Day 44: Made in Red

Date: Sunday 11^th May
Staying: Hotel Garden – Siena, Italy
Distance Travelled: Over 320 Miles
Song of the day: Crawling - Linkin Park

I think it would be fair to say, and I think Laurie will agree, that we probably bit off a bit more than we could chew today. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it would appear that the world has managed to conspire against us, making this our longest travelling day of the trip so far.

Our plan was, leave Deiva Marina by 8am and drive to Maranello (home of Ferrari) to watch the Turkish Grand Prix. It didn’t start out to well really. Every service station we passed for the first 70 miles of the day was closed, which does mean the petrol gauge light looks a little more insistent than we had intended. No worries, we managed to find a station and Jarno filled up more than I thought possible. No worries; back on track we even managed to stop on the way and call our mothers to wish them a happy Mothers day (for those in the UK, it’s the second Sunday in May back home and in Italy as it turns out). It wasn’t until we got to Modena (main city nearest Maranello) that the problems started to happen.

A piece of advice for the wary traveller; don’t drive in Modena, and don’t trust the signs, they are wrong. Fortunately, I had been to Maranello previously, and could mostly remember the way, but not before the signs sent us in the wrong direction a couple of times. So we got to Maranello in plenty of time to watch a Ferrari victory (Get in!!!!!!). The real trouble started when we tried to leave (I had gone a different way last time). Without going into detail, we did an extra 30 miles through detours and following what we thought were the correct road signs in Modena (A1 to Bologna, right place, right road, but we couldn’t find either). In the end, we followed signs to go in the other direction, and we found the road.

OK we thought, we can still make Siena by around dinner time. Well, you may remember Laurinda writing the other day about what it’s like on Italian toll roads. This time people were having picnics and dancing between the cars because we were stationary so long. When we eventually got going, we crawled all the way to Florence. Then, if we hadn’t had a long enough day, the road works around Florence meant our sign to Siena had been taken down and we missed our exit. 40km round trip and another traffic jam later, we were back at the exit.

We made Siena just on dark (about 8.30 – 9) and rocked up to a hotel (planned, not cheating), after a brief escapade around town, exhausted, but happy to have made it. At least we didn’t have an experience like Le Havre.