On the face of it the drive from Geneva to Florence although long was interesting as we were to go through the Mt Blanc tunnel from France to Italy. We started from Switzerland and back into France in a mixture of rain and low cloud, paid our €40 to enter the tunnel and 11.6 km later we emerged into Italy to bright sunshine.
The Italian motorway are not in north as good as the French ones, more like the British ones, more traffic and lots of road maintenance. At one point we queued very slowly for about 30 minutes surrounded by large trucks.
Then there was Genova. The city is on the coast and is very hilly, the motorway passes through the city so we were joined in parts by commuters, the thing you have to understand about Italian drivers is that the scooter and motorcycle riders all think they are Rossi and the car drivers Fangio, which of course they are not. The other thing about Genova are the tunnels and viaducts, not so bad you think but these are the two things that Penny hates the most, so for her it was a white knuckle ride of the worse kind and I cannot blame her because there must have been at least fifty of them if there was one, and by the time we got through them all I was sick of them too. Putting sunnies on then taking them off, back on, back off......... aghhhhhhh!
Then we got to Florence......... the hotel said not to rely on the sat nav as it is in a restricted vehicle area, so they sent us a map and written instructions, except the map wasn't attached to the email, so we relied on the written instructions. The first direction was to leave the motorway at the Florenza Sud exit, which would have been fine except for the fact that there was no such turn before the motorway ended....... so we then followed the sat nav. Penny was busy trying to find street signs on the instructions that matched the way the sat nav took us, she found not one, it was as though they had written the directions for a different city. The time was marching on, the reception closed at 6pm, it was after 5-20pm and we entered the restricted traffic zone. OMG we had no idea where we were and the street name we were trying to find seemed to be not existent, we were however on the correct side of the Arno river in the old town. At this point we stopped the car in some piazza and I got out and asked a couple of courier drivers, with a lot of gesticulations and blank looks they pointed in one direction. Not sure they had understood even the address on the email I decided to leave Penny and the car and try on foot. You have to understand the roads around us had almost enough room for a Smart car, there were many pedestrians, scoots and bikes as well so foot seemed like a good idea.
I asked directions at a restaurant and followed those, asked a couple of official looking guys who sent me in a different direction, then I found a couple of really cute Municipal Policewomen who sent me in the right way. Lo and behold I found the hotel, actually just a doorway in-between a Pizzaria and a Gelateria.
Fulvio the receptionist was extremely helpful, booked me in, gave me a map, showed me where to leave the car, all was well, except for the bit where he asked me were I had left Penny and the car........... I had no idea! We tried to work it out based on the limited number of bridges that I could have crossed on and finally decided on a point on the map. Now the more forward thinking ones among you are saying to yourselves why doesn't he ring Penny and ask where she is, good idea except I left my phone in the car and I didn't know the number of Penny's Uk sim card. Doh!
Fulvio said that was ok and said just go out the door and turn right and keep going, I now had a map and went out the door and turned right and started walking, the only thing was it didn't feel right, it was not the way I had come, so I turned left. After a few minutes I started to recognise a few places so full of confidence I kept going. Five minutes more and there was an anxious looking Penny and a 3008, all was well.
Or so we thought. Fulvio had had marked on the map the garage to take the car to, they would then drive us back to the hotel, drop the luggage and take the 3008 away again. The map didn't quite work out, one way streets, blocked off streets, went pass the hospital several times. Ended up in the Piazza were the hotel was, asked another two delightfully helpful Municipal police who marked our map with new instructions and sent us on our way, again the map didn't help and round and round we went, cars, bikes, pedestrians, buses all got in our way. The street we where trying to find was no more than 1km from were we started, an hour later Penny says "thats the street we want" , drove down it and there was the garage. They then drove us back to the hotel, it took five minutes. Welcome to Florence.
