Santorini to Pitigliano, Italy

Thanks, Stavros! He gets up at 5.30am on Saturday morning to take us to the airport - we would have been quite happy with a taxi, but because he's off the beaten track we guess he feels obliged to ferry his guests between his guest house and the transport terminals. Our Air Agean flight to Athens and then on to Rome goes like clockwork, and our bags actually came off the carousel first rather than being routed through Outer Mongolia. Looking good!

We had an excellent experience with Avis in Crete, and are hoping we get similarly good service from Hertz in Italy. The clerk stuffs around with our booking - not a good start. We find our black Fiat Punto in the vast airport parking lot, and are disappointed to find the parcel tray is broken, it hasn't been serviced properly, and has a few dings unmarked on the inspection form. Once we have these sorted we're on our way.

There's a Pope thing on in Rome on Sunday 1 May with over a million Catholics expected to attend. Best to get out of Rome asap, so we set the GPS for Pitigliano, a little town in southern Tuscany.

The GPS successfully navigates us onto the autostrada heading north, and I'm glad I've had a bit of experience in Crete before dealing with Italian drivers. They communicate by a combination of telepathy (no indicators) and body language (I'm sitting on your bumper or pulling in front of you, so get out of the way), and all oh so casually in the wet at 130kph (for those that are actually traveling at the speed limit). The little Punto with it's 1,400cc engine tries to keep up, but has to be worked pretty hard.

We don't see much from the autostrada with its high barriers, and the misty rain limits visibility even when we hit the minor roads.


Pitigliano finally comes into view, and a delightful little place it is perched high on a rocky outcrop.

Finding our way in to our accommodation at Affittacamere Naioli is a bit of a challenge. We park outside, press the buzzer, but nothing. In desperation we ring their number, and spend five minutes on global roaming rates trying to explain that we don't want a booking, we've already booked and are parked outside! Finally she sees us from the window and all is good.


Lots of fun exploring all the little lanes, and around the rebuilt Jewish Quarter which fell into disrepair after WW2


And we find a nice little spot for dinner. Despite the rain we have some excellent first impressions of Italy, and are looking forward to the sunken roads tomorrow. All will be explained!

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