Avoiding flying Italians

Today we are doing something we were told never to do. Hire a car and drive in Italy.

The hostel we stayed at in Milan is part of a chain that has four hostels in Italy and four hostels in Myanmar of all places. One of the other ones that was advertised in Milan was the Ostello Bello Assisi in Umbria. Turns out this is not actually in Assisi, but a 30 minute drive away in a place called Torre del Colle. When we had three nights to fill in before our trip to Venice, we thought that three days relaxing in the Umbrian countryside would be idylic, which would mean hiring a car so that we could get there and get around. Sadly this does mean that we will not make it to Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast this trip, but it is a great excuse to come back!

For the full Italian experience, we picked up our Fiat Panda from near the railway station in Florence. For those of you who do not know, Florence (and many other areas of Italy) has really strict and confusing laws around the use of cars in the

city. This is called Zona Traffica Limita and means that some streets are restricted use at certain times on certain days. If you happen to drive into the zone during the restricted entry you get a large fine. As we were right on the edge of this moving target, we really couldn't afford to get lost, however after some precise navigating from Joanne we made it onto the open road and headed towards Siena without incident.

The roads in Italy are atrocious, and the drivers are crazy. There are potholes and cracks everywhere and cars, trucks and buses will drive half in lanes or wherever it is less bumpy to drive. They also do this at speed and love to get up behind you and let you kow about it if they want to go faster. It was an experience to say the least.

After an hour of playing dodge the car from both directions, we made it to Siena. Siena is known as Florence's poor cousin. This is because back in Medieval times, both Florence and Siena were city states competing to be the dominant force in the region. Florence won by conquering Siena in the 1550s, mostly because the black death had wiped out a third of the city in 1348 and it never recovered. Siena was then set to become a backwater under Florence's power, however it has never lost its medieval charm. In a nutshell Siena is a beauitaful medieval town set on a hillside in Tuscany.

The main event on the calender is the Palio de Siena, a horserace held twice a year. Ten of the 17 neighbourhoods in Sienna get to enter a horse, decided by drawing lots and rotation, and draft a jockey. The horses race around Il Campo, the square in the middle of the town, three times. They literally truck in dirt to make a track and put mattresses against the shops for cushioning. The horse can also win without its rider......gutted we didn't get to see it, but didn't really want to be two of 60,000 people crowded into the square to watch (and without bathrooms ...Jo's worst nightmare)!

Siena itself is a great town to walk around, however it is packed full of tourists (who would of thought in August)! This did make it hard to walk at times, but it was fun watching lost tourists trying to drive through the cobbled streets and crowds! We did a walking tour from the Rick Steves book and had some lunch in the main square. A great place to wander around for a few hours.

Back in the car there was a change of plans as it was getting late in the day. Instead of heading to Assisi for a tour, we decided to head straight to Torre del Colle and check into the hostel. This was a pleasent enough drive dodging more locals until we started on some back roads through Umbrian farms and finally saw our little town on

the hill. What a place. After checking in we got talking to Felipe and Candela who ran the hostel, both from Argentina. They mentioned that the hostel had only been open since May and the part we stayed in used to be the school. There are also only 10 permanent residents in the town. Torre del Colle consists mostly of a hostel, a restaurant, and a cafe.

After finally getting a corkscrew to open our wine and cooking some dinner, we watched another Italian sunset and had a tour of the tower, the premier rooms in the hostel, which is in one of the old watch towers in the town wall. The roof terrace was a great place to watch the stars and the relgious drag train that was coming up the hill. No idea what this was but the whole town turned out, all 10 of them, to light candles and get a blessing from the preist from his truck, while a lot of people did burnouts on scooters around him. There was also people doing burouts on a tractor. Was one of the most random religious parades I have ever seen! I think we will enjoy this part of Italy.