Saturday 24 September: Venice to Tuscany

Up bright and early for some quick photos without the crowds, then in line for St Mark's cathedral. The main attraction here is the romanesque architecture with its five domes, and the very extensive mosaics. Quite impressive, but of course photography was not allowed.

We then packed up, said goodbye to the lovely staff at Antigo Trovatore, and caught the vaporetto to Piazzale Roma, where the Avis office is.

Our car this time is a Fiat Punto - quite a nice little car, but again the boot is very small. We got onto the autostrada without too much difficulty and headed west. First stop was a toll plaza - we went through a lane that looked like the right one, but was in fact an electronic toll lane. Nowhere to put your money, no ticket machine, and no human to ask for assistance. There was a dirty great semi-trailer behind, blowing his horn and flashing his lights, so we just went through. Within a few minutes we were in Padua, and turned south for Bologna. Traffic in the fast lane was very fast indeed - we were doing 130 or so in the slow lane, and being left well behind.

Feeling the need for refreshment we stopped into an Autogrill. Went up to the counter to buy a coffee, and the woman started shouting at us and pointing in the general direction of the door:

A la casa! A la casa!
Err..due cappucino, per favore.
Si signor - a la casa!

We never did get our coffee.

The road south from Bologna is the A1 - the famous Autostrada del Sol. It's a four lane dual carriageway and pretty good in places. However as we got into the more mountainous areas the geometric standards dropped markedly. There is a lot of new road under construction, so it should be really good in a year or two.

We left the autostrada at Barberino del Mugallo and immediately hit another toll plaza. This time we avoided the electronic lane, but didn't have a ticket to feed into the machine. A furious attendant came out and demanded we produce a ticket. After a flurry of Italian (of which we didn't understand a word) he raced off and another guy came along, who spoke English. After explaining that we had got on without a ticket by accident, and furthermore that we got on at Bologna (we weren't about to admit to driving all the way from Venice without a ticket) we paid the rather hefty toll and were on our way.

A farmhouse in Tuscany

Our route took us to Borgo San Lorenzo, about 30km north of Florence. From here we followed the signs to Il Poggio - only when we got there it turned out to be Il Poggiolo. So we had to re-trace our steps and found the right road to take. It led us up hill and down dale, along lanes that were narrower than anything we had seen in Ireland. Eventually we got to our destination Agrotourismo Il Poggio Alle Ville. It's a little group of former farm buildings converted to apartments, surrounded by olive groves.

We couldn't find the proprietor, but eventually an ancient noña came along and let us in. Let's have a cup of coffee - there was no coffee. No tea. No milk. OK, it's supposed to be self-catering, but surely these minor essentials would be provided? Apparently not. A further check showed that there were no consumables of any kind - not even soap in the bathroom. So back to Borgo S. Lorenzo to stock up.

We had fun trying to decipher the labels of all the unfamiliar products, and came back with some pasta, bread, cheese, salami and steak. Well it looked like steak but when we tried to fry it, it turned out out to be mutton. So we had a nice meal of fried mutton and salad, followed by gelati and some very delicious chocolate. We still wanted a coffee and now discovered there were no filters for the percolator. Evenually we found an Italian-style pressure coffee pot, and got our caffeine fix.

The apartment is a good size, but didn't look much like the one in the brochure. It was also very dirty, with dust everywhere, cup-rings on the bedside tables, cobwebs on the wall. Somewhat despondent, we headed for bed - but the bed hadn't been made up. Luckily there were some clean sheets and a blanket, so we made the bed ourselves. The blanket was filthy, but we found a doona in good clean condition and used that.

We will definitely be having a deep and meaningful discussion with the proprietor if and when he shows up.