Getting to Arezzo

Getting to Arezzo

All went smoothly. We realised once again how far Australia is from anywhere else. We also appreciate how lucky we are not to be flying cattle class. The shower in Munich was particularly welcome. The flight from Munich to Rome over the snow - clad mountains was quite spectacular.

We were a bit concerned about how long we would have to queue for in Rome because we had been warned by Lufthanser that because of the G7 summit in Taormina that internal border checks had been reinstated. According to the quoted dates they would still be in place when we went through. We landed on time, walked straight through the border checking booths, not an official in sight, quickly found the baggage carousel, read that the baggage from our flight was expected in 15 minutes, collected our bags about 8 minutes late, walked straight through the customs controls, again, not an official in sight, went straight to the train station , bought tickets to Arezzo and got onto a train to Rome main station,  Termini, which left about 5 minutes later. I looked at my watch and realized only about 30 minutes had passed. We were able to catch an earlier train than expected and we very pleased to finally get to our apartment at 4pm.

After sorting ourselves out, we set off to find a particular mobile phone and modem shop . We had been told by our landlady that we had to get them to sort out the modem for us and  relieve us of €15 so that we could have a wifi connection.  Unfortunately they were closed. So we set off in the direction of  a pizzeria that i had read of that made gluten free pizzas. It took us ages to get there because there were barriers up all around the  town. We saw some women ( I am assuming women but they were so heavily made up or masked that maybe not)  wearing long lavish brightly coloured gowns  parading down a road , followed by all sorts of old cars. Then we saw some long distance runners. Arezzo is a hill top town. The course would not have been easy. We took ages to get to our destination because it was hard to cross roads because of the barriers. We gave up when we found ourselves on the wrong side of the road to our destjnation and stopped for a glass of wine at a cafe.  Noel played safe but I tried a vernaccia from Sienna.

We then found an excellent supermarket for some supplies , including dinner from their deli which we enjoyed in our apartment. We have found about 6 stove top espresso makers of different sizes but have to boil water for our tea in a saucepan.