We wake up in Bologna and have a wonderful breakfast in the hotel, and start off the last leg of our trip to Ticciano where our first villa is. We stop at a rest area near Napoli, and find, along with an assortment of food, a massive 3 liter bottle of wine. Well, that's a garunteed purchase!
We make it into Vico Equense where we meet up with the villa coordinater who will help us the rest of the way to the villa. Well, little did we know, we still had about a half hour or so left of the trip. This part is hard to explain to its full potential, but I'll try my best. Imagine going up a mountain side with what seems to be one lane, in a van when everyone else is in a smart car or Vespa, with concrete walls on one side and a two foot "barrier" on the other side protecting you from a cliff, and hair pin turns in which you cannot see if there is another vehicle coming. Oh and don't forget, the locals don't drive very slowly during all this.
One half hour later we make it to the villa, where a tiny one vehicle side street (but cars go both ways) takes us to the enterance. The villa is really nice, with 6 bedrooms, living room and kitchen, wrap around balcony, and a pool. The view from the balcony is of a small local town that we have dubbed the mountain people. Now this entrance to the villa isn't a very easy sharp turn, and we are informed of a close by parking lot that has a lot easier access for the van to fit. As Knud is pulling the van out to head down the side street, another vehicle with 3 little old Italian grandmothers comes up, and they reach a point where the road is blocked with two cars facing each other. They proceed to start yelling at Knud in Italian to basically say, "hey, move your van around this sharp turn that took you about 10 minutes to turn into." It was a mess, that eventually got resolved with the other car able to pull to a side lot and let Knud pass. What an absolutely crazy start.
It's about 6 or 7 o'clock now, and we haven't eaten since breakfast. The supermarkets close by noon on Sundays, so we need to find a restaurant to grab some dinner. Conveniently, there is a restaurant/bar/pizzaria directly below the villa! Fantastic!
Nevermind, not only did they speak no English (but German as we later understood), but it was reserved for a private party. Well, we are on the top of a mountain with no other restaurants except, you guessed it, back down the mountain to the city. Off we go down the mountain!
Going down wasn't as bad as going up the first time, but still a little stressful with a big van and small roadways. We find a parking spot and walk to Pizza le Metro, a local restaurant famous for meter long pizzas. We order a delicious margerhita pizza with buffalo mozzarella. Pizza here is just so much better! We decided that sometime we have to go back and try more, everything they were bringing out looked so good.
After consuming the meter long pizza, of course gelato is a perfect topping to it all! Shadley and I share a tiramisu gelato cone, and we head back to the van. Trying to get back to the villa without guidance was a lot of fun. The navigation doesn't recognize the villa as an address, and what I assume doesn't know this area at all. It proceeds to take us the wrong way down a one way street with 10 feet walls that the van just barely fits between. Of course, we come to an Y intersection where two vehicles are heading the right way down the street, and we are in the way. A very stressful 15 minutes later we get both cars past us and turn this van around in a very tight interection and head back down. One of the vehicles that we met at the intersection waited for us at the bottom and helped us head toward the villa. This is the friendliness of Italians we had heard of.
We make it back to the villa, and that 3 liter bottle of wine was opened. It was time to relax.
BUT, that private party is still going on, blasting music and people yelling all around. Let's hope that the "no music after midnight" applies here as well, and we can get some rest. We have an early day tomorrow to finish up our documents for the wedding.
Overall, an interesting day of events. We are definitely looking forward to having more stories to share.
8 days left.
I wonder how early that rooster is going to wake up tomorrow,
Shadley and Tom
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