Day 07 - Monday 31st August

We got up before 7am and after my shower I found that Graham had been awake for a while and was keen to join me on a walk up the hill behind the villa. There were no hunting dogs or shooters today and so we had an invigorating walk that gave us pleasant views of the valley as the sun rose over the mountain with Cortona in the distance.

Today we had planned to drive to Florence leaving at 9am. I was still on the mobile phone talking to Westpac and MasterCard International when we left. I’d given up on ever seeing my wallet again and I had rung to get them to cancel the stolen cards, to send replacements to our home in Sydney and to issue me with an emergency MasterCard in Italy.

MasterCard said it would take at least 24 hours to get the emergency card to me and they needed to send it somewhere where I could sign for it or someone could sign for it on my behalf. In the end I asked them to send it to our hotel in Sulmona where we are booked to stay on Wednesday night.

It was a long difficult conversation with MasterCard – my Australian accent talking to an American about Italian addresses etc. Altogether the conversation lasted about an hour. Graham had very kindly lent me his mobile phone because it is charged out at a corporate rate.

John had programmed the TomTom and the Peugeot satnav for our journey this morning. Our first destination was to be “The Mall” which is a factory outlet in a town called Leccio about 20km south of Florence.

They have fashion label stores such as Gucci and Armani. It is not the sort of place where I normally shop but the others in our group were all quite at home there. Suzy and I had been there when we came to Italy about 4 years ago.

On the journey, John rang Europcar about the problem with the Peugeot’s flat tyre. It was a very frustrating conversation – partly because they didn’t understand what he was saying and partly because they didn’t want to just replace the spare. They wanted to either swap the car for another one or take the car away for most of the day and leave us to our devices to get around in the meantime. Eventually the phone call was cut off and we decided not to pursue it any further with them.

There were several traffic delays on the trip along the A1 autostrade. We got to The Mall before 11am and left there for Florence at about 1:30pm. Everyone except me managed to find something to buy.

John had managed to find a parking station that was close to the markets in Florence and had programmed it into the Peugeot satnav. When we found it down some narrow streets, the entrance was very tight and so the owner offered to back the car in for us. Graham and I got out and let him do it. He accelerated back at any amazing speed and parked it an empty spot without hitting anything.

The markets were only a block away. I recognised them from our trip four years ago. We even went to the same café for lunch. After lunch, I was looking for a wallet to replace the one that was stolen. I’m very fussy about wallets and eventually found one to do the job. Graham and John liked it too and they both bought the identical wallet too.

The boys left the girls in the market and we went to visit the Duomo (cathedral). About a block away from the Duomo, John found a Vodafone store. John wanted to buy a new USB modem that he could use in Europe because we had no success with their UK USB modem. There was a long queue and he and Graham were there for more than hour.

By the time I had taken a few photos of the Duomo, I bumped into the girls across the road from the Duomo. We had some coffee in a nearby bookshop coffee shop and we all met up again back at the car just after 5:30pm.

Neither satnav could get a signal when we left the carpark and so we had to guess which way to go. We managed to find the railway station in the centre of Florence from which there were signs pointing back to Rome and the A1. The satnavs then started working again.

We stopped at the supermarket near Cortona for more supplies and got back to the villa at 8:15pm. Poallo had organised a lasagne for us for dinner.

John successfully installed the new USB modem he had bought today from Vodafone - first on Nicky’s laptop and then on mine.