Pbenjay's Blog

DO WE GO LEFT OR RIGHT? Gauche or Droit?

Finally I’m at the counter and luckily my agents speaks English.  Oh! Some other agent assigned our car to someone else.  No problem, she promises us a better car, an upgrade!  And to our pleasant surprise it has automatic transmission, not the standard shift we paid for,  it’s a Ford Focus.  Now we have to travel to another part of the airport that is a giant parking garage.  Following signs for Hertz, we go down and down to the lowest level in the garage.  There is a short line to enter into the Hertz office and it’s now 11:30am.  Whatever happened to my plan of arriving in Rome early in the morning, having a leisurely breakfast and then toodling off to a picturesque drive to the mountains?

We signed lots of papers and received the keys and now we just have to find the car in space 501.  You know, I have no idea what a Ford Focus looks like or any other car for that matter unless it’s a Jeep, a VW Bug or a Corvette because after those they pretty much all look alike.  Well what do you know, we found the car without too much tsuris.  I unlock the car, we load it up and get in, it’s really quite comfortable.  That’s going to be a bonus for the long ride.  Any millennial readers out there?  You’re going to love this part!

How Do You Turn This Damn Car On?

We couldn’t start the car!!!! Yes it was a keyless starter, we figured that part out.  Peter pressed the button several times and nothing happened.  By now the car is hot, I’m hot and tired so I open the doors.  I looked all through the glove box and all the papers they gave me and I can’t find any manual.  This is JUST GREAT!  After many attempts, I suggest we find someone because this getting ridiculous.   I spied a young girl who had a name tag so I went to her and asked for her assistance and she spoke English.   She got in the car, pressed the button and the car started! Geez- us!  She then proceeded to explain about the automatic transmission settings and where the lights were WHEN I stopped her, we know how to drive, we just couldn’t start the car so what did you do?  Well, I’m sure everyone else knows, she put her foot on the brake when she pressed the button.

Let’s just get the hell out of here…. The car rental agent gave me a map to get onto the autostrada and it was  not as bad as I thought it would be, perhaps the Guardian Angel on the roof helped, although Peter denies their existence.  We are on our way!  Half the day is long gone, and we have a 3 hour trip ahead of us.  Meantime, Pasquale has been messaging me to find out if we landed and are we on our way.  We are, but when he asks me where we are, I haven’t a clue.  The journey was not as picturesque as I had hoped. I had mapped out two routes, one went south along the coast till we would have turn inland and east to reach Guardia.  That route would take a least 4 hours, so now that we are so late in leaving Rome I have to abandon the thought of stopping along the way in little seaside towns.  We are on the autostrada which is Italy’s equivalent to driving on I-95 😦 .  At least it’s sunny and clear and Peter can drive faster than if we were on I-95.  

I keep checking Dario’s hand-drawn map directing us to follow signs for Naples and to turn off when we see the signs for Caianello.  Getting closer because we’re now heading north and east.  The map isn’t so clear at this point and we have come to the end of a road.  DO WE GO LEFT OR RIGHT?   To the right, there is one sign indicating Telese, a town I knew to be close to Guardia Sanframondi from my research.  To the left, there are multiple signs for restaurants, stores etc.  I say we should to right, Peter says we should go left.  We went LEFT.  At this point, there’s nothing on Dario’s map that is either clear or that we can understand.  I turn on the GPS, a feature we have finally come to appreciate after a few trips to Florida.  OMG!!! She is SPEAKING IN ITALIAN!   Peter reminds me that there must be a way to change languages, so I locate that feature and THE ONLY OTHER LANGUAGE AVAILABLE IS FRENCH!  We’re f____d for sure.  

     NO PASSING – NO KIDDING!     WHO GOES FIRST?

The road which looked so paved and normal soon turned into gravel roads and then dirt roads.  I am frantically searching the online map to see where we are twisting and turning  and she is now spewing out directions in French (Peter’s choice).  We go à gauche, we turn maintenant (now) when she commands.  We are on roads, if you can call them that, that have the universal road sign noting that the road is only passable by one car at a time.  We are really nervous, driving in never-ending twists and turns, olive groves and cherry orchards all around us.  I think we are on someone’s land!  Although we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, way off in the distance to the right I saw the remains of a castle and I knew it was Guardia from all the photos I looked at but the way to get there was not at all apparent.  

                                                                                                          to be continued….