Thursday, Nov. 15 (I know because we had to write it on our HI card applications.)

Murlo

We washed a load of clothes last night. We didn’t have enough change for the coin operated washer, so I went back up to the front desk armed with a ten Euro note. The lady wasn’t there anymore, so I rang the bell and waited. There was a button outside that said FOR EMERGENCIES, but not having enough change to wash your clothes didn’t seem all that urgent. No one came, but I could hear someone coughing in the other room watching TV. “Hello?!” I yelled a couple times, but no one came. The door to the office was ajar, so I went in and opened the change drawer, inserted my ten and got a collection of 2’s and 1’s in return. Then we returned to the tent and drank wine and wrote until it was time to put the clothes in the dryer.

The night in the tent was very cold. We hadn’t brought our inflatable sleeping pads, which act as much as insulators as mattresses. We were camped on cold gravel, and it sucked the warmth of our bodies through the thin tent floor, even through our sleeping bags. Finally, I put my jacket under torso and a spare T-shirt beneath my feet to separate them from the ground. Still I would wake up shivering. I always sleep best after the sun comes up and warms up the tent, but Berck told me it was time to arise. My arms were asleep from being curled up tightly around myself in a vain effort to keep warm. Berck said he was cold all night too, and he had the warmest sleeping bag, my extra tall I got on sale. We decided we were ill-prepared wimps and not to camp anymore.

Road from Sienna to Modena

We drove back to Sienna, in the daylight this time, enjoying the beautiful countryside and the curvy road we’d flown by in the dark the night before. We had to navigate around Sienna again but did so successfully this time and took the free “autostrata” (limited access four-lane highway) to Firenze, stopped for some “pizza”-like substances, and continued north on some curvy roads to meet up with a highway to Modena.

The road to Modena was spectacular, and Berck was having fun navigating the curves in our underpowered Dihatsu Sirion (or “Sirloin,” as I call it, which is still a very cute car). We rounded one bend and saw snow-covered Apennines ahead of us. Little did we know that’s where we were going. The road went higher and higher as the temperature dropped lower and lower. Soon there was snow on the side of the road. By the time we got near the pass, snow was covering the road, and we were driving very slowly. But as soon as we’d descended far enough, the snow turned to slush, then to simply wet, and we were on our way again.

Berck stopped again to get us some “lunch,” but it was already 2:24pm, and they were only serving sandwiches, no pizza. We strategized about where to spend the night, deciding to call it day by the time we got to Modena. The problem with navigating by car in Italy is that the map of the country will get you to a city, but the guidebooks only have little maps of the city centers, where all the interesting bits are. Then they’ll list some hostels on the outskirts of town with little arrows pointing down which road out of the city center you should take, but the hotel won’t actually be on that road. They’ll give you a phone number and possibly a website for more information, but that doesn’t help us in the car.

Modena

Modena is a fairly big city, but our best bet for affordable housing for the night was there. Still we were approaching during daylight, so we might have a fighting chance. I studied the maps diligently during the approach, hoping to fill in the gaps between my detailed but limited map of the center and my country map. We tried going straight into town, but we kept being deterred to the right by one-way streets, do-not-enter signs, and bus-only lanes. Soon we were heading out of town again instead of into. We turned around and tried to follow the signs to the center again, but Berck won’t drive into zona traffico limitato areas. Somehow we realized we were at the stadium, which is surrounded by acres of free parking, except, I think, on game days.

We found a spot and walked to the hostel, which was miraculously open. We had to fill out the paperwork to get HI cards, but we get a room to ourselves with clean sheets, a clean bathroom down the hall (our very own in the larger bathroom area with its own key… very strange). We’ve got dorm beds, but I shoved two together. Berck decided it would be worth it to pay to park closer to the hostel, since we only had to pay for the hour or so before parking was free plus two hours in the morning.

We hit the town next, finding an Internet cafe by the main square, where Berck checked e-mail, our flights, and transferred money into checking accounts so we can get it out of bancomats. Then he found us supper at a place nearby recommended by the guidebook, ordering two appetizers, a pasta, and a pizza. Our waiter looked a little confused as he tried to figure out what order he should bring it in. We also has a good bottle of Chianti, and I had a latte for dessert. Delicious. We tried to find some gellato afterward, but everything was closed. So we just went back to the hostel.