Baggage Fees and Olive Trees
We packed up this morning and wanted to head out for a quick brekky before our flight. We had some chocolate croissants, not realising they were jam-packed with chocolate ganache and were so rich. Our hotel was so relaxed about check-out time so we made the most of the airconditioning and lingered, perhaps a little longer than we should have. We called a cab to get us to the airport and our driver drove so erratically and over the speed limit, we both sat in the backseat feeling a tad carsick. Dropped at Terminal Uno, we made our way to the check-in counter and seemed to have to wait an inordinate amount of time before finally getting served. I’d booked these flights online and had been warned we’d have to pay a ‘little extra’ for baggage at the airport. The weight limit was 23kg and strangely, both our bags were the exact same weight - 24.7kg - so not too far off the mark. The attendant wanted to charge us an extra €115…EACH! Yikes. No doubt our faces revealed our horror, so she made a phone call, garbled some Italian and then reluctantly agreed to waive one of the charges. “Why you have-a such-a big bags-a?” We thanked her profusely (though I still think it was a rip-off) then as she handed over our boarding passes, she said those words no-one about to board a plane wants to hear…”Now RUN!!”
The Rome Fiumicino Airport was massive! We had to get to gate C67, which felt like a suburb away from check-in. We were sprinting through the crowds saying “Scuzy, scuzy” and signs with arrows pointing to our gate kept teasing we were nearly there but we were still miles away. Heaving my heavy backpack, sweating, huffing and puffing, I was a lot slower than Molly so I told her to run ahead and see if she could get them to wait for me. A misleading sign above the lift sent me off in the wrong direction and I was frantically trying to find our gate. A quick call to Miss Molly alerted me to the fact I was now on the wrong floor! By the time I did make it to the gate, it was about to close and I’d just made it. Thank you God!
Our flight was headed for Brindisi, a town down near the heel of the boot of Italy. The flight attendant asked us where we were from and when we told her, she looked incredulous and said with high eyebrows, “You’ve come all the way from Australia and you’re going to Brindisi??” Obviously not a tourist hub.
Eventually seated on the little plane, both of us were feeling the combination of the carsickness, the rich croissants and the hot sprint through the airport and weren’t really in the mood for chit-chat but a Canadian woman next to Molly was intent on just that, quizzing her about our holiday and what it was like to live in Australia. Molly told her it was winter there now and her mind was blown. “Do you mean to say, it’s not summer right now? They have different seasons down there?” She couldn’t believe it and tugged on her husband’s shirt to tell him the news. He was equally shocked. “It’s winter? Now?” Something for them to tell their grandkids.
I’d booked us a rental car to pick-up from the airport. All the car rental places had booths side-by-side in the one building so it was a hive of activity in there. Our company had a take-a-ticket set-up so I grabbed a ticket and stood to the side, while Molly went and grabbed us some lunch. The queue seemed to be moving and I noticed people who’d come in after me were getting served before me. I enquired as to what number tickets they had and they said “Ticket. What ticket?”
What a farce. The lady behind the counter looked a little embarrassed and immediately reinstated the ticket system. Scrolling through the number with her remote control until my number came up and she called me over. Here are a few things they don’t tell you in the fine print:
You need an international driver’s permit to drive in Italy.
You can’t hire a car using a debit card. It has to be a credit card.
A NSW driver’s licence doesn’t have the date of issue on it, it only states the expiry date. It is necessary therefore, to be able to produce your previous (expired) licence to show its expiration date.
OK. So I don’t have an international driver’s licence, I never use a credit card and I don’t make a habit of carrying my expired licence around with me. Houston, we have a problem.
Though the attendant’s accent was extremely thick and she was hard to understand, she seemed to want to help me. She took my word for it about my licence being issued for five years so we could work back from the expiry date. She accepted my Australian licence and didn’t worry about the international requirement and I was able to use a credit card that was buried in my wallet, even though I had no idea what the PIN was!
I was nervous about having to swap hands on the gearbox so I’d asked for an auto car. It turns out, everyone drives manual cars in Europe and requesting an auto is an unusual thing to do. They could only offer us a fully electric car that would need charging at some time during our hire period and that takes 3 hours. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Feeling hot and flustered, we hauled all our luggage and left in pursuit of our vehicle, which was like searching for a needle in a haystack in the mammoth carpark, with only a number plate to go on. Eventually we found it, wedged between two bigger cars at the farthest possible point of the carpark. Molly’s Aldi-bought luggage has dodgy wheels and kept toppling over and getting her in the shins. I was carrying my heavy backpack, wheeling my big bag over the gravel, balancing the paperwork from the rental place, the car keys and the sandwich and drink Molly had bought that I hadn’t had time yet to eat. It was really hot. No wonder we both had our cranky pants on by the time we reached the car.
We turned on the ignition and, being an electric car, it was completely silent. We thought the car was broken until Molly tried the aircon and cold air came blasting through the vents. It was on! The car settings were all in German but hey, it was on and we were on our way.
It’s been a good eight years since I’ve taken to the road on the ‘wrong’ side so it was with a modicum of trepidation that we hit the highway. Molly’s navigational skills were on point and she did an excellent job of reminding me which side of the roundabout to enter, who I should give way to and nudging me when I was veering too close to the right. She was a backseat driver that was very welcome.
There were a couple of warning signs along the road - big triangular signs with exclamation marks on them and some writing at the bottom. We thought we’d read one correctly as saying: “strata dissatata” but when Molly typed it into Google Translate, it came up as: “desaturated strata”. Somehow I don’t think that was it. We ploughed on towards our destination, past walls of pink and white oleander trees, cactus plants in flower and pomegranates dangling over terracotta coloured walls of piled stones. It felt a little Spanish.
Our accommodation is a Masseria, a traditional fortified farmhouse commonly found on the estates in the Puglia region in Southern Italy and typically built in the 16th century. Ours was formerly an olive farm - 700 years old - still surrounded by olive trees. So rustic and full of charm, its whitewashed walls and flat, boxy buildings, draped with bright bougainvilleas, look very Greek. It is gorgeous. It also has a pool! It felt so good to finally plunge into some cool water after all the hot weather we’ve had, with until now, nowhere to swim.
We spent the afternoon swimming and reading and then headed to our room to freshen up. Just a tip if you travel to Italy and take a shower, C=Hot and F=Cold. Who knew? I thought the hot water was on the blink. Our bathroom is so cute, there’s even a chain to pull to flush the toilet. Speaking of chains to pull, this place (and our last hotel) has a string with a red ball on the end of it, hanging down in the shower. It looks to be attached to a light switch. Molly and I both assumed it would activate an exhaust fan so both pulled it multiple times to find it did absolutely nothing. We’ve since discovered it actually activates an emergency alarm, regulation for all hotel bathrooms in the country, in case of a slip in the shower. Tourists so often do what we did and pull it to see what it does, the alarms are generally ignored, ready for a classic boy-who-cried-wolf scenario.
Tonight, we were treated to an incredible vegetarian feast in the hotel’s award-winning vegetarian restaurant. Seated in a beautiful courtyard with grape vines dangling overhead, we were given a tasting menu - the food in lots of little courses. It was così delizioso!! We even got to meet the chef!
