Today marked the end of the auto portion of our planes, trains and automobiles vacation. We started the day in Tuscany, in the lovely Hotel Panorama on top of a hill near Montepulciano.
It was a beautiful clear morning so we had the breakfast offered by the hotel that came with the room and then went outside to sit and look some more at the views.
Since we were only two and a half hours or so away from Rome and didn’t need to get to our Airbnb until 2-3pm, we decided to take our time getting there and explore the little villages along the way instead of blasting straight down the toll road. We enjoyed a scenic drive along the way.
We said goodbye to Tuscany and hello to Umbria. We stopped at a little place called Orvieto, I admit, due to the fact that I have enjoyed some inexpensive white wines from there in my time, but what we saw of it was not very picturesque, it was more of a ugly strip mall type of place than idyllic village. It’s possible that it had a charming city center that we failed to find.
Other than some annoying problems communicating with our host and then the absolutely atrocious traffic, we had no problem finding our new little home away from home for the next 8 days.
After we dropped our bags there, we jumped right back in the car to take it back to the rental agency. The last thing we wanted was to keep that car until tomorrow in the city center where there is no place to park. It was about an hour walk back from the agency and a little challenge with only a paper map since we are trying to keep the phones off due to crazy data use charges. I really don’t know how we would have found the place initially had it not been for the GPS in the car, a paper map would have been impossible in that insane traffic. Jack did an amazing job driving today, the traffic was almost as crazy as Cambodia and that is saying something!
At 5pm after no food since breakfast and walking for an hour after dropping the car, we stopped for food and a beer and Jack got the first of what I suspect will be many tiramisu here in Rome.
This was pistachio flavored. His look says it all.
Adventures after Retirement 
Enjoy Rome. With a WiFi connection you can download Google Maps for off-line use. Accurate to about 20 meters and no roaming charges. Ciao
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Jack says ‘Hi’ and ‘Thanks!’ (Me too)
If you guys are anywhere near Foix, check it out, it’s a favorite of mine that I found exploring around when my son and I were down there in 2010 for the Tour de France.
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