Campsites,Italy # 8of13

On three different years we spent a night or two in Siena Colleverde, the campsite on Strada di Scacciapensieri. It’s a nice campsite, and after the floodlights come on in Siena’s Plaza del Campo, the view from the campsite is electrifying. This is another campsite that used a computer when we registered. Doesn’t help, it seems to take longer to register. They were unimpressed to hear municipal campsites in France cost about 1/4 as much as this one did.

A ring road circles Rome outside the city, and is connected to Rome by roads like spokes of a wheel or the hands of a clock. Camping Roma, where we stayed three different years, is located at nine o’clock on Rome’s circular road, just west of Rome on Via Aurelia, not far from the Vatican. One of the largest and nicest supermarkets we found in Italy, Silos Supermarket, is just across the street from Camping Roma.

Our camping brochure said there is a campsite in Tivoli, a few miles east of Rome, the location of Villa d’Este and Villa Adriana. We had to ask three or four people before we were able to find the campsite. The gate was locked, but finally a grumpy old woman came and let us in. We looked here and there, and finally found a place with an electric socket, but none of our 10 or 12 plugs would fit. Finally the friendly Italian next door gave us a plug that would help solve the electricity problem. As we left the campsite the next morning, I noticed a canal and water gates. This water feeds Tivoli’s famous Villa d’Este fountains. Years ago they diverted the river through a tunnel so the water could flow to the five hundred fountains at the gardens of Villa d'Este. They all operate with natural water pressure — no pumps are involved.

As we left Dorgali (Sardinia) we saw a camping sign pointing through a tunnel, toward Cala Gonone, a campsite not noted on our map. As we came out of the tunnel we were overlooking a steep, tight switch-back road dropping down to the coast. It was about four twisty, hairpin miles down to the town of Cala Gonone, right on the Tyrrhenian Sea. This large campsite is run by a man from Chicago, and his wife from Sardinia. They live and work here in summer, and live and work in Chicago in the winter. What a contrast that must be — warm sunny summers; icy, windy, cold winters.