Under the Tuscan Sun; the honeymoon, day 8

The alarm went off at half five; it was dark and cold; outside an owl called and the wind rustled the walnut tree outside. With coffee in hand I went out onto the balcony for the last time to take in the dawn, and saw the last sliver of the old moon just above the horizon.
With heavy hears we packed the car, and took one last look around at the monastery; one day we’ll be back.

The roads were pretty empty, apart from the one maniac who chased us onto the main road to Siena before overtaking round a sharp bend. At least at weekends there were very few trucks on the road, and even around Siena there was little traffic.

We made good time up to Florence, only to realise that the steel boxes beside the road with auto-something signs were in fact speed cameras, and it was way too late to worry about that now.

At Florence the signs to Pisa were clear, and we managed to find our way on the Autostrada north. The signs off to Pisa were not easy to spot and it would have been easy to be well on the way to Bologna before we would have realised we had gone wrong.

But that was nothing compared with the turn-off for the airport which was only signposted at the junction, which I am sure most people would have seen as the drove past it. Thankfully, Julie had seen the green cooperate colouring of the car hire place, and warned me to slow down.

There seemed to be no problems with the car and this time walked to the terminal rather than wait for the overcrowded shuttle bus. Inside the terminal, it was chaos; there were far too few screens with departure information, and no one to ask. We did find our wary to terminal B, and where our desks would open; and after asking a rep we queued up behind other early arrivals, whilst behind ever more people lined up well into the car park and across the road.

Once checked in and through immigration, we managed to work out the system for the café and got a coffee and something hot and savoury under the name of a cordon bleu; chicken and cheese in a chiabatta bun.

And then it was time to find our way to the gate, have a scrum to get on board, strap ourselves in and then it was time to go. On our way to the clouds, the plane banked, and from our seats we got a stunning view of the Leaning Tower before Italy slipped out of view beneath the clouds.