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Published: February 1st 2012
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When one pictures Tuscany they may have the view in their minds of rolling hills, twining gravel roads and terracotta castles that reach for the clouds. Well you wouldn’t be wrong. Spending 5 nights in the Chianti Countryside in Tuscany was amazing; with the images of the film ‘Under the Tuscan’ sun becoming a reality (well a Winter one at least, without the sunflowers). We had hired a Lancia from Hertz car rental in the main city area of Florence. I must say the drive was quite nerve wracking, not anything to do with Ben’s driving skills, but the fact that there are many stupid drivers in Florence – if there was only 1 lane, you would have 2 other cars right next to you, and 3 motorcyclists driving up the side of the car. Even if you were going the speed limit (130 km/h can you believe it!) there were still drivers constantly overtaking and not leaving much room before a potential collision. There were many ‘One Way’ straights, which were only made known to you when ‘hitting a dead end.’ Driving in Sydney is a dream in comparison to Florence – I don’t know how they all do it.
Anyway, you get my point – no wonder why Florence has been labelled the ‘hardest city to drive in for motorists.’
We reached the place we were staying ‘Torre Forrese’ – which honestly looked like a Castle. The interior was filled with marble statues, old wooden drawers, expensive chandeliers, painted framed portraits of sophisticated aristocrats, rich crimson rugs, golden wallpaper and a magnificent dining table.
Our first 2 days in Florence consisted of visiting the infamous Italian Outlets with names such as Prada, Gucci, and Versace lining ‘The Mall’ as they like to call it. I didn’t buy anything as even ‘Reduced’ still felt like ‘a little less ridiculously expensive.’ We must have had about 4 coffees each during our time there in the cafe- the coffee was so good in comparison to Paris and the like, so we were in for our quota. That evening we also had two ‘Affogato’s (for those who are unsure, it is 2 shots of espresso with a scoop of ice-cream) In hindsight having so much coffee wasn’t such a good idea as I don’t think I slept more than 2 hours that night and we
had to be up at 6am for our ‘Best of Tuscany’ Tour. The tour took us through the main towns of Tuscany – commencing in Siena, through San Gimignano, onto an Organic Farm in the Chianti Countryside, and the final stop being Pisa. Highlights of the tour included stopping in San Gimignano where there were a lot of cobblestone streets and excellent leather shops. For lunch on the farm, we enjoyed olive oil and fresh garlic ciabetta, pasta with a beef sauce, cured meats and cheese, and Italian biscotti for dessert. The people who sat with us for lunch were from Louisiana so it was interesting to speak with them about where they had visited and how things were different culturally.
The views from the farm were only those that you would see on a postcard. There wasn’t too much to see at Pisa (besides the Leaning Tower) and admittedly when we had our free time, we had a photo at the tower and then went to McDonalds for the rest of it. When meeting up with the tour group again, we were driven around on a small cream street train (very cute!) to see the main
town. The most beautiful sunset came across the sky and reflected on their main river as we got off the train and back onto our bus for the trip home.
Enjoying the coffee so much at ‘The Mall’ the previous day and wanting to keep driving through the Tuscan countryside, we decided to go back for some more cappuccinos and lunch. I had a balsamic vinaigrette steak and Ben had a butterfly chicken. We fooled the waiter as he just assumed Ben was having the steak – he was a little perplexed when Ben placed the steak in front of me. The meal was just as beautiful as the coffee and we made our way back to the car.
This is just about where our enjoyment of Tuscany ended. When reaching the car, I realised that there was a massive dent in the side of the car near the petrol cap (about 25cm x 20cm). Needless to say, neither Ben nor I were impressed. Evidently someone had smashed into the side of the car without us knowing, and didn’t bother to leave any details whatsoever and just drove off. We should have taken it as a warning sign when we saw pretty much every car in Tuscany was strewn with massive scratches, dents, broken headlights etc… Our enjoyment of Tuscany quickly turned into panic, with questions running through our head like ‘How much is this going to cost?’ and ‘How can we possibly get this dent out?’ If we couldn’t get the dent out, we probably would have been up for about $1500 under the Hertz Rental agreement. Our insurance only covered us for whether the car was a write off.
First, we tried putting boiling water on the dent before trying to prod the dent out from the inside of the car with a fork. No luck. Ben YouTube’d a few possible ‘remedies’ to get the dent out. The most common was using a hairdryer to heat the dent, followed by some compressed air to make the dent ‘pop’ back out. Trying to be as efficient as possible in packing, I decided not to bring a hairdryer on this trip (just when you need it the most!)
We googled where to buy a hairdryer as there wasn’t much around in Florence, being lead to an ‘Home Electrical Appliance’ store which was bordered up like an abandoned shed. We then drove back to the local supermarket, their equivalent of Coles called ‘Coop,’ and managed to buy a hairdryer, can of deodorant (as there was no compressed air) some wooden spoons (our prodding tool) and about 20 metres worth of 5m extension leads to run the hairdryer out from our accommodation, onto the road and by the car. No matter how hard we tried, nothing would make that dent come out. Mind you – we were getting a lot of odd looks from every Italian who walked / drove by. We ran out of deodorant and the hairdryer seemed to have such little heat. We went back to Coop the next day to try and find a stronger tool to push the dent out and buy some more deodorant – ‘CLOSED.’ On a Sunday?? Are you kidding? I can’t even imagine how chaotic Castle Hill would be on the weekend if Towers decided to close for Sunday shopping. A lot of prayers later, we used the last little bit of deodorant in the can, the end of a wooden spoon the hairdryer and the last little bit of hope we had to try and get the dent out. “POP!!” That was the best sound we could ever hear and the relief was overwhelming. Ben now thinks he is MacGuyver.
We couldn’t wait to say good riddance to the car, and have decided that we never want to hire a car again – at least in Europe anyway. All in all, Tuscany was amazing and we can (almost) already laugh about how those few days panned out. We had some magnificent meals, views and memories in Tuscany, that without a doubt, will live long into the future.
I’m a little behind on the Blog updates (my apologies) but will write about Rome, Venice & Vienna soon!! Lots of Love. Xx
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