Bell'Italia

Today I hopped on an Alitalia flight to Rome and met up with Mom and many of our old friends from Huntsville, AL. Long ago I decided that, although Alitalia typically provided attractive flight attendants and good food, I didn’t trust its maintenance and engineering. This flight validated my mistrust! My armrest literally fell off and pieces of plastic were hanging down from the ceiling—I hope at least the wings were in better shape! We arrived late of course but I finally met up with our travel group.

We rented two HUGE vans, the likes of which are not commonly seen in Europe, for the 12 of us and made our way down to the Amalfi Coast. We stopped in Latina for lunch but just about everything was closed for pre-Easter Saturday. We did find a little bread/cheese/other shop, though, where they sold freshly made ricotta and mozzarella. They got a big kick out of the random Americans dropping in and they loaded us up with lots of extra food for free despite our attempts to compensate them. They insisted that we needed nourishment for our drive and I think it all would have gone bad anyway over the holiday weekend. Grazie!

It’s a good thing we had extra food too, because we didn’t arrive at our villa in Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi until nearly midnight. On our way we missed several turns due to poor signage and were stuck in an hour of traffic due to an overturned potato truck. Driving these huge vans (nicknamed by the locals “grandevans” insead of “minivans!”) through windy coastal and mountain roads turned out to be no small feat either! Finally, though, we made it, dined on wine, bread, and cheese, then collapsed around 2 AM.

Benritornato in Italia!