Post #1 May 2 In an apartment on the upper floor of an ancient stone building outside Lucca, Italy

Post #1 May 2 In an apartment on the upper floor of an ancient stone building outside Lucca, Italy

I’ve been many places in the world, but not Italy—until now. Joanne and I arrived in Pisa yesterday afternoon from Denver, three stops on three different airplanes with no sleep along the way. We stepped out of the Pisa international airport into the gray drizzle, took the shuttle to the car rental place, and in less than 15 minutes we were driving in our miniature midnight blue Fiat.

Before we left home and for $20 we bought a used Garmin Nuvi GPS for cars on Facebook Marketplace. We had also purchased a Garmin SD card loaded with maps of Italy. Once inside the car I pressed the card in the slot on the side of the unit, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, typed in the address, and held my breath. In no time the screen came alive with a map and a female voice with a British accent (we named her Katherine, Kate for short) told us to “Proceed to the highlighted route”. Amazing! I giggled as I began following the map and directions. Kate was taking us on a route that differed from the directions given us by our soon to be hosts, Donatella and Claudio and being read by Joanne, who became more and more anxious the closer and closer we got to our destination.

A word of explanation is in order. By her own admission Joanne has absolutely no sense of direction, to the point that when she says go left, she “knows” you should go right. Fair enough, but she’s also absolutely certain of her wrongness (or is it rightness?). And you should know she has read this before it was posted.

We crossed over a road that was mentioned in the written directions and Joanne insisted we turn. I was driving and decided to follow Kate’s map and instructions instead. Two turns later with Joanne insisting we were on the wrong road I relented, retraced our steps, turned on the road mentioned in the written directions, stopped and asked for directions, and then proceeded on to Il Pasco, our home for the next two weeks. (When I later looked at a printed map, I discovered that before we turned around on the route Kate had us take, we were no more than a kilometer away from Il Pasco but coming from the other direction.)  

Getting out of the car at the top of the driveway, Donatella and Claudio greeted us with warm embraces and Italian air kisses on both cheeks. That’s the way it really is in Italy. They of course could speak more than passable English vs our non-existent Italian. They are very warm and gracious, and while we needed their help and directions, and appreciated all the time spent with us, what we wanted more than anything was a place to lay our heads before they crashed on the kitchen table