And so the road trip begins...
Trip Start
Jun 17, 2007
1
16
26
Trip End
Aug 01, 2007
Assisi,
Italy
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
There was a slight problem at the booking counter when they told us that the information that they had received was that we had booked the car from the 14th of July rather than the 17th. Our confirmation proved the 17th, while the booking information the company had received said the 14th. In the end, it turned out ok as there was a car available for us to have (a nice silver Mercedes hatchback thing). Needless to say, Claire was going to be having words with her travel agent when she got back to NZ!!!
Once we'd managed to fit all of our luggage into the car, we set off for Assisi with Amanda driving and me navigating. Our intended path was to go to Assisi via Cortona - however, my first stint as navigator had us miss the motorway exit that we needed and we had to take a small detour and miss out on Cortona. We drove around Lake Trasimeno, stopped at a supermarket (once we finally found one!) and had a picnic lunch by the side of the lake. Was a beautiful day and we found quite a scenic spot at Castiglione del Lago. Had a bit of a rest under a tree there to recover from our 'exertions' so far, and then headed for Assisi.
We'd pre-booked our accommodation but the confirmation that we had did not have any driving directions on it (must get on to hostelworld.com about that!). All we had was the name of the hotel, the street name, phone number and that it was in Assisi. So we drove via Perugia and Santa Maria degli Angeli towards Assisi which was on the hill. And we drove around and around Assisi in the hope that we'd see a sign or a road sign that would point us towards our hotel. As a result, we became very familiar with the roads in and around Assisi. In the end, in my role as navigator, I went and asked for help at a local hardware shop (it was easy to find and from a distance actually looked like a tourist shop!!). A lovely old guy there (who didn't speak any English, but seemed to understand my questions!) phoned the hotel and found out that the hotel was actually in the small town at the bottom of the hill, Santa Maria degli Angeli. After one more stop to ask for directions once we got to the bottom of the hill, we found Villa Rafaello Park Hotel.
It's a beautiful building, with nice big, light rooms with air conditioning and a pleasant little gazebo out the back, which was a perfect place to enjoy a bottle of wine before heading into Assisi on the bus for dinner. Had a pleasant alfresco dinner and walked part of the way down the hill before getting on the last bus down to Santa Maria degli Angeli and our hotel.
