It will be a short one tonight.
We stayed at Laura’s place in Florence for the last few nights. It was comfortable, but not really close enough to the centre of Florence where all of the fun stuff happens.
And the rain didn’t help much, either with the traffic, the bus schedules, or my attitude.
We got away about 9.00am as usual.
I’m a bit annoyed that we pay a cleaning fee at these places, and then we are requested (and expected) to strip the bed, gather the towels and dump the rubbish.
So rubbish dumped and Claude packed, we gave Joséphine instructions to take us to Milan.
Last night when we looked at the route we’d be travelling, it was going to take us one way and take 4 hours. Today, that same route was going to take 5 hours, so we got a different route on the A1 motorway.
It’s nice when Joséphine gives us options.
We had to navigate the surface streets on the outskirts of Florence to get onto the motorway, and as luck would have it, it was peak hour.
And in peak hour, the traffic is worse, the speed limits are less relevant than they normally are, and the crazy Italians take crazy to a whole new level.
Crazy!
There was horn honking, shouting, gesticulating, cussing … and that was just me. The other drivers were insane.
It was like being in a dodgem car, without the actual contact. Cars going everywhere, cutting you off, overtaking.
Yikes.
But we got out of the city and onto the motorway without incident, just some frayed nerves.
It was another day of driving through tunnels. Every so often Joséphine got herself in an absolute twist because the tunnels were so long that she had no idea where we were.
Losing all GPS signal will do that.
One tunnel we went through today seemed to go forever. MBW checked on the Intergoogle and it appears that one was 8.5km long.
That’s a lot of digging.
And we seemed to be travelling downhill for most of the day. I’m not sure if Florence is on the top of a mountain, but we were definitely going downhill.
It’s all very confusing for a simple-minded person like me, but great for fuel economy. I think we have averaged 5.2 litres/100km on this tank, and it says we still have 750km range remaining.
Around 10.30 we stopped off the motorway at one of those service centres and had coffee and croissants.
The speed limits continue to confuse me. I have too many data points.
Google Maps displays 110. Claude thinks (from his sign recognition system) that it is 130. I’m sure I last saw a sign that said 90, yet people are overtaking me at something close to the speed of sound.
It makes it really hard to know how fast to go when Joséphine reports a speed camera ahead.
As luck would have it, after 2 days of rain in Florence, we were driving in almost clear blue skies. Although I guess that’s always preferred when you are travelling at speed, to travelling at speed in the rain surrounded by lunatics.
After coffee we decided to plan a lunch stop, and the lucky winner was a shopping complex named Esselunga, in the township of Piacenza.
Not that we needed to eat, but we can’t get into our digs in Milan until 2.00pm, and we needed to fill in time.
So Joséphine got new instructions and off we went.
Esselunga is our new favourite place until we get back to France, then it will be E.Leclerc again.
We found the shop (it’s like a Costco), bought some stuff we needed, and some stuff we didn’t need (of course), then told Joséphine to take us to Milan.
A couple of minor roundabout debacles but they are easily corrected by going around again, and we found ourselves at the on-ramp of the motorway again.
Signage was unclear, and in a moment of gratuitous indecision, we (… well, technically I because they were my hands on the steering wheel) picked the wrong lane.
I’m calling it a parallax error, because I genuinely thought it was the right lane, but once I was committed to the decision I quickly developed a sense of buyer’s remorse.
An overwhelming sense of buyer’s remorse.
I went through the eTag lane without an eTag.
Bugger.
The Italians may be a lot of things, but they are not very advanced when it comes to eTag lanes. Unlike Australia where you ring up and pay within 3 days, that’s not an option here.
There is no delayed gratification on the Italian motorways. Only instant, and crushing regret.
You don’t need a tag to go through the eTag lane getting ON to the motorway, but you most definitely need one at the other end to get OFF.
And if you don’t have an eTag at the exit point, then you need to pay using your ticket as you get off. Except if you didn’t get a ticket getting on because you stupidly chose the eTag lane, then you are in a world of hurt.
Double bugger.
So we found ourselves at the toll exit and pressed the assistance button, and put on our hazard lights. This could take a while, much to the delight (NOT) of the cars behind us.
Anyhow, the assistance operator was very helpful, and between him and his limited English, and me with my “non parlo Italiano”, we finally reached a tacit agreement that a) Geoff had a problem, b) Geoff had “no ticket” (the only two words of English he could obviously understand, probably because he’s heard them from frightened tourists many times before), and finally that c) Piacenza was where we got on and made the blunder.
I expected to be strip searched by the local Polezzi but I was lucky – he tapped some buttons at his end and €4.30 displayed on the screen, and I tapped my Mastercard.
The machine said “arrivederci” (“goodbye”, but more likely “get lost you crazy Australian”), the boom went up, and we drove away.
We were expecting a “maximum possible toll fee” for our error, and maybe that’s still coming. But for now I can just add “failure to take a ticket” to my list of sins, along with fare evasion on buses.
I’m really going to have to go to confession. Maybe we should make a side trip to Rome to see the Pope, because I think I’m going to need someone influential to forgive me my sins in Italy.
We got into Milan around 2 30pm feeling a little frazzled. We had a quick lunch and went out to find the local post office.
Despite the sunny start to the day, it’s been raining all afternoon … just in time for our Milan coffee culture walking tour tomorrow.
We found a nice bakery around the corner, so that might be breakfast tomorrow.
It’s been a stressful day, and I haven’t been my best self.
I’m all caught up on the blog again, and we had a nice dinner of gnocchi with a ricotta and truffle oil pesto sauce.
Yum. There will be a lot of pasta in my future, I think.
Now I just need coffee. And sleep.
And maybe a valium.
On a humorous note for today, when we stopped at the shops in Piacenza today, I used their facilities. Beside the toilet was two things: a huge red button, and a red and white sign (see below).
Where I come from, a big red button and a red and white lettered sign translates to “if you are having a heart attack and need urgent assistance, press this button.”
But in this case it literally translates to “to start the drainage, press the button.”
They could have just said “flush”. Crazy and unnecessarily verbose Italians.
Sorry for the lack of quality photos, but there are slim pickings today.
Editor’s note: it appears that I can be unnecessarily verbose also. Sorry.
Ciao
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