Road trip through Tuscany... hahahaha!

Sorry this one is a little late, but there has not been a good time to sit down and type it.

Renting a car in Tuscany
This was our first obstacle. Unfortunately, many of the books you read about traveling through Tuscany make it sound so darn easy to get from one place to the next using the buses. Well, that is far from true! If you are going to Tuscany, you either need to be on a bus tour or you need to rent a car and have some good navigational skills :)

I voiced my need for a car to the ladies at Voltrona, and they jumped right on it. They called 5 different places and finally found us a car that we could rent for a day. A guy named Daniel, from San Gimingnano, owns a Peugeot museum and also rents some older Peugeots that he has. He came out to Voltrona and picked us up that evening, we looked at his antique cars and then sat down to sign some papers. The thing about Italians is once you get them started talking, they tend to not shut up :) No offense to my relatives :) I gotta say, I have a slight hint of that trait myself! (Don't laugh). He just talked and talked about places we should go see, what wines we should try, etc. Both Matt and I are thinking "Can you please shut up and can we please get the car and go." Finally, we signed the papers and left. This little "yee deet" car (as my Mom and Dad would call it) was actually great. It was really small, enough room and it worked!

Early morning start to begin our road trip on Easter Sunday
We got up around 7:30 am and headed out! We had a map in hand, that Daniel gave us, which did not include the roads… just the cities. That was our first mistake. Had we had a good ROAD map for our ROAD trip we might have had a much easier time. When traveling by car through Europe, you notice an annoying number of roundabouts every few miles if you are not on the highways. Our first destination was Pisa so that Matt can see the famous tower. We get to the first round about, and it has the little sign that points in one direction. Well for about 4 more roundabouts there is no sign for Pisa. What we figured out later is you keep going in the direction that it pointed you in... not toward the other towns that you think are near the one you are trying to get to. Matt nearly lost it by mile 15.... he was sure we were going to get lost and never ever ever be able to find our way back! He was literally freaking out, and I of course, kept my cool and told him it would be fine. We went through every tiny little town between San G and Pisa. We guessed our way through the entire 2 hour trip that should have taken about an hour. To be honest, I would not have done anything differently except reassure my sweet husband a little more :) The countryside was beautiful. Along the way we saw some interesting things, to say the least. When we were almost to Pisa, we are driving through a larger town (more industrial) and I looked up ahead and saw this guy on a cart being pulled by something. It's smaller than a horse, so I am thinking "what the heck is pulling him?" Um, it's a mini-horse pulling this old man on his beat up cart down this street that has stop lights and such. “What is he doing?” He wasn't even pulling any goods. It was like his morning exercise, except, this poor little mini-horse is doing the work? I died laughing. Once we got into Pisa, I assumed we would see the tower... not exactly. We navigated our way through the town based on the location of the river and our trusty North, South, East and West directions! Yes, we did this without a Garmin, ladies and gents! We actually used a road map to get us all the way to Pisa! WOO HOO! As we drove up and Matt finally saw the tower, I will never forget the words that came out of his mouth..."Wow, that thing is really leaning!" HAHAHHAHAAHAH! Um, yes dear, it is really leaning :) I think he thought it was going to be a slight slant, but as you can see, it's definitely leaning!

We walked around, took some pictures, BOUGHT A FREAKING ROAD MAP and headed back out!

Trip from Pisa to Lucca

This was much easier! We got there in about 45 minutes. Lucca was packed with people, so instead of getting out of the car like normal people do, we drove around the tiny streets that you could drive in (kind of like in the movie Italian Job) and saw the sites. The city is amazing! It has the original wall still wrapped all the way around it. Inside, it's this town with streets that make you feel claustrophobic, but it's really magical. We both loved it! I would highly recommend it for a day trip.

Trip back to San G


So there are highways! Straight from Lucca, after figuring our way out of the city, we jumped on the highway and headed towards Florence. We did great! We followed the signs and got on the same path that our bus took from Florence to San G. Not sure how we did it... oh yes I do... we had a real ROAD MAP! We got back to Voltrona and called Daniel. While in Lucca, we purchased our train tickets from Florence to Milan, but getting back to Florence, the next morning, was going to be a challenge, so we decided to turn the car in that evening. Daniel was less than thrilled when we showed up and did not fill up the car. He never mentioned it, and with him not being a large company like Avis, we didn't know if we were supposed to. So we took the car back up the hill to get some gas. Time to use some math: Gas is 1.32 euro PER LITER! There are 3.78 liters in one gallon. THAT IS $6.48 PER GALLON U.S.! We had to fill up half a tank. We spent 38 euro on half a tank of gas (in a tiny car) which means a full tank of gas after the conversion rate is probably upwards of $84.00 OH MY GOSH! Thankfully we only used half a tank! Anyway, he charged us 50 euros flat and we were on our way.

Getting from San G to Florence

Now remember, I lost it on the way to San G with the bus, so we decided to pay for a taxi to get us to the train station in Poggibonsi which would take us into Florence. The taxi was a mere 40 euro (geeze we spent a heck of a lot on Taxi's while in freaking Tuscany). Then the train was 12 euro to get us back. We had two backpacks strapped to us, bottles of wine and olive oil strapped to us (I could just kick myself for not taking a picture). We looked like a couple of gypsies traveling through Europe. It was time to get some rolly bags! So I got Matt set up to guard our bags while I headed under the rail station to the shopping mall. I picked up two lovely flowery bags that Matt just LOVES :) HAHAHA. I reorganized everything between the bags. I had clothes out, bottles of wine out I was rolling bottles in clothes, stuffing everything so it would not move. The last thing I wanted was to spend 70 euro on these two bags and have something break. It worked.

Train from Florence to Milan
Unfortunately, the trains were sold out, as far as seating goes, but they will still sell you a ticket. I met a very nice customer service agent who gave me a great tip. He said to find either car number 4 or 5 and be the first in there. It's their bar area so there is plenty of standing room. As soon as the train pulled up we booked it to the 4th car. Sure enough, it was the bar. We had our two huge back packs and are new little rolly bags under the counter and we stood on either side of them. It was only 2 hours, so standing was no problem at all.

Train from Milan to Bergamo


As soon as we got off the train in Milan, we went to a TRENITALIA kiosk and purchased our one way tickets to Bergamo. They were 5 euro total. It's a quick 30 minute train ride. I would describe it as a suburb of Milan. We get on the train and head out. As we are sitting there, a TrenItalia agent comes by to check our tickets. Mind you, we have traveled all over Italy on trains and never once has someone checked our tickets. We hand him our ticket. He sits down... which I knew was a bad sign... telling us (in broken English) that we did not validate our tickets. I showed him our other tickets to prove that I had no idea what he was talking about. For those of you taking trains in Europe, always stick your ticket in the yellow box where your train is located and get your ticket stamped by the meter. They don’t want you to be able to use the ticket twice, which makes perfect sense. Back to the guy... I apologized and told him I had not had to do that before and that it would not happen again. He could clearly see we had no plans to use that ticket again... we had all of these bags, we showed him our plane tickets out the next day... nothing worked. He wanted me to hand him 50 euro for EACH of us. I told him we didn’t have that kind of money on us. He kind of scoffed in disbelief. These Italians think we are rich (being Americans). When we got to Rome our first night, we didn’t have any Euros yet, so I presented them with my mastercard, which happens to have an American Flag on it. They made a comment about wanting to keep the card (joking of course) because American's are rich! HAHAHAHAHHA! That card wouldn’t get them very far :) Anyway, back to our guy. So he asked me for our passports, scribbled down our passport numbers and walked off. So, if I get thrown in jail next time I am over in Italy because there is a warrant for my arrest for not paying a fine, at least I have the story documented! I doubt it though :)

Bergamo

Getting to Bergamo might have had some frustrating components, but we were there. The tourist office is located right outside of the train station. They pointed us towards our hotel, which was a 5 minute walk. Now, in the states, you could not pay me to stay in a Best Western. I have a very fowl impression of them here. In Europe, STAY AT THEM! They have basically taken over some of the nicest hotels (all 4 stars and above) and slapped their name on the building! We loved this hotel! The room was small, but clean and updated. The location is perfect if you want to venture around the lower and upper city.

~Another reason we would probably never go during the Easter Holiday again, ~ all of Bergamo was basically shut down. We walked around for a bit and came across a Sushi restaurant. They didn’t open for another hour, so we continued to site see. We ventured back over when they opened. The food was great! I have a picture of the restaurant and the street that it's on. Everything we had was great! They do not speak English! So be prepared!

This is the street that it is on ;)

After dinner, we were too tired to venture up to the historic upper city, but we did stop for some Gelato. The first place we went had 6 people behind the counter, all serving other customers yet they would not even look at us! We stood there for 5 minutes thinking they were serving people that were there before us... NOPE! They were purposely skipping us! Wow! I even had money in my hand sitting on the counter... still nothing! So we walked to the next shop and they gladly served us! Yet another example of how rude these Italians were... unreal!

DONT GO TO GROM IN BERGAMO!

We got a good night’s rest and headed to Paris at 5:15 am!