Gaeta

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  Gaeta, Italy
Monday, June 25, 2007

Today we rented a car and drove down to Gaeta, a couple of hours south of Rome.  First of all, yes, I drove a car here, and yes, it was insane.  Italians make a show of installing traffic control devices like stop lights, stop signs, speed limits, lane dividers, etc., but absolutely nobody follows them.  If you don't drive aggressively, you are going to have a very bad day.  So when in Rome...

Gaeta is a port/beach town on a little peninsula on the west side of Italy about halfway down.  Daniela's Grandfather's family is originally from this town, so we thought it would be a fun place to go see.  The port is routinely used by the US Navy, and there was what looked like some sort of electronic surveillance ship (a host of radar "pods" everywhere and not much else) docked there. 

After driving around the port a little bit, we went over to the beach for a couple of hours.  We ran into some people from just outside Providence, RI there who have family in Itri, a small town we drove through on our way to Gaeta.  After chatting with them for a while, Daniela took a dip in the Med, and I worked on my tan.

The RI family recommended we go see the Turkish Grotto which is not too far from the beach, so we drove up to see if we could find it.  There is a church at the top of a rocky bluff several hundred feed above the beach, and the Turkish Grotto is almost directly below this church.  Apparently some Turkish pirates made this place which is reached by descending 350+ stone stairs down into what is aptly described as a grotto.  Needless to say we got our workout for the day coming back up.

We had a light lunch of salami, olives, bread, and (for Daniela only) funghi on our way out of town late in the afternoon.  (At least the Italians come right out and admit that they are eating fungus!)  We ate at a local place overlooking the med, and to say that it was picturesque does not do this area justice.  Gaeta is probably not a town that would be on a lot of tour destinations, but we enjoyed being there from a family perspective.  Daniela especially enjoyed being in the town where many generations of her family before her had spent their lives.

From lunch we traveled north up the coast to a town called Sperlonga which seemed to be more of an upscale area.  The closest comparison would be Santa Barbara.  If you want to have a nice beach vacation in Italy, this would be the place.

The trip from Sperlonga back to Roma was a great lesson that just because the Italian authorities decided to put a "Roma" sign at an intersection with an arrow pointing left does NOT mean that you should turn left.  I have no idea what these signs were for, but after a lengthy side trip through Italian cow-towns, we learned that you just stay on the biggest road you can find heading in the approximately right direction.

To top the day off, it took us about an hour to find the hotel again once we got back into the city.  Our second lesson in Italian navigation is that although all roads do lead back to Rome, most of them do not lead to your hotel.  A couple of times we had glimmers of recognition of our surroundings, but only after seeing several new neighborhoods, did we finally find "home" again.

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View from Turkish Grotto

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