ROME TO AREZZO - LESSON LEARNED

DRIVING TO AREZZO

Vacations have one thing as a compulsory ingredient- travel. Unless your vacation consists of finally building that she shed in the backyard your wife has been hassling you about or hiding at home while you recoup from that tiny facelift you didn't want your co-workers to know you had done then a vacation means getting away from your home base. It means moving from one place to another. The upside is you get to be somewhere far far away from that she shed or the nosey neighbors. The downside is you need to get in your car stuffed to the gills with suitcases and beach toys, or squeeze into a way too small middle seat on a full airplane, or hop a jitney to the Hamptons with all the other twenty-somethings hopeful of finding romance. In our case, for this year's vacation, once we had flown into Lisbon and then Rome in those dreaded middle seats the sequence of subsequent travel arrangements didn't stop. No. We had a full itinerary of additional transport needs we were going to valiantly attempt to conquer.
Our plan after Rome and following our attempt of transitioning out of time zone fatigue was to rent a car for the next nine days and head north into Tuscany.

We had done the car rental many times in the past and since this was our third stay at La Residenza I knew there was an AVIS rental office about five blocks from our hotel, an easy walk. I had made our reservation well ahead of time and reserved an economy automatic sedan, fingers crossed there would be enough room for three adults, three large suitcases, three carry-ons, three personal items, a bag of snacks and by now several shopping bags of the loot we'd accumulated on our buying spree in Rome. We'd been in this situation before and managed to get everything into the trunk and backseat of an economy car as long as the one backseat passenger was willing to hold either one larger suitcase or two carry-ons on their lap and the front seat passenger could stuff the personal items and snacks under their feet. I, as driver, had to be willing to give up the rear view mirror as it was completely blocked by the floor to ceiling luggage and rely on the side mirrors for safety and guidance. It sort of worked.
This time when the AVIS desk clerk asked how many people and what kind of luggage we'd have I watched as the swarthy Mediterranean color drained from his face and turned an ashen grey similar to the color of wet cement. Then in his pigeon English he whispered,
"I upgrade you to midsize Peugeot. No extra charge.  I go on holiday tomorrow too and I don't want to meet you on the road."
My trade off for his concern was I'd need to purchase the most expensive and comprehensive insurance policy AVIS offered, just in case. I accepted.
Once I had figured out that I needed to use the break to get the ignition key to engage I was off to the hotel.

Rick and JoHannah were supposed to be back at the hotel with all our luggage downstairs and ready to go. All I had to do was drive back the five blocks to the hotel I walked to get to the rental office, pick them up and we'd be off to the next stop on our Italian adventure. What I discovered is that a five block walk is not necessarily a five block drive.

Rome is not really laid out in a sensible manor. A five block driving trip shouldn't require a GPS navigation system, but if you think that then you don't really know Rome. Rome can have five to seven streets all running parallel to each other and all going one way in the same direction. If you want to go in the opposite direction you may have to search miles away from where you want to go to finally find a street that goes east instead of west. Then once you do they'll sneak a little trick in and change the direction of allowed traffic several blocks along with a no entry sign forcing you to move even further away from your destination. I thought I'd be able to negotiate the "short" drive using my usual "follow your nose" method of self-navigation. I was quite quickly lost and turned around as if someone had picked me up and spun me until I was dizzy.
To complicate my return after having zigged and zagged for a good twenty blocks I made a wrong turn onto an expressway. That added an additional five kilometers before an exit ramp appeared leaving me off in completely uncharted territory. I hadn't panicked yet but the instinct to wet myself was quickly approaching. JoHannah had offered to go along with me in case I needed any help. At the time, I shrugged that off thinking I could handle it. Regrets don't get you back on the road to home or in this case our hotel.
Some way I managed to get myself back to the Via Veneto, a street name I recognized and knew was close to La Residenza.  Then I discovered a little alley without a sign I had missed on my first go around. It was my staircase to heaven and a keyhole to the hotel.
Our hotel sat on a very narrow one-way street.  As I pulled up in front of the hotel only to see no sign of either Rick or JoHannah I was at least hoping there would be an available parking spot. There, of course, was none. I couldn't stop in front of the hotel since there were several cars behind me all with amazingly loud horns. I had to move on.
I pulled around the block praying that I could find a place to pull over and text them I was finally here, although I questioned why they hadn't been texting me since I'd been gone for more than an hour and a half. I was also concerned that if I did made it around the corner I might not be able to get my one-way streets and my secret alley to line up to get me back to the hotel again.
I texted Rick. No response. I texted JoHannah. No response. I had pulled into a no parking taxi stand to do this. Now the taxi drivers were outside my car flailing their arms and trying to air shove me out of their spaces. I realized there was no way that I wasn't going to piss off someone so it was back to the hotel.

Here's where my luck changed. The streets all lined up. I made it the hotel. I left the car in the middle of the street ignoring the honking cars behind me. I walked into the hotel to find the two of them sitting calmly in the reception area unaware that I had been texting them and completely unconcerned that they hadn't seen nor heard from me in two hours. I made them pull the luggage down to the car. I got us loaded up. I made them both put our next destination, Orvieto into their Google maps app and off we went.
We had planned on stopping in Orvieto and then Cortona before reaching Arezzo and our next hotel reservation at BiBi Bed and Breakfast. All we managed was a lunch of prosciutto and melon and a lite pasta followed by a walk past the beautiful Orvieto Duomo before we went back to the car and agreed that a bed in Arezzo was more enticing then a gelato in Cortona.