I have been in Florence attending a wedding and have experienced major problems with cars. I hired one at the airport, a rather nice Toyota Corolla hybrid, and for a short while it was fine. I drove from the airport out into the sticks and then, for a couple of days, drove to places like Siena and Greve and made a couple of small trips to a local supermarket. It took a couple of days to get used to my different surroundings, although I took naturally to driving on the right hand side of the road and didn't have any problems with roundabouts. But then I got a puncture and things turned to shit. First, the car hire company wouldn't replace the car with another one, leaving me (and those with me) stranded. It was lucky that the flat tyre was discovered close to the villa where we were staying as I managed to drive us back 'home'. It was then a case of calling the hire company who were anything but helpful. We spoke to their breakdown business who sent somebody round to retrieve the Corolla and that, effectively was that. No replacement car, we would have to rely upon unreliable taxis. Not only unreliable but very expensive. We had to pay 120 Euros to travel around 10 miles tops and later, when I asked for a receipt from Guido, our first taxi driver, he wanted me to part with a further 15 Euros. I told him I would write my own receipt. Virtually every journey cost us around 100 Euros and the costs soon mounted up. Eventually, of course, I lost it completely with the rental company, not that doing so achieved anything. In fact, on 'losing it' I appear to be doing it on a regular basis and put it down to needing a rest, a holiday, for example. That said, I've also considered anger management. For those of you thinking 'he's out in Tuscany, surely he's on holiday'. Well, no he isn't. While I wanted to de-stress and had the perfect place to do so – there was beautiful scenery (olive trees, rolling hills, the occasional low mist, blue skies and so forth) – I was not allowed to enjoy it. For a start I was really a cab driver waiting outside clothes shops and then, once the car was towed away to be repaired, I had the stress of Italian cabs, notably that they were few and far between and also that they were extortionate. My 'holiday' was one huge ball of stress as, indeed, is any 'holiday' I take. I'm never allowed to relax, there's always something to fret about (mainly money) and then I find myself back at work and in no way prepared for it having not really had a break. Note to self: always use a reliable car rental company, ie Hertz, Europ Car, Enterprise.
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| Breakfast – in the end it wasn't ridiculously large |
I write to you from the Villa Dragoni in Buttrio, Northern Italy. Yesterday I took the train from Florence to Venice and then changed to a local train for the penultimate leg of the journey (Udine – pronounced 'Oooh-der-nay'). From Udine I encountered more taxi problems, notably that there were no cabs to be found on the rank. I stood outside the railway station in the dark waiting and waiting and waiting. Fortunately for me a woman from Vancouver was in Udine visiting relations and her husband and cousin (both Italians) were the most helpful strangers I've ever encountered. They called a cab company and two of them miraculously appeared. Myself and a lady from Verona (as opposed to a gentleman) were saved from standing around waiting in the dark and watching buses that were 'not in service' as they pulled around and into the front of the station never to be seen again. I'll admit that I had considered a bus, but I'm glad I didn't follow up on the idea as Buttrio, my final destination, is small and sleepy and dark and I'm guessing there's no way I'd have found the Villa Dragoni. My taxi driver knew of it and after a little messing around on a smart phone we set off in the rain. A storm was brewing. With increasing frequency, the skies were lit up with lightening which later developed into a full-blown thunder-clapping storm. Getting into the Villa Dragoni proved a little problematic as it was, to all intents and purposes, closed and dark. Access was possible via a huge gate, but the gate was closed and my driver had to press an intercom button to talk to somebody inside the villa who eventually opened the gates and we were inside. At last, I thought, I can rest easy. Once inside there was nobody but me and a Villa Dragoni employee who handed over a small square piece of card, it was the wifi log in details and a code for access should I leave the building, which I fully intend to do. Then, she handed me a small rectangular piece of card on which I found a list of breakfast items. The idea was that I circled what I wanted and then, in the morning, at a specified time, my breakfast would arrive at my room. I started to wonder whether I was the only guest. I was led through the villa towards room 3, from where I write this note as I await breakfast, which is due to arrive in just under one hour (49 minute to be precise). I wondered whether I had ordered too much. I mean, I like a big breakfast and normally, with the usual self-service affair in conventional hotels, I could help myself, but here at the Villa Dragoni I found myself circling almost every item available: cappuccino (check); muesli (check); yoghurt (check); bread (check); boiled egg (check); fruit juice (check) the list went on and as I lay in bed awake at 0500hrs I wondered what it was all going to look like. Perhaps it will take two people to bring it all to me, perhaps there will be two trays, who knows? And what will they be thinking? That there's two mouths to feed? Probably. But there's only me. And then I started to wonder if there was room on the table. All very humiliating. I'd better make sure I eat it all so they can't say I wasted anything. And if you want any kind of justification for my piggery, perhaps missing dinner last night is good enough. The last thing I ate was a pineapple croissant at a café in Florence and that was around 2pm yesterday afternoon. Alright, I had a peanut bar and a cup of black tea on the train to Venice, but that was it.
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| View from Room 3, Villa Dragoni |
After last night's storm everything outside is now relatively still. It's light and cloudy and I'm surrounded by trees. In the distance I can see a train, presumably approaching Buttrio railway station. Originally, I had planned to train it all the way here, but it was a flawed plan. I was advised (wrongly) to take the 1920 train from Florence to Buttrio, changing at Venice, but this proved to be wrong. When I reached Florence station I was told to take a fast train to Venice and then to Udine and from there jump a cab. Buttrio station was tiny and there wouldn't be any cabs and the thought of arriving at gone 11pm and walking to the Villa Dragoni, dragging a heavy suitcase along the street, was not in the slightest bit appealing. Even though I had to wait a good 20 minutes for a cab at Udine railway station, the journey wasn't that long and I arrived long before my original arrival time of gone 11pm.
I am here all week. I fly back on Saturday afternoon. In all honesty, I could wish the whole thing further. It would have been better taking the week off and chilling at home, although I know now that I wouldn't be chilling, I'd be fretting about money and working out how much I didn't have and the spectre of work would always be looming in the background. But that doesn't mean I'm better off where I am as I'm working. In fact, I can't even remember if I'm working today or whether I have the day off. I'll need to check that. Oh, did I mention fruit? I also ordered fruit for breakfast and I'm not sure what I'll get. Hopefully not a huge bowl as there's no way I'll finish that along with everything else I've ordered. Sorry, I digressed, but there you go, I'm fretting about breakfast now.
A word about Italian trains: they're fantastic. The train from Florence to Venice was fast. A screen in the carriage told passengers that the train was travelling at something like 220km/hr. It departed Florence on time (1639hrs), there were free snacks, a man vacuumed the floor, it was perfect: clean, fast and on time, what more could one ask from a train? I arrived in Venice, on time, at 1842hrs, in plenty of time to catch the 1914hrs local train to Udine.
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| Local train to Udine... |
The weather here in Italy was fine up until Saturday (the day of the wedding) when it started to rain around 1400hrs and now I guess the Italians, like the English, are settling in for the winter months. I know that in the UK right now bad weather is expected. I'm hoping it all dissipates before my flight home next week. I'm on an easyJet flight from Venice to Gatwick and I'm sitting in seat 1a, right at the front of the plane. Let's hope it'll be smooth.
Breakfast arrived on just one tray; there were four small rolls, a tumbler of fruit juice, two pots of yoghurt, cereal – but no milk – a small bowl of fruit (apricots and kiwi fruit), a boiled egg – no fingers – a cappuccino and a small plate of biscuits, tiny ones. I did well: I ate two of the rolls, used the natural yoghurt as a milk substitute for the cereal, ate all the biscuits, the other yoghurt was strawberry-flavoured so that was alright and I'm confident they won't be thinking anything bad of me, ie I didn't 'leave' anything untouched, I'm not a greedy bastard in other words, I ate what I ordered.
One note of criticism about the Villa Dragoni: all the hangers in the wardrobe are for jackets and coats, nothing to hang trousers on. A small detail, perhaps, but it's a problem nonetheless.
