so get off the plane in Florence (that was half full of yanks…what’s this about…) and my first thought is of course…ITS TOO HOT!!!!
Get rental car…why yes I don’t really remember how to drive and it might be technically illegal for you to rent me the car, but hey…when in Rome…sweat is probably showing through my shirt at this point as I walk to the lot with all the other yanks. Find that my car has literally 4 inches between it’s bumper and the car in front and 2 inches with the car in back…Go back inside the little league airport and buy an english-Italian dictionary…Find that the girl behind the counter who must be younger than me doesn’t really speak very good english…I find this odd, but as a native english speaker I expect everyone to understand me all the time 😉
DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM… 😉 (Saffa….By day Albert, but by night…)
somehow manage to wrangle car out of it’s ‘parking spot’ and drive around lost like a fool for a while…finally get on autostrada and after about 60 minutes get off the wrong exit, and go to the wrong line in the toll lane…and my italian driving adventures begin…
Spend the next hour driving through small towns with roundabouts while trying to get used to motor scooters on one side, bicyclist and/or pedestrians on the other and watching out for the italians who like to pass on corners (it’s true)!
It’s actually not as scary as everyone described it…it is sort of like chaos-as-art. I find that if you know where you’re going it’s easy to get around. The problem is when you don’t know where you’re going and trying to watch signs as you’re entering or exiting a roundabout…
I only got honked at once so I’ll consider it a successful drive…
The scariest moment was when about 12 bicyclists entered the roundabout at the same time as me…after a moment of panic I just decided to gas it and hope that I could get out before them…
I didn’t look in my rearview mirror, but hey…I haven’t been arrested yet 😉
Marvel at how green everything is…even though it’s so hot. Must be the humidity that keeps everything green. The weather forecast past and future seems to be exactly the same every day…Low of 20, high of 33.
text from matt: Are there guys just diving everywhere? U should carry a yellow card and just start sending people off.
to test matt’s theory I bumped into a dude in the street…He fell over and grabbed his foot…
Doing my best to channel Christy Ronaldo I fell on top of him and grabbed my ankle…there was some wincing, and rolling around…The cops came running up and gave ME a card…can you believe that…One more and I have to leave the country for a week…you can’t beat the Italians at their own game 😉
started a pics page…not complete yet, but keep checking back…