Day 24- 19th May Tuscany

Day 24- 19th May

Woke at 7am but lay in bed listening to the street wake up until 8.30am or so. A good nights sleep as always – we have all learnt to fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows!!! Have included a pic of possibly, the world skinniest elevator in the hotel!!!

The market stalls slowly began to open around 9am and you could really smell the cheese store beside us and the fresh fish store across the lane. The smells are very strong especially the cheeses – a mix of wet socks, damp mould and pungent fermentation!! It has been a great experience though of the real French lifestyle. We have been told by the TD that French incomes are low and the cost of living is high, but apart from the beggars, they all seem like they live decent lives here.

We tidied up and had a healthy breakfast of biscuits and coke ?! then got some money at the ATM – there are 3 right outside the front door, makes it very easy as we will need quite a few euro’s for the villa in Tuscany as they don’t take credit cards. This has been the only booking in the entire trip where this has happened, everywhere else takes visa etc.

Were picked up by the shuttle for the airport in Orly and arrived early which was good as we had to work out where to check in. The shuttle driver told us it was a very small airport- he needs to come to NZ , it was about the size of Auckland’s !!! Finally worked out where to queue, Easyjet queue all their flights together. There are only 2 staff on check in and it was a bit of a melee for many as the line on our right was closed down and moved to our left then back again as there were problems with the computer. This meant all these people lost their places as others from behind jumped in the new line. Slight chaos for them but we were fine – thank goodness there was no need for Graeme to do the “beep beeping easyjet” thing we had joked about !! (No tv cameras either, so we were safe!!)

Plane was 20 mins late but we were first on as we had paid for speedy boarding where you were first on the plane. Easyjet doesn’t allocate seats, so it is first on, first choice of seats! A bit of a mickey mouse affair but fine really. Graeme saw us lined up smartly everywhere in the queues and I just took it as it came. Bummer Gray forgot he had hand sanitizer liquid in his backpack, so we lost that as it was over the allowed 100 mls and is flammable. ?!@#@!!

The trip was 1 hour 20mins, so arrived about 4pm local time in Pisa Italy. Off to the europcar desk to find our rental car. Pisa airport is about the size of Hamilton’s and about ¾ of Hamilton’s population was in there lines up for rental cars!! The worst was the Avis and Hertz counters – there were people lined around the corner. Pretty long wait and very hot, we were fine but I felt sorry for those with small children. Asked if we could get GPS as Matt and Michelle had it in England and it was fantastic but the computer isn’t loaded for the area we are going to .
Onto a shuttle to the carpark and found our car a Renault Megine – 6 gear diesel. A little bit ugly in the back but with only 2000kms on the clock, its all good! First thing Graeme did when trying to find reverse was pull the whole gear stick and cover off! – “Well, it said lift for reverse he says”!???! Our mouths were all like this O !! After we recovered he found he could put it back on (mostly)and we were off in a squeal of front wheel drive tyres!!! Then the fun began….

Driving in a car with the steering wheel on the left, driving on the right hand side of the road for the first time and the instructions we had said just to follow the signs to Firenze (Florence) which we did but then all hell broke loose.

Roadworks everywhere, signage was non existent and with 3 or 4 lanes and no lane markings, it got crazy. We ended up heading into Firenze and jammed in god knows where, managed to get off the road but ended up in a carpark full of people, where Gray almost ran 2 over in his fight to get out!
Got back on the road heading back the way we had come in and then u-turned onto the right road, ending up at a roundabout where we tried every exit before we finally found the right one. We travelled down 3 highways and had to get off then back again, before finally pulling over to the side of the roundabout (along with others I saw) to try to figure it out. All roads lead to Rome and that was the way we found we needed to go even no instructions told us too.

Needless to say we had traumatic stress disorder by the time we got on the right highway but never even yelled at each other !!!! The sun was starting to set by the time we got into the country and got there – SO relieved, as I feared we were going to be stuck in the dark.

Once you know where Lupinari Tenuata is though, you are almost taken aback at this hamlet in Tuscany. It has a castle ‘Castelli’ where the owners live and the hamlet has the apartments. It is set on the hillside overlooking small towns , vineyards and olive tree’s – this was a good internet/ Trip Advisor pick !!

The girl that was on duty was lovely, she speaks very clear English and is studying languages at university. She helped us settle in and when we asked if we could get some bread, she got us prosciutto, cheese, salami and sliced bread. This was great as we hadn’t had any proper meals today and it was 9pm. Sat in our apartment named
Il Granaio (is a converted grainary) and ate our first Italian supper!

Off to bed to wind down and relax – this is been some day!