Italy for Dummies

A friend wants me to write about my trip to Italy for her column but I am not sure… so I will start with my rough notes, blog them for those who want to read and for those too who want to ignore. Then if I still feel like it I will edit or delete the lot and forward to her. Please bear with me if this bores you to tears.

What if your partner/ husband/ companion/ lover/ whatever has an affair?
Will you tolerate her?
Well, I did!

She even went on holiday with us and she went everywhere with us. And let me tell you, she relieved me of all the stress I usually had to put up with on trips, & there were no arguments, we all squeezed in, I did not have to read the map and did not have to worry that left = right , or the other way round. She did it all. Her name is Ms Garminia. She is the brain child of modern technology and what a star she is.

I was, to start off with quite upset and irritated that in order to get a visa, one has to plan your itinerary almost to the last detail and book hotels on the way. But this really worked out extremely well in the long run because most of the hassle of finding a hotel at the last moment and having most unpleasant surprises gets eliminated to a great extent. So the first question of where to go and how to travel is the most important. This the MD did. Italy! Hire a car… and this will be roughly the route and places to see. The next he left up to me, completely! Carte Blanche! And once this had been done, a trip like this becomes a trip of a life time.

Now, with Garminia you buy her a little (gift) card beforehand – a ‘map’ of Europe – and then you know she will take over the navigation and even tell you about places you never knew existed! And does she save time? And marriages and lives…and unhappiness and arguments and misery...

If there was a book on “Touring Italy for Dummies’ I would probably strongly recommend it – because there are stuff we do not know. Like where to pay for your parking if there is no parking meter! Maybe I can now do “Italy for Dummies’. Because I now know you buy the ticket at the green grocer and it looks like a lotto ticket (in fact the MD asked why I bought a stupid lotto ticket) which you scratch with a coin & leave on the dash board.

I eventually found a hotel site called hotels dot com! And this is the best site of the whole lot! I booked car hire through Europcar (because I know them and I know their cars are reliable) and asked for the smallest but one size bigger than a Smart – please! This limits the size of a bag which is also a good thing because one really does not need to take much. Who cares if you wash your blouse / shirt in the shower and wear it often? In any case nobody sees you for more than 3 days at a time. And if you travel with less than 10kg it is regarded as hand luggage, no fear of bags getting lost or waiting for luggage – which can take hours if it is not on the same flight. Would have taken even less if I knew we would have such warm weather. The car we would collect once we leave Rome. You don’t want a car in the city, you really don’t! For the price of parking you can buy a car.

We went via Madrid which has a beautiful new airport, but no time to spend in the gorgeous shops if you have to change planes…After that the Rome airport is really grubby and smelly and not too user friendly. Especially because it seems the Italians do not really speak English and you have to look around for information who also explains (is that the word?) in broken English - so easy to misunderstand.

We took the train from the airport to the big station in the city but because we could not really figure out where the hotel was (Garminia was still acquiring her satellites and it was a fairly new relationship…*g*), we took a taxi @ 25 Euros. Look I am not calculating that back into South African Rands, because as the MD said, do not spoil your whole vacation….because you will be sick for the duration of the trip…! After that I got familiar with the underground and bus system…then it is easy peasy and no sweat. You buy a ticket at a tobacco shop (there are many of them) (!) because nobody told the Italians smoking is ‘bad for your health’.