La cingue non functionna

---

The fan belt (la cingue) was broken. and it was repaired at a proper Peugeot dealer, so we feel confident about continuing our journey.

We've had to do lots of things we never expected to do - get the phone number of the garage, find out when the car would be ready (cheated on that and got the Tourist Office to phone for us) go on a bus to pick up the car, ask in Italian where to get off (and fail to understand a single word he said in reply), but he stopped the bus about 50 yds from garage. Then we had to pay for and collect the car in Italian: we also asked the word for fan belt - he explained what was wrong by showing us the broken one.

Our Italian has come on dramatically, thanks to a pocket dictionary and Evelyn's BBC teach yourself Italian.

Yesterday, we went for a cruise on Lake Maggiore to the next settlement up the lake. Had a walk along their lakeside promenande and people watched. Italians are terribly vain and have very trendy minimalistic swimwear.

Today we have mostly chilled, eaten Italian ice cream and very good, very cheap coffee - especially now we've realised we need to ask for extra hot water as well as milk.

Heading for Barga tomorrow and from there to Florence and Lucca.

---