Day 05 - Saturday 29th August

We were up early to catch our flight to the airport. We got there at 6:45am in plenty of time for the 9am flight. The plane left about 30 minutes late. If we’d known that was going to happen, we might have been able to get up at a slightly more civilised hour.

It seems to be a Greek custom for everyone to queue up at the gate half an hour before the boarding call. We just sat in the lounge and relaxed until the boarding call. Unlike Bangkok airport, there was WiFi access within the terminal.

At Rome airport, the rental car counters all had long queues and so it was almost midday before we got our car and left the airport carpark. Because my licence had been stolen yesterday, they wouldn’t let me drive the car. They said the international drivers licence was not sufficient. So Suzy had to drive.

The car they gave us is a Nissan Note. It’s like a very small wagon or hatchback with only enough space in the boot for one of our big bags. We put the other one on the back seat.

The TomTom gave us lots of strange instructions initially and she took us into the carpark of an industrial complex. There had been no satellite signal in the carpark and she must have been disoriented at first. We stopped and reset her and she was fine after that.

After a couple of hours on the A1 autostrade, we stopped at a roadside service centre for lunch. They had a Visa ATM and so we took the opportunity to withdraw some cash from our Travelex Cash Passport cards.

We had no trouble finding the turn-offs towards Cortona but we missed the turn-off to Ossaia and ended up on the outskirts of Cortona. We rang Graham and he reassured us that they had had the same problem. He gave us directions to get back to Ossaia and then we followed the printed directions to find the villa. Graham forewarned us that the last 200m of the driveway was very bumpy. He wasn’t kidding.

Nicky and John had flown into Florence airport from their holiday in Sardinia and Graham and Joan had picked them up there for the drive to the villa near Cortona. They arrived about an hour before us.

The villa is a charming two-storey stone building with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large lounge room, dining room and kitchen. John thinks that the lounge room makes an excellent TV room. The only problem is that there is no TV.

It is a very solid construction. For example, the internal walls are about 400m thick. Each set of windows and doors has timber shutters. Outside the kitchen, there is an outdoor patio with a large table and chairs.

There are nice views of the countryside in several directions. Behind the house, there is a hill with a thick coverage of trees. During the afternoon, we had watched a thunderstorm approaching over the valley and it reached the house at about 5pm.

After settling in, I tried to use Nicky’s USB modem to get access to the internet but without success. Nicky tried it on her laptop too because it had worked OK on hers back in London but it wouldn’t work for her here.

Despite the storm, we set off for Cortona to get some supplies at the supermarket and to have dinner. Graham and Joan had hired a people-mover that was big enough for all six of us. It is a Peugeot 807 with all the latest gadgets and features.

On our way down the hill, John saw that the screen in the dashboard said two of the tyres were under-inflated. After we passed through Ossaia, Graham noticed that the warning light above the steering column said “Stop” and so he pulled over into a petrol station under the roof near the bowsers (out of the rain).

The tyre at the left front was flat and there was a sharp stone embedded in it.

Naturally, the instruction manual was in Italian and so we couldn’t read it very well but at least we could understand the diagrams. We managed to find the spare tyre and tools and changed the tyre by relying on the diagrams in the manual and my memory of reading the instruction manual for our own Peugeot 308 back in Sydney. There are a few tricks with changing a Peugeot wheel such as the secret wheel-nut lock that is kept in the glove box.

After conquering that little challenge, we went to the supermarket. What was originally going to be a quick shop for essential supplies ended up being two trolley loads including plenty of beer, wine and bottled water. The alcohol is incredibly cheap. Most wine is less than 2 Euros per bottle and we saw a bottle of brandy for 4 Euros.

At Cortona, we parked in a carpark near the bottom of the hill. The climb up the hill looked somewhat daunting but we found there were open-air escalators for much of the climb. The view from the top was amazing.

The hilltop town consists of narrow cobblestone streets with stone buildings on either side. In the centre of the town, we came across street performers in the town square. We went to a nearby restaurant for a very pleasant Italian meal with plenty of wine and beer.

By the time we got back to the villa at about 10:30pm, I was exhausted after a long day. The others sat up talking but I went to bed.