Friday 18th April

Today we thought we would venture over to Sansepolcro (this is on the Tuscan, Umbrian border) where we will finally get to meet Kathy and Harley. Kathy Jacobson is an expat American living in the small town of Sansepolcro. It was Kathy who reassured us it was possible to reside in Italy without paying outrageous sums of money for accommodation. We met Kathy through our Internet searches and we were initially going to rent an apartment within the borghetto (apartment complex converted from an historic building/gaol) where she was living, until circumstances changed. Kathy is our age (a bit freaky that we keep meeting people our exact same age) and has two daughters, Zoe and Harley. Harley is the same age as Charlotte and they have been email buddies since we first made contact with Kathy over a year ago.

As we were about to leave, Kathy sent us a text that she had forgotten a previous engagement and wouldn’t be free until tomorrow but to still come on over anyway. We decided to leave for Sansepolcro, but visit Anghiari on the way, and maybe stay there for the night. It turned out to be both a delightful and stressful drive over to Anghiari.

After driving for about an hour through tiny picturesque villages, we all of a sudden found ourselves smack bang in the middle of Florence! Leon and I were commenting how the traffic was getting quite busy (thinking this was due to everyone leaving work for siesta) when all of a sudden to our right appeared…. what I jokingly said looked like the Arno River! We were trying to decipher where the GPS had led us, when I spotted the famous gold bridge to the right of us and realized we were indeed in the middle of Florence. The traffic was unbelievable….. But Leon was having a ball playing dodgem cars with the Florence drivers, while I didn’t know whether to scream, cry, laugh, pee and poo my pants or wish yet again that I had access to some valium! Meanwhile, Charlotte is busy texting Harley working out our ETA and asking the most useless and annoying questions…..not realizing that her Dad seemed to be possessed by some formula one, racing drivers ghost and not listening. *#@!..all the while I’m thinking about the extent of injuries we might encounter if we collide with the masses of over powered motorbikes, vespas, scooters, Nona’s on push bikes, buses, sports cars, dogs, cats and every other imaginable vehicle that has wheels……… also that maybe…*#@! It was likely that one of these vehicle’s might just not judge correctly how quick they can stop or that it’s not possibly feasible… to squeeze another car in here without damaging our panels! Oh! I forgot to mention their lack of respect for pedestrians, cross walks, traffic lights and even stop signs!!!!!

It was pure torture trying to work out if there were actually any road rules… or how many vehicles can enter a roundabout at the one time, and mind-boggling, wondering who gives way to whom!!! Leon just kept up his demon driving not letting other drivers think that….. because of his French number plates, he was going to back down meekly and let them get in front of him. I thought maybe if I compose myself I could suggest to him that, ‘Darla you do realize that you don’t have your sirens and flashing lights with you and maybe you could slow down a bit or just give way to few vehicles?’ Unfortunately my suggestion wasn’t taken, and I was told to just sit back and relax… or would I like to drive? like yeah!!

Before I lost all self-control, we incredibly broke free of the senseless and wild Florentine traffic and thankfully started to head towards the Tuscan countryside again. The demon left Leon and was replaced by the wanna-be Opera singer in full voice… and all was cheery for the remainder of our trip.

We arrived in Anghiari at about 3 o’clock , Anghiari is a small medieval town perched high up on a hill, still unchanged in centuries and not yet discovered by tourists. We parked the car in the tiny piazza after driving down the most amazing narrow streets that reminded us of a ski jump. Very steep, long and narrow, with cobbled paving that gave the bones a sound shaking. Anghiari was delightful and the locals very friendly, so we sent a text to Kathy and told her we would find somewhere to stay here for the night and meet up with her in the morning. We booked into a hotel after having a look at the rooms. You have to be careful in Italy as there is a huge difference in rooms, but not a lot of difference in the price. So we were shown the 80 euro room first, which was a newly renovated room, tiny but clean and with a modern bathroom and a spectacular view over the rooftops of Anghiari. Then we looked at the 70 euro room…. that could only be described as something forgotten since the 1960’s with 3 single beds, with the most delightful (not) toweling bedspreads, no windows and nothing else in it. So of course we spent the extra 10 euro’s and enjoyed our view. After checking in, we needed to park the car for overnight and with our limited Italian tried to explain our situation to the ‘non speaking the English’ Nona. A man appeared (I think he was the Nona’s son who had been having a snooze out the back) and gestured to park outside, but to us this was another small piazza with only about half a dozen tiny parks that were already full. We walked back to our car in the other piazza and proceeded to find the hotel amongst the small maze of one way narrow streets. Thankfully when we finally found our way back to the hotel, the Nona’s son was there making someone shift their car so we could have their car park. Leon and I were a bit concerned as it had a ‘no parking’ sign above it and Italy’s parking fines are expensive in the extreme! Again we tried to explain our concern, and the gentleman quickly disappeared, he came back with something written on a piece of paper, he stuck it under the wipers and gestured that it was okay now!

We were now free to explore Anghiari. It was quite surreal walking through the steep and narrow meandering alleys. The steps outside the terraced dwellings had an abundance of colorful flowering pot plants and the occasional customary pussy cat catching the last rays of the sun’s warmth. Charlotte even found a friendly dog sitting in a window with his head poking out through the decorative wrought iron screen. Every time we turned a corner there was another enchanting vista to enjoy. We truly felt like we had been transported back in time, and that we could be part of a segment of Getaway that you only ever dream of experiencing!

After an enjoyable and strenuous stroll through the village we walked up the very steep main street and poked our heads into most of the appealing old –fashioned shops. Leon found a traditional old news agency that sold hats and Leon bought himself a very stylish Fedora, and I purchased an Italian birthday card for Charlotte. We also came across a stylish shoe shop and I was tempted to buy my first pair of Italian shoes, they looked far too expensive! Leon scolded me for not asking the price and walked back into the shop and asked in his confident manor, ”Quanto costa questo?” How much are these? Quickly doing the conversion of euro’s to our aussie dollar….. I was astonished that they were within our price range. So then the fun started of working out my shoe size and trying to explain this one was too small, this one is too big and this one is just right…. but too wide! Mamma Mia, I wished I had finished my Italian language lessons! But fortunately the very patient sales girl (I think we had actually given her a bit of entertainment for the day) called in a gentleman from across the street and explained the problem of the shoes being too wide. He showed us that he could fix the problem by building up the innersole and to our amazement we were asked to wait a momento, while the gentleman headed back across the street to fix my shoes. When he was done, he slipped the shoe back on my foot and feeling just like Cinderella….. they were a perfect fit and the alterations were completely invisible. Now that’s service for you, I was one very happy Signora!