Civitavecchia

and there it was – my dream car – an all electric, remote controlled Maserati. And we had to come to Civitavecchia to find it. Only the little shit wouldn’t give it up.

I put this place on the itinerary cos I thought I’d seen that it had some sights to offer. It didn’t. We stayed in a B&B which was quite nice but was a bit out of the way. The streets here are narrow and the motor bikes/scooters are a liability. Both nights we heard heaps of ambulances hoping they were for these pests of the roads but each day seemed to dawn with more of them. Adding to the congestion is the annual holiday season. It seems Romans in their millions come to the beach…

and leave their mark. The above shots are all taken out front of some of the biggest and classiest hotels seen anywhere.

The beach umbrellas in the above pictures don’t tell a complete story – further down the road not only can’t you park you cannot see the sea for the seas of umbrellas. All this on stones for beach, no sand.

The city itself seems to be predominantly apartments or hotels primarily to accommodate the holiday makers…

with more and more being built up in the surrounding hills. Well one of those being built is a boat but it looks like work stopped a year or 3 ago.

Not to be to perturbed we decided to look a little further afield. Some Roman ruins seemed to be calling and according to my limited research weren’t too far out of town. We never found them but came across some other interesting things…

like what we presumed to be the remains of a Roman viaduct only to find it was new (well nearly -1709). Still, it doesn’t work anymore.

But then we found Orte…

a city of the 1300’s atop a mountain. There is one road in, winding up the side which I was unprepared to take in case I found us in a position as we have previously of having to find someway to turn around to get out of trouble. As it turned out I needn’t have worried – just fold the mirrors in and pray. Anyway, parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up…

this is living in medieval times with a few mod-cons thrown in – like power and water and of course cars. How about the extensions hanging out over the sides of the cliff. I didn’t actually see any donkeys but I’ll bet there are still some around. Judging by the appearance of the few people I saw they had helped build this city. Its truly fascinating that in this day and age people still choose to live like this although it is increasingly hard not to see Italy as an emerging 3rd world country – all the trappings of a first world nation but squalor and disintegration and diminishing living standards all around.

Most travel days so far have been limited to perhaps a maximum of 150km, with many being as little as 50 or 60 but you can’t relate distance to travel time. Any journey takes hours and I must add, a toll. Some of these days after just 60 km I’m stuffed – the narrowness, the bends and the other bloody motorists and motor bikers all seem to come together, usually on blind bends. Its horrendous. Jude draws breath audibly at most corners. Speed is generally around 30 kph if that. Most cars on the road wear battle scars. Cars are parked wherever theres no space, often double parked and they just swing the doors open in front of you or pedestrians just emerge from between cars and walk in front of you even if there is a pedestrian crossing 20 feet away. Motor bikes don’t give way to pedestrians on crossings and anytime we did the bikes would roar past on either side of us. UGH!!!. Its hard to believe that there are any Italians left alive but somehow it all seems to be incident free – whilst we’ve seen obvious signs of traffic trauma we haven’t actually seen an accident.

Anyway, we spent two relatively uneventful nights in Civitavecchia before heading further south towards Naples (Napoli) and onwards to the Amalfi Coast.