The Rest of Italy....a little vacation

After picking up a rental car at the port of Rome and dropping Roman off at the airport Rich and I continued back down to Sorrento to take in a few days of personal time before heading to Serbia to finish shooting that movie.

When we checked into the hotel I notice a piece of luggage missing: my video camera for business! I was thinking back to when I left the ship and remembered that I did not have it then so I must have left it under the bed in my cabin. Since it was the weekend, the cruise line’s help desk was not open so there was no way for them to help so I went to the website to see where the ship was docking next and noticed it would be in Monaco the next day. The following day after changing hotels I called the Port of Monaco and a wonderful woman contacted the ship for me and it was confirmed

that they had my precious cargo, but they wanted to send it to the corporate office lost and found instead of shipping it to me in Italy from their next port which was to be Livorno, Italy! I made an executive decision to fly to Pisa and rush the ship and insist they give it back to me, but flights were too expensive and there were no nonstops. After a ton of searching the net for a decent airfare I decided to look at train tickets. I found the train was direct from Naples to Livorno and took about 5 hours so I made the decision to take the train the next morning. Driving was just not an option since we had already booked a non-refundable hotel and really wanted to spend more time in Naples in addition to the drive taking about 7 hours.

The next morning I woke up early and took a commuter train from Sorrento to Naples and then the big train from Naples to Livorno. I slept a lot along the way and the time seemed to go pretty fast. I decided to walk to the port since it looked close on the map. However, I first went to the wrong port so I had to turn around and go to the next port when it started raining. By the time I arrived at the ship I was soaked and the person that was to have my camera had just “stepped out.” 5 minutes later here she pulled up with my baby all safe! I thanked the staff (some of them recognized me and asked where the rest of the previous passengers were…LOL), took the ship’s shuttle into town then a bus to the train and 5 hours later Rich picked me up at the station in Naples.

The following day Rich and I went to Ponpeii which is truly amazing but very hot and dusty! I also stopped in to get my hair cut which was a very interesting experience. Italians LOVE to chitty chat and they so desperately wanted to do the same with me and the hair cut took about 20 minutes longer than it should of, but it was a great experience nonetheless. The next day we drove back Rome and relaxed a bit. I went to go meet a “friend” and drove all through RomeRome trying to find the apartment. which was a crazy experience, but I saw a lot of

The next morning we took off for Belgrade on our favorite airline: JAT Airways…LOL. Our camerawoman extraordinaire was going to very late since she called me at 3am Rome time to let me know her flight was severely delayed. I took a nap while Rich worked and then we went to go get Pam from the airport sans luggage. YEAH! Mr. Pam made it to Serbia safe but extremely exhausted!