We left our flat at 5:30 am to head to the distant Stansted airport and get onto our flying bus. Pisa is only a 2 hour flight from London, so we were in Italy before we knew it. But before we left London, we bought an English/Italian dictionary, which was probably the best purchase we made because even though lots of people spoke English, lots of people didn't. Unfortunately, asking for directions in Italian, when you don't speak the language is a challenge. We found that out first hand.
In Pisa, we headed to the Hertz rental area and picked up our car--a Fiat Punto. The Fiat, it turns out, is a pretty popular car in Italy and we often got our car mixed up with all the other Fiats that looked just like it. Here is a picture of Jim in our trusty rental car. This litle car could really go up the big Tuscan hills!
We also got a "Never Lost" GPS system for the car, so that we could "never get lost" while toodling around Tuscany. Well, never say never. The thing didn't work and we went back to the old fashioned way of getting around: the map. We had mapped out a way to get from Pisa to Montacino, where we were staying, but decided to take an alternate route and check out the town of Volterra.
Volterra is a typical Italian hill town, with a huge wall around it and steep, narrow alleys throughout. On the way there, we drove on winding roads through rolling hills with vineyards and wild flowers, which became familiar as the week went on. Here is Volterra as we drove up:
And Jim, walking up a Volterra Street:
In Volterra, I had my first of many Gelatos
We were eager to get to Montalcino, where we were staying in an Agrotourismo (a farm that has rooms available), so we headed out again into the winding roads and beautiful hills and got really lost when we got to Siena, which is a moderately sized city and which we really couldn't figure out how to get around. After several hours of crossing back and forth through Siena and not being able to figure out what the signs meant, we finally found some guys at a gas station who were so nice that they led us to the road we needed to take to our town. Then, when we weren't quite sure where to go again, we found an Indian Italian man who spoke perfect English and told us very specifically where we needed to turn. Throughout our drive, pheasants wandered on and off the road and we got tailgated a lot because we were driving like old people on the swervy roads.
What we learned on our first day is that Italians are really nice, friendly people who drive like maniacs and that I am not a good navigator (although we already knew that second part). When we arrived at La Crociana, we were warmly greeted by our hosts and bought a bottle of their Bordello wine, because we really thought we deserved it.
