Day 2 - Saturday, August 11 (Sorry, this is a long one!!)

Picked up rental car at the airport, and loaded things in the car (2 large bags, 2 small bags, 2 carry ons) Spent nearly 10 minutes trying to figure out out to put the car in reverse.  The European cars with a manual transmission are always a bit of an adjustment.  I wish I could have remembered that you pull up the bottom cover of the stick shift in order to go into reverse.  We tried pushing it and punching it, all to no avail.  Of course, if you pull out the manual, it is in Italian, and I just didn’t see any pictures of the stick shift so we really were frustrated.  Finally, the girl from Hertz came over to help us figure it out.  

Got on the road for our drive from Rome to Greve in Chianti.  The girl at the Hertz Counter showed us the route to take, and Jeff didn’t want to “buy” the map because of the Tom Tom app on his phone.  But I talked him into buying the map which cost 3 Euro (about $4) so we would have something to look at!   The route she suggested took us over 4 hours on the drive.  If we would have taken the main freeway (Autostrada) we probably would have saved about an hour and a half.  On the map, both routes look about the same, but the truth is, the route we took turned into several 2 lane highways, which went through towns, and of course slowed us down considerably.  

We had stopped 2 different times trying to find a new Sim Card for Jeff’s jailbroken phone (the ones that they had at the airport were only for voice, not for data or broadband.)  He needed the sim card because he has a Tom Tom App on his phone, so we can drive-by directions for all of Europe.  A lot of good this does, when you don’t have the sim card!  He would ask people along the way (in English to their Italian...) if they had the sim cards, and they would say no, he would say “Where do I go?” and they would just smile and shrug their shoulders.  Either they didn’t understand or they really didn’t know, but it was not too dissimilar from our trip a couple of years ago when he was on a mission to find his Italian shoes.  

The funny thing is, he pays money to jail break his phone, so he can get a free app, that we can’t use, because we can’t get the sim card.  We have the Garmin that we used before which had all the European roads on there, but could we use that?  Of course not, we had use the jail broke free app that we couldn’t use!

Sorry, I digress...started getting hungry since I slept through breakfast, so we made another stop to get a bite and use the bathroom.  He asked again about a sim card, and still the sort of pathetic shrug...we both got kind of  gross sandwiches that we didn’t finish, and got back on the road following the map that wasn’t exactly the best map. 

We navigated our way through different towns and by chance got onto the right road which took us into Greve.  We had to go up and huge hill and back down again but we knew we were in the right region when we came across thousands of acres of grape fields and vines 

Here is where it gets interesting...the directions from our booking agent for this part of the trip, were very vague, and not real clear as to where to find out apartment that we were staying at.  So, we drove around the town, trying to find the “Square” and to find the car park which is by the church.  We were then supposed to walk to the square, find the owners of the apartment and they were help us with our luggage.  BUT. after inquiring as to how far the square is from the car park, ”Mr. I refuse to follow directions, I do what I want to do” insists that we park the car, and take our luggage with us.  So, we take ALL of our luggage out of the car (luckily I had the presence of mind to change my shoes from my heals to my flip flops) and proceed to “schlep” our luggage through the town to the square even though we had no idea where we were going.

Luckily, after we got through the square the directions were somewhat accurate, we started to walk through the back of the building, and asked some girl for directions.  She pointed to a man standing at the top of a hill of buildings, and that is how we met “Mauro” our host.  He came running over to us (and luckily to me...) to help us with our luggage...there are lots of hills in these hillside communities) and brought us upstairs to our apartment.  His English is not that great, but he is sweet and happy to show us around.  We get settled in, and Mauro takes Jeff out to find a sim card for his phone.  While he does this, I fall into a deep sleep...mmmmm felt great!

Jeff comes back from his adventures with Mauro (they also stopped by for a wine tasting somewhere...) and of course, no sim card!  They don’t open until Monday so we are stuck without a digital map.  I have an idea!  Let’s go to the Tourist Information stand and get a Map!  Hmmmmm, the old fashioned way!  What do you know!

We were able to walk out of our apartment to the square where we have a nice dinner and wine (of course) around 9:00. Exhausted, we both fell asleep, and slept quite well through the night! ;-)