We had a lovely time in La Spezia, but it is time to move on.
Towards the centre of Italy, and into Tuscany.
We were packed by 8.30am and had a brief video chat with some of our FLP – Elias and Isabel called to say that a postcard had arrived.
One of the check-out tasks is to dump any rubbish. Each apartment doesn’t get its own wheelie bin like we do in Australia. There are 4 industrial bins down the block, and you have to take your rubbish there. There is one bin each for glass, plastic, paper, and general non-recyclable rubbish.
You have a card – like a plastic transport card – that you have to tap on each bin before the bin will open, and when you tap, it displays the owner’s name. The openings for each of the bins is very large, except for the general rubbish which has a tiny slot making it almost impossible to dump any non-recycling.
They clearly make recycling a priority.
Claude was packed by 8.55am and we let Monica know that we were ready to roll. She came up to the apartment, collected the keys, and let us out of the carpark.
The trip to La Gruccia is only a couple of hours and we were on the road by 9.00am … but we couldn’t check in with Cinzia (our host for the next few nights) until 4.00pm which was a bit of a pain. So we decided to take the very scenic route.
I thought that we had the motorways in France figured out, but Italy is just all different again. I’ve mentioned before that speed signs are confusing, or non-existent, and Italian drivers just seem to do what they want to do anyway.
The first leg of the trip was down and around Pisa – yep, the place that we visited yesterday. We skirted Pisa and turned east towards the centre of Italy.
Italian motorways aren’t as good as the French ones, and you have to pay more attention. They can be quite rough and bumpy, making it a bit more of a challenging journey.
I made a bit of a mistake by not checking my rearview mirror for a few moments at one stage, and there was a truck (like a removalist truck) right up my clacker, which gave me a bit of a fright. They are not very tolerant, these Italians.
We filled Claude up with fuel not long after leaving La Spezia, and that is the first time in Italy. That’s a bit of a feat in itself, because in Italy the fuel types are called something different, and it doesn’t necessarily make sense.
Well, not to me, anyway. It was more a case of eliminating the one that didn’t look right, and hope for the best. I’m sure that if I’ve put deisel into Claude who only drinks 95RON unleaded, we will know soon enough.
We stopped for a coffee someplace on the way, Castel Fiore I think, but I could be wrong about that. It was just a coffee stop and nothing special.
The roads were pretty boring, if I am to be completely honest. They are just roads with nothing of note to see.
Until we got properly into Tuscany, then it all became very beautiful.
There was a little bit of excitment on the trip when the two women in my life – MBW and Joséphine – had conflicting views about the next turn we had to take off the highway. Joséphine showed that we needed to exit the motorway and when an exit came up, MBW instructed me to take it, even though Joséphine hadn’t issued that same instruction.
It turns out that the exit wasn’t coming up for another 48km, so there was no rush 🙂
We had been in contact with Cinzia and asked if it was possible to drop off our luggage earlier so that we could go out exploring … and she was Ok with that.
She said that she would be home by 1.00pm, so we aimed for that.
Cinzia’s place was a bit hard to find. The address took us to a little cluster of houses in what might loosely be called a village. But smaller than a village. It was more like a cluster of houses.
Parts of the road was dirt, and we drove back and forwards a few times unable to find it.
We have been trying Waze for our navigation as it seems to have better capability when it comes to ZTLs (Zona a Traffico Limitato) – those dreaded Limited Access Zones where if you encroach one, you get photographed and you get a fine.
But Waze – a great app but with a few limitations – couldn’t find Cinzia’s place, so we asked Google Maps for an opinion, and we were taken about 500m further down the road to where we wanted to be.
Within 2 minutes of arriving, Cinzia turned up. Unfortunately her English is limited to “I can’t speak English”, so that was a challenge.
With the magic of Google Translate, we managed to get the message that the apartment was not yet ready, but we could drop our bags and come back later (which is exactly what we planned to do).
We’ve scored big this time. Cinzia’s place is a granny flat at the back of a huge house set on several acres. She has a vinevard to one side, and an Olive Tree grove at the back. We are in the middle of all of it.
It was after 1.00pm and we were hungry, so we set out to find lunch.
There is a small village called Monteriggioni about 10 minutes away through some very pretty countryside. The roads to Monteriggioni were seriously narrow – narrow to the point that when you have a car coming towards you, you have to slow down to walking pace and put your passenger-side wheels off the road so that you can pass.
There was one archway where we followed a small truck through that was so narrow, he had to fold in both side mirrors, otherwise he would have taken them off. Have a look at the photos below.
When we went through, Claude’s proximity sensors (like reversing sensors, but all around the vehicle) were screaming that we were about to hit something.
Seriously narrow.
Monteriggioni is the first place in Italy that we have been to where it is a walled city. You park outside the city wall because it is a ZTL inside, and walk in.
It’s like stepping back in time.
We stopped at a little cafe inside the city and had some lunch – lasagne and pasta – and then went in search of groceries.
It was a pretty low-achieving day.
Claude has had a couple of days off and I haven’t had to think about driving while I’ve been a bus and train ninja, but we are back on the road again and heading into some beautiful Tuscan countryside.
This particular stay – as I’ve said already – is in the middle of nowhere, so we will be using Claude every day.
So far I’ve managed to avoid getting Claude scratched or damaged, and I’ve avoided getting pulled over by the police. Let’s hope I can maintain that success rate.
Tomorrow we are doing a pizza making course near San Gimignano, about 35 minutes away from here. The course is being run in a pizzeria, and we get to eat what we make, so that should be fun.
I’ve told MBW that I’m going to ask them what they think about putting pineapple on pizza, but she has warned me of physical harm if go down that slippery slope.
Wish me luck!
Ciao
#Europe2025