Your Escape Blueprint

Italian bureaucracy!!! That was our lesson today!

We visited beautiful Pietrasanta, we were stunned at the beauty of the Cathedral and really liked the atmosphere of the square so much so that we wanted to eat lunch there. Therefore we had to go back and move the car as we were in a parking lot that allowed for one hour only.

We arrive back at the car 40m minutes after leaving it to find a incomprehensible, yet identifiable parking ticket…….. the lady parking enforcer was just a few cars down. We being me with my strong sense of justice and fairness decided to approach said “enforcer” and explain that we had only been gone 40 minutes not the one hour allowed.

Between her little English and my even smaller Italian and a visit from her “Boss” we established that yes we may have only been there 40 minutes however the ticket was for…. not writing the time we arrived on a piece of paper and leaving it on our dashboard!!! Duh!

I kindly asked them to show me where this notice was displayed……… the boss did

Do you know what that symbol means?

not seem to agree with me that this was a little obscure.

OK lets put this to the vote what do you think this means? (apart from 1 hour of parking between 8am & 20.00pm? Please leave your input below….

Apparently this hieroglyphic means that you have to leave the time you arrived on your dashboard…….. apparently this is commonplace amongst the locals who have their own little handy dandy cards with them. How the heck are people such as ourselves i.e tourists supposed to know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two very valuable lessons learned today!

1)      Don’t expect justice or fairness from traffic enforcers

2)      Keep quiet, get in the car, then rip the ticket into little shreds!

By expecting fair play we were forced into paying the ticket on the spot…. as we were not a Italian registered vehicle! If we did not pay the fine, they threatened to take away (i.e. tow) our car!!! The fine of €39 is what we would have spent and more on a nice little lunch at Michelangelo’s Bar! Well done you traffic enforcers….. you just took money away from your towns businesses and really ticked off a couple of Canadian tourists, who intend to make sure that everyone hears about this.

Funny thing is we have been in Italy for 2 weeks now and we have never seen this bizarre system before! Travellers beware Italian bureaucracy is not a force to be reasoned with!!!

It has been my experience that no matter how chaotic and crazy traffic seems – there is always some under lying order that makes things work, well mostly!

Before coming to Europe I was told by friends and family that driving in Italy was , well “interesting”.

I have driven in Vancouver, LA, New York, Miami and London England, I can drive as aggressively as any other, or I thought…….. I was almost prepared for Italy.

Our first experience with real Italian driving was when we reached Lake Como on a Friday afternoon at 5 PM. Multiple lanes of traffic squeezing into traffic circles where anything goes, when traffic did thin out it was at high speed with inches to spare.

Driving on the Auto-strata has also been an interesting experience, It would appear that the focus on driving is secondary to many  drivers, such as texting, reading newspapers, catching up with work on the laptop, talking on the phone, talking to your passenger Italian style, (with both hands), personal grooming. All these actives were witnessed on the auto strata while travelling at speed! The  posted speed limit is 130 km/h.

Texting and driving is very prevalent …. we have observed many instances of drivers of scooters negotiating traffic in town which means 2 or 3 lanes, merging on and off roundabouts, while texting at the same time. I am not sure if they deserve an award for extreme multitasking or the Darwin Award? We have seen a couple of Vespas implanted into car grills, makes one wonder which driver was texting?

Parking is also an interesting process. To put things into perspective Italy has 61 million people who own 45 million cars ( this does not include the hordes of tourists, motor cycles or scooters). All these cars are crammed into a country 1/ 3 the size of the province of British Columbia. The infrastructure which predates Christopher Columbus certainly was not designed with 45 million automobiles in mind. Parking in Italy appears to be about abandoning your vehicle wherever there is space. Watch out at the Cafe / Bar  approx. 9AM. we have seen cars triple parked while their owners get their caffeine jolt for the morning. In some instances we have seen entire roads blocked with parked cars (good thing they had their four way flashers on).

For me as a visitor to this fascinating country is the puzzle of the lines on the roads. I still have not figured out why they are placed there in the first place. They don’t appear to hold much influence and would seem to be regarded as mild suggestions at best.

One thing I do like about driving in Italy is the live and let live attitude, for all the craziness I have not observed the abundance of road rage one might expect. This laissez faire attitude is witness on the Auto-strata. Back home in North America there is this attitude that if I am doing the speed limit in the left lane then tough. It is almost a moral imperative to prevent any other driver who wishes to drive faster than the posted speed limit (God forbid!) . In Italy you use the left lane to pass slower traffic then pull (or casually drift) into the right lane. If some body in a Ferrari wants to travel at 160 km/h – fill your boots. However if you don’t pull over when you are in the left lane you may have some one 2 inches from your bumper at 130 km/h flashing his high beams and attempted to squeeze by on the shoulder (this does help dis-pell the moral imperative to slow other drivers down).

Driving in Italy certainly is not boring or for the faint of heart. It will drive you to distraction or at least a fine glass or two of Italian Chianti when you reached your destination.

Remember alls well that ends well, Ciao!

http://youtu.be/z-sZTOoqfKM

If you like us are a “Foodie” this will get your taste buds salivating.

One of the joys of slow travel is cooking for ourselves. Coniglio Ragu is what we had for dinner last night!

You start with a “odori” these are the “flavourers”, celery, carrot and onion chopped, add to this crushed garlic and diced pancetta, lightly braise in good olive oil, once they have caramelized a little add the washed and dried Coniglio and brown on all sides. Transfer to a heavy bottomed pan and simmer on the stove.

Add red wine to soften the juices in the frying pan and scrape this out into your saucepan, add more red wine, tomatoes’ or tomato paste, bay leaves, chopped rosemary & oregano and if you have it the heel (the rind) of a piece of Parmesan. Allow to simmer very gently until the meat is tender and falls off the bone.

We had ours with new potatoes, crusty bread, green beans & red wine of course!

Bellissimo

It was delicious!!!

Any left overs make a wonderful sauce for pasta, but do remember to take the meat off the bone…… it can be a finicky job as those bones are tiny. Yes we had Rabbit! I think I must be a farm girl at heart!

Rabbit is not the only thing, readily available at the market, Quails appear to be a popular choice although there is very little meat on them.

The traditional way of life in Tuscany included not only the typical meats but rabbit, wild boar and in hunting season, pheasant, tordi, & merli, more commonly known as Thrushes and Blackbirds!

Hunting season still goes on and anything and everything will be shot at!

Be very careful in the forests during hunting season, you could be mistaken for a Thrush!

How can you afford to retire and travel, this was the provocative question we were asked by many before we left! After all, we are not talking about a 2, 3 or even 4 week vacation here, we plan to be travelling indefinitely.

When we made the decision to travel full time, we decided to rent out our home and use that monthly income to cover our expenses or at least the bulk of it. With a limited income and limited savings we have found a few ways to make it stretch.

One of the ways we stretch our funds is to limit the amount of restaurant and fast food eating whenever possible! It is both healthier and easier on the purse strings! We aim either to stay in apartments with kitchen facilities or to have at least a fridge in our hotel room. This means we can self cater most of our meals and keep some cold wine and beer handy.

We do enjoy eating out and trying new foods, when we do eat out we try the local dishes. Try asking a local for where they like to eat, rather than a good place to eat. You stand less chance of ending up at the nearest restaurant with tourist-inflated prices.

The great thing about slow travel, long term rentals and doing house sits is that you have complete cooking facilities and local contact’s as well, which means you get a heads up on where to shop and where to eat out when you do choose to!

The local supermarkets are always fascinating, in Italy we enjoyed fresh tasty tomatoes for €1 a kilo. The cheese selection was somewhat overwhelming, as was the cured meats, hams, add in the bewildering array of pasta, and you have a gourmet heaven. Even with a good bottle of wine to accompany dinner we seldom spent more than $20 a day on food.

We minimized travel costs in Europe by leasing a car this service is available to North Americans and is a much more economic than a rental, plus you get much more flexibility.

We use local transport where possible and are always on the lookout for ways to reduce flight costs. There are many travel articles written on this subject and it is worth researching.

Do take advantage of Air Miles or a rewards card program, as your ongoing daily expenditures can eventually add up to free or discounted travel. Also be as flexible as possible in your travel plans, consider other dates and other routes.

If you like to Cruise be sure to check for repositioning cruises, we recently booked Miami to Panama for far less than any flight we could find.

With planning and flexibility, you too can make your dreams a reality.

My first introduction to echo location driving was in Sumatra in 1995. Small busses the size of a Dodge Caravan were fitted with compressed air tanks on the roof just behind the windshield. When I first saw this configuration – I wondered what the compressed air was for. After packing approximately 22 passengers and all of their belongings (often included chickens and live fish) into the van we headed off to our destination.

Once we started into the twisty mountain roads I soon discovered the reason for the compressed air tanks – to power the skookum air horns. Our Sumatran driver apparently  did not want to reduce his speed below four wheel drift territory. The blasting of the air horn was to warn oncoming traffic that there was a bus drifting sideways across both lanes around blind corners that were punctuated with precipitous drops offs.

If our bus had left the road the result would have looked like mice and shards of glass being run through a food processor ( with some chicken,fish and luggage thrown in for effect).

The echo location system of driving worked  –  we avoided head on collisions and I am still alive today.

Fast forward 17 years to the hills above Lucca Tuscany in Italy.  The driving here is not quite as extreme as Sumatra (I have not driven in Rome yet), however a form of echo location  driving is used on the local roads.

The twisty roads that connect the small villages here are often single lane and rife with blind corners, switchbacks and blind spots.

It has been my observation that Italian drivers are not know for poking about and easing their way around corners (or keep the car in a designated lane).

In order to get around these beautiful twisty roads safely one must not be shy about laying on the horn to let other drivers hikers, (and on the weekend) cyclists know that you are coming.

So far so good………..

We open our shuttered windows and lean out peering down into the night clad valley below. The lights of Pisa light up the distant horizon, reminding us of the

A Glorious Evening

busyness of the life we left behind.

Below us fireflies flit through the arbour and the tiered garden that cascades below us, like spiralling embers from a camp fire, they burn brightly, then fade and disappear…

A haunting, eerie hooting reminds us that the night is the domain of the owl, who abound in these thickly forested slopes that have endured through generations.

This is Tuscany, the Tuscany that has endured through millennia, grown and nurtured its people and its customs. A land where people live as their great, great grandparents did. Where the land and there labour, provide a bounty year round. Generation upon generation have lived solely off what the land provides through winter, spring, summer and fall.

I see now why Tuscany has stolen the hearts of so many; she is beautiful, fresh, alluring… yet also ancient and enduring! Tuscany….. you have my heart!