Wednesday 19 August – Rome

Flight was quite late leaving Dubai for Rome. All smooth and easy, and relatively short at 5 hours after the 13-hour marathon of the previous leg. More films. Into Rome about half an hour late. Off the plane and to the bag pickup via a very quick and simple immigration. Two bags out very soon, then ages for the last, who knows why. Red and green lanes for customs, but nobody taking any notice so straight through into the main terminal hall. Remarkably small, especially for what surely is a major airport.

Had to ring Peugeot Open Europe’s reps on a freephone number. Tried various phones, with and without money, but nothing went through. Eventually went down the hall for another phone and this time got through – “will be there in 15 minutes”. However wandering down to the appointed meeting place found the driver already there. Into a van for a trip out into a cheap industrial area, down a dusty road to an even more rubbishy area, and turned into a tired yard with a nice shiny new near-black Peugeot 207 with just 6km on the clock. Signed a few papers and it was all ours with a minimum of fuss.

A bit of a struggle packing away our bags successfully, as Sally’s bag is quite long and the handle required the rear seat back to be a little forward, also ours rather fatter than when we tested it in Blenheim early in the year.

Piazza Mincio - Architect Coppede

Fired up the GPS with Piazza Mincio in Rome for architect Coppede’s art nouveau architecture, and away on our adventure. Not too much trouble in driving on the right. The GPS working fine, giving us directions all over the place. The trickiest part was at the start just getting used to lanes and learning to watch the road on the GPS as well as listen to its directions. Missed a few lane changes and off-roads, but the GPS self-corrects so no big drama. Through a lot of roads to Rome, and into Piazza Mincio. Found a car park, and wandered about looking at the amazing buildings. The whole area by the one architect.

Casina della Vitelle, Villa Torlonia

Next stop was to be Villa Torlonia and the Casina della Vitelle (House of the Owls), another Art Nouveau building, also containing a stained glass museum. This showed up our hurried and incomplete preparation for the trip, as we don’t have a paper copy of all sorts of things, like dates and addresses. Not only that, but a fair amount of stuff was only in email and we don’t have that either.  Thankfully, the GPS had Torlonia in it, so we were able to find it. Some strife finding somewhere suitable to park, but managed one on the far side of the road. Paid our 3€, but Sally free as an antico! Up the path to the building, only to find Sally should have been issued a ticket, albeit free. She went back for it, then finally a pleasant trip around the lovely small scale building. Very hot, all of us suffering in the heat. Just as well the car has aircon, even if it doesn’t come out as freezing as we might like. Would have been near impossible to see these two places without GPS. There are so many one-way streets, and map-reading would be near impossible. There simply isn’t time to make map-based decisions whereas the GPS quietly and confidently tells us what to do without fuss, and never gets hassled when we ignore it or miss turns. The driver (currently only John) has enough to do without troubling with sorting out directions.

Our exchange in Viterbo

Then finally away to our real stop - Piazza Crispi in Viterbo. It is a free carpark, just outside the old walled city which is non-parking to all except residents I suspect. There about half an hour early after a pleasant and easy enough drive through the outskirts of Rome and the countryside. Not a great many free all-day parks, but were lucky in that one came free very soon and we were able to snaffle it. Sat around for a bit, then Rita turned up. Cheerful greetings all round, into her wonderfully beaten-up Fiat (still the worst car we have so far seen as I write this) for the trip through the Porta Verita into the walled old city. The apartment is 14^th or 15^th century, one big room with a mezzanine double bed platform. Gorgeous stonework, arches and big old timber beams and tiled floor. A little musty, and pretty warm at 25C inside. 

Met Rita’s father, and found out that Aurora, the student who was to come and see us sometime, is in Vermont for the 4^th time, and unfortunately unlikely to come to NZ as the timing won’t suit. Her main break is August, when we are a bit cool in NZ. Rita had left all sorts of stuff for us. Milk, bread, juice, biscuits and so on. Very generous. We presume she has this place as a holiday let normally, so this must be costing her a fair bit.

After Rita had gone, had to go back to the car to collect our bags. Took the opportunity to get some gelatos – a nice range of flavours at a decent price. Unloaded all our gear, settled in and off to sleep.

All slept OK considering the flights, disrupted times, noise from traffic, people and the odd animal