iPod story about a mouse in a castle, The Tale of Despereux, for Maxim to listen to. He loved it. Life continued as such for some 40 minutes, in Pompeii after we had spent 40 minutes in driving from Naples, and 5 hours driving from Bettona, until I arrived at the address.
Finally, when I found what was surely the address, the person asked about the hostel said, “The hostel is right there (I could see the sign for the Pompeii Youth Hostel), but it has been closed for a year.”

“What?!?” Those two question marks and one exclamation point do not near do justice to my feelings. While my outward voice and expression were muted, because I could see no point in looking like a hysterical foreigner who doesn't know how to travel, but inside my hopes collapsed. How could this be true? I had just called the hostel two days earlier and they said they would be expecting us. My wife was flying into Rome that evening; she would come to the hostel the next day, and then what? Did we have to stay at this empty building all night? What if she found out the hostel was closed? Would she even bother to go there? I told the people opposite the hostel, who were having a birthday party at a restaurant, that the situation couldn’t be worse.

“What number did you call?” they asked. When I showed them they said it was a Pompeii number. Their call was automatically forwarded to Naples—35 km to the north, via a road I never wanted to meet again. So even though the hostel—named Pompeii Youth Hostel was taking reservations, they didn’t bother to tell me that they were not IN Pompeii. The website still says that the hostel is a 5 minutes walk from the buried city. I’m still composing the scathing letter I am planning to post on some hostile hostel website.

Anyway, a man at the party where I made the call worked as a tour guide in the city. On his second try, he found a hotel for us—right outside the gates of the ruins. I didn't care how much it cost, ($140/night) I was happy to find something. The hotel was in the midst of hosting a Roman feast with greeters in classic Roman uniforms, swords and weaponry including fake snow machine to add authentic(?) atmosphere. In the end, Maura had sent me a text message on her phone telling me that she was delayed because of snow storms. Luckily, we both had enough money on our phones to communicate to each our plans and locations. She made it the next day without much incident, so the worry of the evening passed. My extreme worry and utter failure of logistics turned out not to be a problem after all.

Next installment: What did we listen to on the way to Pompeii? Second grader Maxim is a junky for news and information. We listened to a 90-minute walking tour of the Pompeii ruins—TWICE.