Day 78: Wednesday 4 June – Rome to Naples And Beyond, by Ken

I programmed the satnav first thing to take us to the port in Naples where we were booked on 20:15 sailing to Palermo in Sicily. Having worked perfectly yesterday(eventually) in getting us to Rome, it was now denying any knowledge of an autostrada between Rome and Naples. We knew better, we had driven it two years ago.

The only wi-fi in the camping ground was in the bar/restaurant area. I went down there having decided to connect to the TomTom website take the Europe Camper map off the satnav and reload it thinking that might fix our problem. I had no difficulty in removing the map, but it didn’t reappear in my map library. Thinking there was a bug in the map and not wanting to reload the non-camper map that was in the library, I decided the best way forward to purchase another copy of the camper map. AU$125 later the map began to download, but painfully slowly. I went back to Jane and got her to mind the laptop and satnav while I got Mabel ready for the road.

Waiting For The New Map To Download

Jane sat patiently outside Camping Tiber’s bar watching the percentage download creep upwards painfully slowly, 1% at a time. I returned with Mabel and parked her in the bus park nearby watched nervously by two Hungarian drivers who had just finished cleaning their bus. I never got within metres of them.

Nearly Lunchtime and Still Waiting

Jane started a log of the download speed, it fluctuated but 1% was taking 3 – 4 minutes. At that rate it could take 5 or 6 hours. I bought us breakfast of coffee and croissants from the bar and we watched and watched and watched the percentages tick by painfully slowly. By noon, four hours after the download started, my laptop had acquired 71%. It could easily take another two hours to complete and we would run the risk of missing the ferry. Mabel has a satnav and while it doesn’t take account of her size when planning routes, I thought there was little chance of her taking us down a blind alley when there were autostrada that would take us virtually all the way to the port in Naples. Jane agreed to my suggestion that we use Mabel to navigate and I purchase some data for my iPhone and continue the download on the move. I thought NZ$50 would cover it easily.

We hadn’t got very far at all when my phone beeped and informed me all the data had been consumed. I wasn’t prepared to keep feeding it $50 of data a time to continue the download, it would have cost an absolute fortune. Jane wasn’t at all happy!

We stopped at a service area near Tivoli to fill Smarty and at another to eat lunch. We were on the autostrada we took from the Amalfi Coast to Rome, via Naples two years ago. In the distance we could see the monastery on Monte Casino which was destroyed in World War II by allied bombing. We had visited the site two years ago, I was keen to see the place where my dad had been during the war.

Monte Casino

We were ahead of time and took a break 20km north of Naples. We set off again aiming to arrive at the port 2 ½ hours before our ferry was scheduled to depart at 20:15. The traffic became a lot heavier as the massive cone of Mount Vesuvius came into view. We saw the hairiest piece of driving yet when a car travelling very fast overtook everything in sight taking a weaving path using all three lanes.

Mable’s satnav wasn’t as easy to use as the TomTom. The screen is built in to the dash and it was difficult to look at it without taking our eyes off the road for what seemed a dangerous length of time. We overcame this by the non-driver reading the map, calling out turn directions and counting down  distances to turns. All of the above are clearly displayed on the Tom Tom which we had mounted at eye level where the rear view mirror would normally be. Her satnav did also speak directions but we preferred more notice in order to be in the correct lane for a turn. Mabel’s satnav’s vocabulary was also different, one announcement in particular confused Jane. Did “prepare to turn left in 300 metres” mean that in 300 metres you started getting ready for a turn some way ahead, or start preparing now and turn in 300 metres? Jane’s habit of overanalysing things at times  can be quite entertaining.

Mable's Satnav on the Autostrada to Naples (79km to our exit, take another motorway after 670m, 0:57 GMT, 85km/hour, Heading 120 degrees approx.)

Mable’s satnav did a good job and leaving the autostrada it was easy enough to follow all the trucks bound for the port. Our previous experience of catching a ferry had been at Dover which was simplicity itself, well organised, clear directions from staff and good signage. Naples wasn’t like that! The port is ancient, I’m sure my dad would have recognised it from the wartime days when his truck ferried supplies from the port up to the front line. Decrepit sprung to mind, and it seemed that everywhere were half hearted abandoned attempts to improve the awful road network. We were stopped by a guy in uniform who gave us a very friendly buenosera.. We asked him the way to the Tirrenia terminal and we think he told us to follow the road straight ahead and turn right at the third roundabout. The place was a shambles with signs pointing in all directions, mainly for bars and trattoria. It was far from clear what constituted a roundabout, at the second crossroads we came to there was a sign that read ‘Tirrenia Parking’. We ignored it, we wanted to board our ferry. There was a roundabout at the third intersection where we were stopped by a security guard who wanted to see our tickets. I opened up my laptop and showed him the Direct Ferries booking confirmation. I’m not sure what he said but the look on his face and raising of voice would have been something to the effect that I was a f***ing idiot and should have gone to the booking office to get boarding passes. Clearly arrangements in Italy differ from the slick computerised number plate recognition based system in Dover that has all the paperwork ready for you when you pull up at the check-in window. As she does at times like this Jane began to fret that we could miss our ferry, in spite of there being nearly two hours before it was due to sail.

The security man pointed down a road and indicated we should follow it for 300 metres. 400 metres later there was nothing resembling a booking office to be seen. I parked Mabel at the roadside and set off on foot to see what I could find. I took a side street on the left and at the end of that there was a large canopied parking area with an adjacent building with people leaving clutching pieces of paper. I walked back to Mabel and drove her round the block passing the ‘Tirrenia Parking’ sign on the way. I found somewhere to park under the canopy and walked over to the building. It was chaos, full of people milling around lots of different booking offices for trains, buses and ferries, but I couldn’t see a ‘Tirrenia’ sign anywhere. I eventually found their office in a quiet wing off the main concourse. I showed a man behind the window the booking confirmation on my laptop, he nodded and motioned me to close it. A few minutes later I had my passes.

We headed out under the canopy, ahead I could see the roundabout with the security man that had doubts about my sanity and headed for it. That generated yells from men just ahead, I was heading for a one way street. Fortunately my security friend didn’t see us. I just managed to make a tight right turn and drove around a block to reach the roundabout via the correct route. Our passes were examined and we were directed towards the stern of the MV Vincenzo Florio. It was still very early and I was expecting a longish wait on the quayside. Much to our surprise we were directed onto the loading ramp and onto the vehicle deck. There deck hands ushered us to a parking spot with Mabel facing forwards hard up against a large truck facing aft. The ferry was a stern loader and we were either going t have to reverse off, or do a U-turn, space permitting.

Boarding

Escalators took us up from the vehicle deck to a reception desk. The staff there and elsewhere were very smartly dressed. We were given two key cards for a cabin which was along a long corridor with a heavy carpet towards the ship’s bows. The private cabin for our use was great, spacious with four bunks and its own small bathroom. Our only concern was the high likelihood of banging our heads on the upper bunks during the night.

Our Cabin With Not a Lot of Headroom Beneath The Top Bunks

We dumped our backpacks in our cabin and headed to the stern and watched the loading process for a while. Large articulated trucks were reversing into the ship with the precision of a Swiss watch. It’s all down to practice I guess.

Trucks Reversing Aboard

We walked forward and found the cafeteria that wasn’t open yet. Heading back we passed the windows of a restaurant with tables laid with starched white cloths, cutlery that glinted in the early evening sun and gleaming glasses. It looked expensive. We came to the bar, a very large space with tables, armchairs and sofas, it looked luxurious. I ordered a Negroni and a Diet Coke at the bar, the barman didn’t understand Negroni, I explained the ingredients, he said I could have gin, martini or campari, nut not all three. I settled for a G and T and was directed to a cashier sitting separately from the bar to pay. Sitting with our drinks it appeared I had got it all wrong, the locals were ordering and paying the cashier for their drinks and taking a docket over to the barmen to obtain the drinks.

Bar

We walked back to the caffeteria which was open and quite busy. Jane chose veal and fries, I had a vegetable lasagna with salad. By the time we had finished eating it was almost departure time. We walked back to the stern of the ship, as we did so it started to move – it was 20:18, just 3 minutes later than scheduled.

Farewell Naples

As we moved away from our berth a Grandi Navi Veloci ferry that should have left for Palermo 15 minutes before us was casting off and it followed us out of the harbour, much slower than us presumably to give some headway. We stayed on deck for a while watching Naples recede while a flock of seagulls followed, diving into our wake. On the starboard side we could see Mount Vesuvius silhouetted against the evening sky and ahead was the Isle of Capri.

Fast Ferry to Capri

Competing Ferry (the fare was a lot more expensive than ours)

Mount Vesuvius at Sunset

We returned to the bar for more drinks, this time I knew the ropes and placed our orders with the cashier. In front of us a crowd formed arranging seats in front of a television screen to watch football. Italy was playing Luxembourg, presumably it was a World Cup warm up match.

Football Crowd

It was time for bed. Jane had taken her seasick pills a while back and was hoping for a good crossing.

Today's Trip (234km)