Diana's Account: 

I love an adventure and when my sister Joni and I are traveling together, we get involved in crazy situations often narrowly escaping getting into trouble. Our first Calabrian adventure came after a Mediterranean cruise. We left Salerno on our way to Matera; I was driving. The combination of two sisters chatting away and my first-time driving experience in southern Italy to a new city did not bode well for making it to our destination without a problem.

I should have remembered the time my sister and I were driving from NYC back to the Poconos with my daughter, the so-called navigator, sleeping in the back seat and my sister and I talking nonstop. When I saw a sign for Philadelphia, I realized we were on the wrong road and that my sister and I were not to be trusted together to get anywhere on our own.

Not heeding my own advice, back in Italy in 2015, we left Salerno, driving south on our way to Matera. We finally realized we missed our exit when I saw a sign for Maratea which is in Calabria. I didn’t regret driving out of our way since we discovered beautiful Calabria, but my sister was upset since we were lost and in the dark. We didn’t have cell phone navigation at that time, so we stopped at a pizzeria which luckily had young people who spoke some English and were good with a computer. They set us on our correct way. 

In 2018 we had our second Calabrian adventure when we booked a hotel stay there on the way to Sicily and one for the way back to Rome. We didn’t realize that it was located at the edge of the coast and that with the intervening mountains, we would have to drive long, circuitous, and precipitous roads from the highway to the sea. They were hair-raising and stressful drives with a storm threatening and we hoped that we were on the right road because going back would have been disheartening and difficult. We made it to our hotel with clouds looming over us. We had just enough time to take a walk on an empty beach with our umbrellas playfully open and ran up and down on the sand as darkness blanketed the beach with a beautiful but ominous sky overhead. We got to the hotel just as the rain began and were let into our room. We were stunned – it looked like a dungeon! As we stood in this dank basement, we regarded each other in dismay. This did not look like the pictures of the room we had booked. We locked up and ran back to the desk and with my little Italian and Joni’s heavy dialect, we launched into a tirade. Poor guy, he didn’t have a chance with two crazy Italian women! He finally gave us another room that was much better. We went back and scooped our belongings and brought them to our new room. We were just about nice and comfy when I realized that I couldn’t find my computer!

I must have left it in our prior dungeon abode. But the desk man was gone! What to do? I snuck behind the desk and swiped the keys, and we ran to the dungeon, found my computer which I’d hidden under some towels, locked up, replaced the keys and ran to our new room. In the rain! Whew!

The next morning, I decided to shower. Simple enough, you’d think, what could go wrong? Well, the shower curtain was too long and unbeknownst to me, got stuck covering the drain. I was so enthralled with a shower with lots of water pressure that I didn’t realize that I was standing in 3 inches of water! The water had spilled over and down into the bedroom while Joni was leisurely chilling on the patio. When we realized what had happened, the entire bedroom was covered with water! Using every towel we had, we did the best we could to clean our mess, went to breakfast and exited the hotel quickly. 

As we drove away, we hoped that no one would find out about our mischievous acts and prayed that our stay on the way through Calabria and back to Rome was less eventful. It was!

Joanna's Account: 

It’s pretty much a given that when driving anywhere in Italy you are in for an adventure! Whether in this country or abroad my travels with my sister, Diana, have never disappointed. 

Back in 2018, Diana and I left our family’s hometown in Molise, in our Fiat Panda, headed toward the town of Cancellara in the Basilicata region for our WWOOFing (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) adventure. That story appeared in the November 2018 issue of La Gazzetta Italiana! Diana, as usual, was the driver and I was the navigator with the assistance of GPS. We started out fine, but things took a turn, literally and figuratively, when our navigation system began taking us farther and farther down a narrow, winding, gravel road through a thick forest as though into the abyss. That is precisely where we found ourselves, at the bottom of this road looking at yellow caution tape wound around the trees, saving us from a cliff overlooking a huge, deep pit. Thankfully with Diana’s skillful driving and a 17-point turn we were able to head back up that harrowing road, barely wide enough for our Fiat to get back to a better, safer road. Crisis averted!

Lesson learned that GPS isn’t always helpful or correct. We did eventually arrive at our destination in Cancellara. Many trips to Italy have taught us to be adaptable and flexible with our plans so when our WWoofing adventure in Cancellara was unexpectedly cut short by three days we decided to visit the town of Matera. Once again, the GPS was of no use when we found ourselves in a multi-laned roundabout in what seemed like rush hour traffic. The GPS kept changing directions and instructions and we thought we would never get out of that roundabout. Diana and I were at our wits’ end at this point but once again we somehow managed to right ourselves.

Our last leg of that trip was a visit to Sicily. Before embarking on the boat from the mainland with our Fiat, we had an overnight in the town of Tropea, in Calabria, which is where Diana accidentally flooded our hotel room. Once in Sicily, we welcomed some relaxation in our Agriturismo bed and breakfast near Taormina. It was such a beautiful place surrounded by acres of fruit trees and vegetables with wonderful breakfasts of fresh food and cappuccinos to start our days. 

So much for relaxation, it was time for another adventure, or misadventure, as things go. We set off for a visit to Mt. Etna, the active volcano. Diana said we would be taking a gondola ride up to the top of the mountain. It sounded spectacular so I decided to dress very nicely in all-white from head to toe with my new, super-comfortable, slipper-like shoes. When we arrived, we were told it wasn’t a good day to go up in the gondola since it was very windy and cloudy and we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Diana, never one to pass up an adventure, had the brilliant idea to hike up one of the mountain trails. I wasn’t properly dressed for a hike up a volcanic ash-covered steep mountain but Diana was determined and I just couldn’t back out. I made it up that mountain with a prayer, a miracle, and a lot of heavy breathing, following my sister the whole way up. She looked back to check on me at intervals to make sure I was upright. Realizing I would have to go down the mountain now, I mustered up my courage and somehow managed to slip and slide most of the way back down. It must have been comical to watch. I can still hear my sister laughing and taking pictures lest we forget that day.

In 2015, on another trip to Italy, where my sister had to pick me up from Fiumicino airport in Rome, we somehow managed to find each other thanks to our cell phones. How did we ever live without them? We had planned to take a one-week cruise up the western coast of Italy on the MSC cruise line leaving out of the port in Salerno. One of our excursions was to a beach in Ibiza. If you have ever found yourself over-dressed for an event you will know how I felt when Diana and I, in our modest one-piece swimsuits, ended up at a topless beach where young and old, all shapes and sizes, were topless. We were the ones that drew attention. Who ever thought you could feel uncomfortable being too covered up? Before boarding the ship that day I stopped at a boutique and bought a bikini. Of course, I would only wear that in Europe these days.

Whether abroad or in the states, life is just one big adventure, and if you go with the flow it makes for a memorable experience, and a lot of laughs.