Italy Trip 2003: part 1

21 June 2003
Today was the traveling day, and I was really sick of being on the road by the end of it. I did get to watch one DVD on the plane. (Only one because for a while I thought the sound was broken on my computer). The movie on the plane was “How to lose a guy in 10 days” and the food wasn’t bad until the weird Dutch breakfast. I guess that wasn’t bad, just weird. There was a period where we were supposed to sleep, although it never was completely dark outside. The sun did set, however. I got a picture of the sun rising again, maybe an hour after it set.

Holy crap I love the Venice airport. There was hardly anyone there, so I think flying out of there will make the departure go smoothly. [We think my mother left her passport at the airport, because it’s been a few days and she cannot find it anywhere.] So anyway, my father wanted an Alfa as our car, the receipt says “Alfa Romeo or similar.” That means we got a similar, which turned out to be an Opel. I thought Opels were not bad cars and this one isn’t, it’s just very wimpy. I don’t know if it is because we have 4 people in it all the time or what, but it does not have any kick. At least it’s big enough, and man can that AC neutralize that hot air! So once we got on the road we realized the legends of Italian drivers were true. They are crazy, stupid, and fast. Anyway, we got to the house in Cortona with an hour left in our 3-hour window. We took what we thought would be a scenic route along coast. It wasn’t along the coast, but it was scenic for the most part. The construction site that detoured us off into the twisty mountain roads was not fun; I’m sure it would be fine for the front passenger, but I was getting carsick in the back.

So we finally got to Cortona, got into the house, had the landlord show us everything in excruciating detail. The house is beautiful: it’s in the valley below the town, not extremely close to anything, trees all around, a huge pool, ivy covered eating area. Very pretty, but not really on the modern side. After a little while of chilling out, we went into town to look for food. The restaurant right at San Garibaldi square (actually a parking lot with a statue) looked closed. We drove around looking for a place to eat, and ended up taking some pretty drives up and down the hill of Cortona. The town perched on the hillside is pretty neat, and there is a castle on top. I hear it is a sort of long hike up to it.

to be continued...