2008 ITALIAN ODYSSEY - Rome/Sienna

Tuesday September 16, 2008 – Rome/Sienna

The taxi in from the runway where we landed seemed to take forever as did the baggage clearance (we later found that there was a  dispute with baggage handlers that had closed some airports so perhaps we were lucky that we only had to wait 45 minutes.). We cleared Customs and Immigration without a problem. In fact the weary looking Immigration officer didn’t even bother to look at the passports – just opened them to a random page and banged his stamp on them. So we got to the car rental offices just after 07.00 – and half an hour before they opened.

Our chariot

Back to the terminal we went for our first genuine Italian coffee of the trip and soon enough the rental offices were open and we were ready for the off. Well, not quite. The staff at Eurocar were not particularly friendly or efficient (or, indeed bi-lingual) and the car we had expected – a Nissan was not available. We were offered and accepted a B-Class Mercedes Benz which, despite the famous name, is OK but nothing special. We eventually found the car, setup the GPS which we had brought with us, got out our maps, set the mirrors – and then had our first experience of Italian parking, battling to get the car out of the minute space into which it had been fitted – perhaps lowered by a crane? The next little problem was that somewhere in getting out of the parking garage we must have taken a wrong turn  because we landed up at a barrier that did not open automatically and demanded a ticket which we did not have. Trying to explain that to the disembodied voice on the Emergency button was not easy with my VERY basic language skills, but we got away in the end and were on our way soon after 08.00.

All went well initially – the traffic was fairly light, no lunatic drivers (just some apparently suicidal motorcyclists), and we could understand all the signs. We got onto the circular road and unlike the London M25 it seemed to flow pretty well. At least until we got to Uscito 3 where we were to branch off onto the Via Carsia SS2. As we got there, the traffic simply stopped moving! It took us the best part of half an hour to complete the exit and even then we were in very heavy traffic. To make matters worse, a warning light came up on the car’s instrument panel – in Italian.

I guessed that the warning had something to do with tyre pressure and that proved to be the case. We turned in to a service station and the very friendly young bloke there, who spoke a bit of English checked the tyres and sent us on happily on our way. We cleared the traffic in due course and go into the  countryside . all went fairly well at first although Rab said I was driving too close to the right hand side of the road. She tended to flinch with a mighty oath from time to time which I found a bit disconcerting. But she did a good job navigating along the chosen route in conjunction with our friend TomTom, the GPS system, which was working well.

Roncigliano entrance

We made our way to Lake Brasciano, which was beautiful and even drove into and parked in our first Italian  village – Roncigliano. It is quite difficult to fit even a small left-hand drive car into the space available, but with the help of Rab I made it. We knew that if we wanted to use a toilet (which we did) the place to go was a bar or café, so we did that having a beer and our  first genuine Italian bar snack – a sandwich.

The first of many palaces

It was great just walking around the town looking at the old buildings – made us feel we really were in Italy. The people we spoke to in the town continued the impression we had already gained – that despite what we had been told, very few people spoke English.

 

A sad bit of graffito

Refreshed we headed onward to Lake Vico which I intended to  circumnavigate on a secondary road. This turned out to be very scenic i.e. lots of bends, very wooded and very narrow, all of which made Rab very nervous but …. things then got worse when TomTom led us astray (as he does from time to time in his efforts to take the shortest route, irrespective of quality). He led us into a very narrow track which seemed to be used by an inordinate number of large trucks. When they loomed into view, I tended to move to the right, very close to to the trees on the roadside and indeed occasionally clipping the branches. After this had happened a couple of times, Rab erupted (and to be fair, she may have had good cause) and demanded that I slow down, get onto a wider road and drove more carefully.

I capitulated and we duly completed the journey in somewhat stony silence at a very much slower pace. TomTom redeemed himself by leading us very well right to the door of the Bed and Breakfast where we were staying in Sienna – Fonti dei Tufi. It turned out to be a very pleasant and comfortable new building and we liked it so much we decided to stay an extra day.

Happy in Sienna - and the prospect of food

Despite the long flight and somewhat fraught day we drove into Sienna and parked, walking down to the main piazza where the Palio is run in July and August each year. The weather was gorgeous – warm with just a bit of a chill wind – and the town was lovely. Although it was only about 18.30 we decided to have a meal sitting outside one of the restaurants and watching the passing crowd. A beer apiece; spaghetti vongole for Rab (very good) and a pizza for me – nice but a little plain.

Back up the (steep) hill we trudged, drove back to the lodgings and were asleep by about 20.00.