It’s the start of the second day of our three-day get-away and we’re heading East through rolling countryside and enough vineyards and wineries to make Napa Valley nervous. Our destination today is the tiny commune of Montefalcone di Val Fortore located high in the mountains about 50 miles northeast of Naples. It’s here that my husband’s grandfather was born, and for the past 24 years, it’s where we’ve focused our search for grandpa’s birth record. So, after all these years, my husband’s finally going to set eyes on this place. Seeing this town firsthand is a very important part of him discovering his Italian heritage.
Settling comfortably into our little rental car, we hope today will be an easy, relaxing ride. We haven’t gone far when suddenly looming ahead is the massive Aqueduct of Vanvitelli. This massive, three-tier, 26-mile aqueduct (183 feet high) spans the highway and our highway lane is running directly through one of its arches. Quickly grabbing my phone, I’m able to capture some great photos plus a video of us driving through the arch!
Speeding along, it seems like our road is running directly through miles of vineyards with grapevines all just inches away from the car. Once we pass all this and start ascending the hills, the road opens and we are treated to views of vast valleys, patchworked in lush shades of green, far below us.
Google navigation is now eating up my phone power and the car’s mobile plug-in is not working. We exit at the city of Benevento to buy a power pack and a coffee, in that order! It’s a large city and surprisingly easy to navigate but finding a place to park is hard and finding a place to buy a power pack is even harder. Eventually we find one at a grocery store and get back on the highway, confident we now have a power source if we should need it.
Our road is taking us through many small farming towns each with roundabouts offering four to eighteen options for turning. We’ve been steadily climbing for a while and each curve in the road is bringing views that simply take our breath away. The hills are now peppered with gigantic wind turbines slowly churning the air; some close enough to make you feel you’ve shrunk and are gazing up at a gigantic pinwheel. There’s little to no traffic on this last stretch of road and there’re no guardrails to protect you from the sheer drop-offs! On the final steep ascent into town, we’re so high up, I feel I can reach out and touch a cloud.
The town is Lilliputian and looks like it was plucked from a nursery rhyme book. The tiny, steep, cobblestoned-streets go up and down like a miniature roller-coaster – skateboarders would have a blast here! I get out of the car and carefully walk a short way down an extremely steep street to get a photo of an unusual house. Turning to go back up, I feel I could simply put my arms out in front of me, lean forward slightly, and scale back up! A few minutes of roller-coastering the few streets here and we finally locate the convent where grandpa was left as an infant and lived until he was 16. It’s riposo now, so everything’s closed, and the town is shuttered and deserted. We want to speak to someone at the convent and possibly look at their records for more info, but the convent is not open to visitors due to the virus.
The wind’s really whipping up now just ahead of a storm. Everything’s locked up and we’ve seen everything we can see today, so we start back. Since there’s only a single road winding down to the valley floor, we won’t need our navigation for a while and can turn off the phone and conserve power.
Miles later when I open google navigator, my power is at about 13%. We decide to exit at Benevento again and let my phone charge while we have some lunch. We park at a Caffe bar, pull the charger out of the bag, and see that it’s still in the security box. We’d been directed by a store employee to use the self-check-out register while she bagged our purchase (without removing it from the security box). The door sensor went off as we exited but another employee just waved us through. We had no reason to look in the bag until now. The security case is unbreakable so, the only way to charge the phone is to plug it into an outlet. I have a cord, but I don’t have an adapter because the store didn’t sell them. It’s now late afternoon and without navigation, it’ll be very challenging getting back to Caserta. We sit eating our lunch and mulling over our dilemma when a young girl working the counter comes over with a power cord and adapter she’s taken from her own phone. Her cord is rather beat up, but it allows us to juice up enough to move on. I give her my power cord as a thank you for her kindness.
Somewhat charged now, I call ahead to Caserta to secure a hotel room for the night and to conserve power, I turn off my phone. Instead of google navigation, I’m depending on directional arrows posted at main intersections in the towns we’re going through to guide us back. Traveling slowly through small towns with lots of roundabouts and intersections is giving me a chance to really observe how Italians drive. In their defense, they are all extremely skilled. That being said, yielding and stopping seem foreign concepts that have nothing to do with driving. They just start their car and drive. Fast or slow, forward or reverse, it doesn’t matter; their car is always in motion. It’s fascinating (and heart-stopping) to watch or experience – like lots of bumper cars all vying for the same space but never bumping into one another. It’s defensive driving on a grand scale and, somehow, it all works. And I’ve yet to personally see a car wreck in Italy.
By now it’s dusk and the small roads back to Caserta are heavily congested. Our anxiety is high because the river of commuters we’re rolling along in won’t think kindly of us slowing to read road signs. I turn my phone on just long enough to get our bearings and then go back to scanning the road for confirmation we’re still on track. It’s fully dark as we enter Caserta and knowing nothing of the city, we must trust google maps to guide us to the hotel.
Once again, we luck out with a hotel. This one’s just minutes away from the main parkway to the Palace. And though this hotel isn’t quite as luxurious as the last one, it has something the other lacked…. a view! Opening our room’s large picture window to enjoy the mild evening breeze, we stand in awe gazing at the majestic Royal Palace gloriously lit up and twinkling in the distance
NEXT UP: Queen for a day!
Ann Kucera is a freelance writer living and enjoying life with her husband in southern Italy