We left Milan bright and early and tracked a path through Pisa, then our plan was to take the coastal highway. Who doesn't like a coastal highway, right? We arrived at Pisa and you could see the tower, but Siri got us a bit lost there, and took us into town instead of to the old town, so we took a road that looked like it was heading back to the tower and found a nice parking spot. This was the one time I felt like we were in a pretty sketchy place. This was a pay lot with no attendant, near the tower and basilica. Just outside were several loitering folks, and I asked Richard to put everything we had in the trunk and park as far away and out of sight from them as possible, no harm minimizing a break in to the car.
Then we walked over the old walled area. What was my immediate impression is that it was just huge. The whole area, the marketplace, the church, the basilica, the large field in front of it with dozens of folks lounging around and picnicking, or kicking soccer balls. It was clearly a community gathering place, not just a tourist attraction.
I know I mentioned the picture earlier, and we did take the obligatory "holding the tower up" photos. We hung out for a bit, walked all the way around the piazza and noticed all the families. There was the cutest little dog with a young couple that looked a bit like a Jack Russell terrier. He ran at the speed of light and was well trained to his master's whistles. Once we had our pics we were antsy to leave and get to Rome.
We got back to the car and charted a course along the coast. This portion of Tuscany had experienced severe flooding the week before, Venice had been under 5 feet of water not long ago and torrential rains that dropped an annual amount in nine days had done some damage in parts of Italy. But we had Siri, so off we went. Our goal was to get to a nice seaside bistro just at sunset. And we did pretty well, we found a nice bistro but they don't open for dinner until 7:30PM, so we settled for a cappuccino and then drove up in the hillside to have a look around. What we found was a really beautiful enclave of high end villas and newly constructed homes mixed together. Many of them looked abandoned or partially finished and after taking a few more snaps of the sea from up high on the hillside, Richard backed us up before it turned full dark and got us back on the highway. This was a good kind of lost and it didn't last long.
It wasn't more than an hour or so later, and now dark, when we saw the flashing lights ahead. There was a detour to "Roma", the officer spoke little English, but we got enough to know to follow the yellow signs to Roma. We hadn't eaten and no restaurants were nearby and we had now discovered that Italy had a time warp. If it said 2 hours, it would take 3. If it said 45 minutes, it would take 60 or more. You could drive 140kilometers per hour and still it took more time than Siri said it should. We had snackage and plenty of water, so we knew we'd survive and then determined what we really wanted was to get to Roma tonight. I had looked at the map again and realized there were road closures listed on the map on both highways heading south. So we turned off Siri and followed the signs.
The signs led us into the middle of Italy on the smallest one lane dirt roads I've seen since I used to hunt. We were in flooded farmland and we saw one vehicle off and in a full ditch at one point. The highways were going to take longer to repair from flooding than these tracks had, so we stayed the course and followed the yellow Roma signs all the way down. We polished off the chocolate covered espresso candies, a couple of tins of Paprika flavored Pringles (they rock and we should have them here), and quite a bit of our water. About an hour north of Rome we were back on highway, looking for a hotel.
I found a Best Western, it looked like it was near the old city, and when I called she said, no problem, just come on in. So we entered Rome with some trepidation, driving in Rome being one of the top ten adventures, but once we adjusted for Siri's slowness, we made all our turns and got to the hotel. Which was nowhere near the sights we wanted to see. And they were FULL!!! This was not looking good. Oh, and our bladders were full, too.
Testy doesn't begin to cover it. This had been one heck of a long day. Richard double-parked on the side street on I got back online and found another Best Western near the Vatican and a metro station. And they had an opening. Richard dashed into the nearest neighborhood restaurant to use the bathroom. Then we booked the hotel and on we drove. The 20 minutes took 40 of course, but once we saw the place we booked for all three nights we were staying. Maybe we should have waited until we saw the shower stall before booking two more nights.
No comments:
Post a Comment