Farewell Tuscany (Tuesday 20th August 2013)

After twelve days in Tuscany this morning we said farewell. We had a little rain overnight so the morning was cool and fresh on the mountain at “Il Vigno.

After breakfast we gathered our things and said our good-byes to Julius and Alice. I was talking with Julius about PFM one night and he mentioned that he played in a band. As a parting gift he gave us a copy of the band's latest CD and shouted all our drinks throughout or stay! How good is that!

Since the days when the San Marino GP was a fixture on the F1 calendar I have always been intrigued by the city-state so we thought we'd take a detour on the way to Venice. The first part of the journey was as expected traveling north along the autostrade. The weather has closed in and was now raining quite heavily. The crappy Italian roads didn't handle it well at all with many sections carrying a lot of water that just couldn't get away. Couple with the pot-holed, patched and sunken sections of tarmac it was a very dangerous driving situation. Through this long mountain section the autostrade was a continuous series of elevated road over a valley into a tunnel through the mountain on the other side onto the next section of elevated roadway.

After forty or fifty kilometers we left the autostrade and headed into the mountains where San Marino lays. I'm talking small, steep, winding mountain roads here. The view was probably magnificent of we could have seen it nut we were up in the clouds in heavy rain. I'm sure the folks who come from Roma to San Marino don't come the way GPS-girl sent up. She has a propensity to not use highways and I can't understand why! None of her settings say “choose the most scenic but difficult route”. We eventually made it to San Marino and the weather had really set in. Traffic was approaching chaotic so before we reached to centre if town we cut our losses and, ignored GPS-girl and followed the sign back to the autostrade. We followed the signs to Bologna along a relatively new road that was in very good condition. We had to pay for this one but I didn't mind. At least it was safe and we could covers some miles quickly. Most of the 280km trip was run at 130kph, large bits at 140kph and on a few occasions the Fiat was cranked up to 150kph. The road was dry and quite (by French standards) so it was quite safe, if not quite legal.

We arrived at Venice by about 4:00pm, crossed the long causeway and found the Garage San Marco we had booked from home. We were stuck in the queue to get in for a good 15 minutes before Kerry jumped out to find out what was going on. She mentioned my name to which the attendant replied “Ah, Gregory Smith. Yes. Follow me” So, we jumped out of the queue and drove straight to our reserved spot. The lesson? If you're traveling by car to Venice, reserve a car-park online and beat the queue.

The Garage San Marco is only 600m from our hotel, the Hotel Dalla Mora, Our spacious, corner room is on the second floor overlooking a canal. There is a shower and wash-basin in the room and a shared toilet (with three other rooms) right outside our door. We headed off for a walk through the streets, across some little bridges and wound up at the Piazza Santa Margarita where we had a drink and dinner. Kerry got a gelati for the stroll home and I got a Chianti for when we got home. We are enjoying the early night.