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Published: August 18th 2012
Although we are enjoying looking at all the sights as we travel, people are the most important thing. We loved spending the week in Rhodes with family and today we spent the day with friends. It is a little ridiculous that we had to come to Italy to meet them as they only live in New Zealand, but the coincidence of being so close on another continent couldn't be passed by.
Regan and David had been in the youth group Fiona ran in Balclutha in the late 90's. She had attended their wedding shortly after we had moved to Australia and hadn't seen them since. Facebook had kept us in touch and we had realised we were all travelling for three months and our paths crossed this week. They were staying in Tuscany and a half waypoint was Lake Trasimeno. So we arranged to meet at a restaurant in Castiglione del Lago.
We almost created a huge traffic jam trying to find somewhere to park. Fiona directed Toby to turn left and when he attempted to do so all he could see down the street were steps. There was anther road to the left of the steps which he
couldn't see that would have led to the parking. However he decided to stop mid turn which meant he was on the left side of the road. Italian drivers aren't very helpful and so no one would let him back onto the right side and those coming the other way just drove around him. We eventually got out and found another park and climbed a million steps to get to the restaurant. Every town in Italy is up a hill!
Regan and David were waiting and we got to meet their kids, Zion and Sabre. We had a lovely lunch and then sat in a park chatting. The kids were so well behaved even though it must have been quite boring for them. We talked about mutual friends and our lives. It's amazing how many people we all know from different places and how easy it was to chat even though we hadn't seen them for so long. We had thought we would be about an hour or two but we parted after 5 hours!
Back at Montone the festival was starting. The festival commemorates the gift to the village of a thorn from Jesus's crown. The piazza
was crowded. The trumpeters and drummers did their thing and then a lady from each region was presented to the crowd. They were dressed in medical costume and went up to a different balcony over the piazza for the rest of the event, which involved flag throwers / wavers from Sanselpulcro - a nearby town. We had never seen so many men in tights before. The village was buzzing. It should be a good week.
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