Domenico 16 Agosto
So are you impressed that I was able to put the day and date in Italian??? I am actually quite impressed with myself!
Venice was great... though somewhat overwhelming when you have found lots of back streets with very few people on and then you emerge into Piazza San Marco... with its thousands of people everwhere!!!! Once we finally sorted out the ACTV ticket thing it was really quite easy... so easy we hopped another water bus and took a trip to Murano... famous for its glass... some beautiful things and some that well quite frankly are just a bit over done like... well for a girlie from little old New Zealand anyway!
Well the drive here from Venice was long… hot and even had a few full on Italian traffic jams to contend with… we passed an accident too… a bike that had not long before gone screaming past us at a great rate… come to a sudden stop with a car… didn’t see an ambulanza so must have miraculously survived with no injuries… the local polizia were everywhere though… some measuring the accident scene, some directing traffic… you do as you are told when a beautiful Italian police woman with a gun! tells you what to do… and then there were the traffic jams… no road markings of any value at pretty full on major road intersections mean that there is typically chaos… lots of over and undertaking… creating of lanes where lanes just aren’t there! The road signs are nothing short of confusing either! The speed limits go up and down like yoyos but no one and I do mean no one seems to take any flaming notice of them anyway… cars here all seem to be new and could all be made without indicators since even though they are there… NO ONE uses them!
I am still figuring out that when you come up to one of the gazillion roundabouts they have here that I have to look to my left NOT my right! Chris hasn’t been able to nod off as a result… terrified I guess that I will forget and we will end up in a prang…
One thing I have found out though is that the people who drive and attend in Ambulanzas are not ambulanza officers they are misericordia… yeah I guess they do deal with a whole lot of misery now don’t they? And the ambulances are nothing in comparison to the ones we have at home… think small van rather than big v8 though when you see the super narrow streets everywhere you soon realise why!
Chris spent most of yesterday afternoon thinking we should have hired a bike here… right now… the twisty windy roads we came over yesterday were great biking roads and with all the really serious bikes and riders screaming around on them you can see that lots of other people think so too…
None of this open face helmet stuff with jandals, tshirt and shorts… till we hit this road that’s all we had seen with everyone on bikes… this road definitely sorted out the men from the boys… even in the near 40 degree heat… full leather suits obviously with body armour, full on race boots, gloves, and full face helmets… and not one of them seemed to be paying any attention to the speed limit… Chris even suggested we needed to move here right away… and for a biker well this whole area would be something close to heaven on earth! Lots of wonderful winding roads… and not too many cars cluttering them up!
Our hotel here in San Miniato is in an old monestary… the room we have was once the home of a chap called Andrea Walpigli… all the way back in 1367… we think the building was built somewhere between 968 and 1237… our Italian is not that great unfortunately… very cool building… heck very cool village…
We have been out exploring this morning and just come back to escape the heat for a little bit and to email our darling girls back home… we are off soon to visit Vinci and to catch up with Sonia and Tony who are coming in to Pisa later this afternoon.
Ciao bellas
So are you impressed that I was able to put the day and date in Italian??? I am actually quite impressed with myself!
Venice was great... though somewhat overwhelming when you have found lots of back streets with very few people on and then you emerge into Piazza San Marco... with its thousands of people everwhere!!!! Once we finally sorted out the ACTV ticket thing it was really quite easy... so easy we hopped another water bus and took a trip to Murano... famous for its glass... some beautiful things and some that well quite frankly are just a bit over done like... well for a girlie from little old New Zealand anyway!
Well the drive here from Venice was long… hot and even had a few full on Italian traffic jams to contend with… we passed an accident too… a bike that had not long before gone screaming past us at a great rate… come to a sudden stop with a car… didn’t see an ambulanza so must have miraculously survived with no injuries… the local polizia were everywhere though… some measuring the accident scene, some directing traffic… you do as you are told when a beautiful Italian police woman with a gun! tells you what to do… and then there were the traffic jams… no road markings of any value at pretty full on major road intersections mean that there is typically chaos… lots of over and undertaking… creating of lanes where lanes just aren’t there! The road signs are nothing short of confusing either! The speed limits go up and down like yoyos but no one and I do mean no one seems to take any flaming notice of them anyway… cars here all seem to be new and could all be made without indicators since even though they are there… NO ONE uses them!
I am still figuring out that when you come up to one of the gazillion roundabouts they have here that I have to look to my left NOT my right! Chris hasn’t been able to nod off as a result… terrified I guess that I will forget and we will end up in a prang…
One thing I have found out though is that the people who drive and attend in Ambulanzas are not ambulanza officers they are misericordia… yeah I guess they do deal with a whole lot of misery now don’t they? And the ambulances are nothing in comparison to the ones we have at home… think small van rather than big v8 though when you see the super narrow streets everywhere you soon realise why!
Chris spent most of yesterday afternoon thinking we should have hired a bike here… right now… the twisty windy roads we came over yesterday were great biking roads and with all the really serious bikes and riders screaming around on them you can see that lots of other people think so too…
None of this open face helmet stuff with jandals, tshirt and shorts… till we hit this road that’s all we had seen with everyone on bikes… this road definitely sorted out the men from the boys… even in the near 40 degree heat… full leather suits obviously with body armour, full on race boots, gloves, and full face helmets… and not one of them seemed to be paying any attention to the speed limit… Chris even suggested we needed to move here right away… and for a biker well this whole area would be something close to heaven on earth! Lots of wonderful winding roads… and not too many cars cluttering them up!
Our hotel here in San Miniato is in an old monestary… the room we have was once the home of a chap called Andrea Walpigli… all the way back in 1367… we think the building was built somewhere between 968 and 1237… our Italian is not that great unfortunately… very cool building… heck very cool village…
We have been out exploring this morning and just come back to escape the heat for a little bit and to email our darling girls back home… we are off soon to visit Vinci and to catch up with Sonia and Tony who are coming in to Pisa later this afternoon.
Ciao bellas
posted by Cheryl at
10:25 PM
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