Day 5 (It must be; it’s time to do laundry. Nov… who knows, it’s Wednesday.)

We slept in at the Hotel Posta, awakened every quarter hour or so by the bell tower across the courtyard from us and shining into our room. It would give the hour by the number of bells and then a different bell would strike one, two, or three times, indicating which quarter hour had passed. It got hot in the room, so Berck got up and opened the window. Then we were awoken by the sound of pouring rain.

That’s the other thing about touring Italy in November. It rains. It rained pretty much all day. We toured the town with our jackets zipped up and Berck’s umbrella. The duomo is black and white striped. We also paid for the pleasure of walking down St. Patrick’s well and back up, all 496 steps each way. The well has a double helix of steps so that traffic only moves one way. They built the well so that if they ever got seiged they would always have plenty of water. They built it right at the edge of the city wall too so that any invaders would be sure to know they had a well and could outlast any army’s patience. The city was never attacked, probably because of their well-deterrence. What I want to know is, why didn’t they just lower a bucket on a rope?

Cortona

Our parking time was up, so we headed north to Cortona, the city made famous by the book and movie “Under a Tuscan Sun” (though that’s not why we went there). The city is more vertical than horizontal… they make a big deal about the one flat road in town. We arrived at a little before 3, and all of the shops and restaurants had closed at 14:30. All but a bruschetta and birra place, whose owner had apparently figured out that he could make a ton of money serving stupid tourists who want to eat between 14:30 and 19:00. We had an amazing pizza with some salami that was sort of like pepperoni and some brichutta with with truffle paste and prosciuto crudo and some rocket to boot. It was fantastic.

By then it was nearly four, so we hiked to the hostel to see if it were open. The doors were unlocked, and there were kids all around, but the sign at the desk said they were closed until 18.30. Then a kid who had been smoking outdoors came in and said they were actually closed for the season and had just opened to cater to a big group of Americans that had come to town. Stupid HI hostels.

Sienna (attempted)

We got back on the road, after me leading Berck with his hurt heel around the wrong way to the car, and decided to head to Sienna. It had an economical hostel and hotel. It had finally stopped raining, but unfortunately, Sienna is much bigger than Berck remembered it being, and we found that we couldn’t get close to the center where the hotel was with the car. So we tried for the hostel, but it’s outside of town, and the trick is figuring out which road it was on without knowing where the heck you are. Italians put their street names on the sides of buildings at intersections, so you don’t know what street you’ve turned onto until you’re already on it. By now it was night, and we couldn’t even read the street signs.

Traffic was nuts, so Berck was driving very fast trying not to tick anyone off. We kept driving inside the city walls where you’re not supposed to go unless you have a reason to be there into zona traffico limitato areas, but we would come up one way streets that we couldn’t turn around in. These streets are incredibly narrow, usually with stone walls separated by the width of your tiny European car and people walking up and down them. It’s like driving into and around a mall, except there would be more space to drive in a mall. Still Berck only got honked at once when he apparently entered a traffic circle too early. I think it was the third time we’d entered that particular traffic circle.

In desperation, even though I knew it shouldn’t work, I pulled out my compass and said I thought we should go north. Berck said it was more likely pointing at a hunk of metal in the car but would gladly follow it if he turned around and it pointed 180 degrees away. It didn’t.

Finally, I figured out that the hostel was on the same road as the railway station, so we tried to follow signs with trains on them. They led us completely around the city, and then to a roundabout where Berck insisted the train pointed to the right and I insisted a train pointed to the left. No wonder since we were right next to the train station we finally discovered. We still didn’t get on the correct road though, and Berck was ready to give up.

I told him we’d try to find the campsite whose website he’d printed out that was south of Sienna. I told him to follow the signs to Gossetto. That worked for a while, but I have to keep an eye on Berck because sometimes he’ll forget which way he was going in a roundabout and just turn a random direction. Like he did when he saw a sign for hotels. We ended up driving back into Sienna yet again and then back out heading some direction generally south but I couldn’t figure out where until he pulled off in front of a “white” road with some signs marking the towns ahead and figured it out for me. Once I knew where I was, I could get him on the right road for the campground again, and we took some more white roads to get back on track.

Murlo

Once again Berck was led astray by a siren sign promising “camping.” We followed the camping signs as the road got narrower and narrower and were suddenly at a campground. I went up to the lit door, and a woman greeted me in English! “Camping?” I asked. “Yes,” she answered, as if to say, itsn’t that what all the signs say? This is remarkable because as far as we knew, there were only three campgrounds open north of Rome in all of Italy past October.

Not only does it have campsites, it also sports hot showers and washers and dryers. If only it had an Internet connection as well… But we’re relaxing in our tent, taking turns taking slugs off a bottle of wine we bought at the SMA by our hostel in Roma. It’s quite good and only cost 3.50 Euro. It’s so nice to have stopped for the night, even though we’ll be sleeping on a 20.50 Euro bed of gravel tonight in the middle of nowhere. The stars are clear and bright. You can even see the Milky Way. The sky is clear now, but Berck says it looks like a thunderstorm is on its way.