ITALIA Monday 7th April

All of us got some sleep on the long flight from HK to Rome, I think from exhaustion! I was starting to feel quite nervous about getting off the plane and driving straight to our Villa in Ponte a Moriano. Our plane landed at 7:15am, we amazingly walked straight through customs, not even a bag check or glance in our direction from the officers. We then had a bit of difficultly trying to contact the company that we are leasing our car from. But, after a lot of experimenting with the phones and numbers we got through, an African/Italian came and picked us up and took us to the where our car was stored. Then without hardly any instructions from the Italians (as of course they could only speak a little English) we were given the keys and sent on our way. Leon plugged in our GPS and sorted out where everything was in our left hand drive car and promptly drove off into the Rome traffic…… Help!!!

The only bit of information the guy gave us, was to take the scenic route rather than the autostrada. But after some very nervous driving through tiny villages with cars coming at us in every direction and up extraordinarily narrow, one way streets…… you practically have to fold in the side mirrors to get through, we decided to change direction and head out onto the autostrada, which ended up only slightly less nerve wrecking travelling at 130kph and with no one using indicators. But Leon wasn’t going to let the bloody Italians in there flash cars get the better of him, so all of a sudden we were on a mission that no one was going to pass us*#@! Leon loved that his brand new little Peugeot could travel at 150kph with ease…… we were also shedding minutes of our arrival time on the GPS!

All of us were thrilled and somewhat relieved that the GPS got us straight to Ponte a Moriano with only a few recalculations, from not trusting some of the places that she (we selected a female voice on the GPS) wanted us to turn into. It was now 4:30pm and we just had to find our villa on the hill.

Now I was truly having a cow as the road was steep, very twisty and yet again seemed not big enough for one car. And of course other cars used this road too, so you have to back down this daunting road when another car approaches at a rapid speed (the Italians don’t slow down for anything)…. yikes!! And to make matters worse Nona’s are standing in the middle of the road chatting, people riding bikes that just won’t move over and vehicles double parked outside their villas. So you come around a blind mend and hey presto the road is blocked by someone…… Oh I forgot to mention, some of the villas, especially their menacing corner stone walls are also jutting out onto the road*#@!

Finally in the distance we spotted our villa thanks to our photos and previously looking on google earth to locate whereabouts on the hill it sat. No one was there to meet us, the key was just left under the doormat as the German lady that owned the villa was sick and couldn’t come over from Germany to meet us. Wow!!! It was everything we had imagined and more. An amazing view down into the valley where the village of Ponte a Moriano sits, views over to Lucca and over the hedge, to the Convent del Angelo.

We were all fighting to be the first to open the door and explore the house. Charlotte charged inside and straight up the stairs to choose her room, she was soon back down; it was too cold and creepy for her. There were too many scary Jesus pictures and little statues decorating the rooms not to mention the thick stone walls which make everything echo and the heating wasn’t on. But Leon and I delighted in the beautiful old terracotta tiled floors, thick walls, timber shutter windows, antique furniture……did I mention the old fireplace and that it was a lot bigger than we expected?

The villa has two double bedrooms, a children’s room with two single beds, a piano room with another single bed and old slow combustion stove in it. Also two bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs both with bidets…. (He He) how do you work them? The kitchen has everything we need, a nice stone feature wall and large timber table to sit eight people. The laundry is in a cute outhouse with another toilet and shower plus a pizza oven. Leon also discovered two barns with lots of interesting old junk in them.

The small vineyard slopes down in front of the yard and the olive grove is to the side and behind the villa. After quickly exploring all round we drove back down the daunting hill into Ponte a Moriano and bought some limited food supplies from a small nonna store. Home again, cooked dinner, made the beds with linen that was too small for all the beds, and then tried to get some sleep.