Thursday, 31 May 2012 - Arrivederci

Leisurely morning packing up.  Left for Pisa Airport for our EasyJet flight to Gatwick.  We had a good drive through Florence, TomTom didn't let us down.  More motorway travelling, stopped at a Service Centre for refreshments - it was OK but not as good as the much bigger ones on the Autostrada.  Arrived OK at Pisa Airport but had trouble finding Hertz.  Their location was in Car Park 5.  We found the right road, there was park 1, then 2 then 3 then 4 then.....6.  After much floundering around we saw it from a back road.  Turns out the un-signposted park 5 was in park 4.  Anyway we made it.  Got pinged for a scrape on the mirror which was actually there when we picked up the car, but not marked on the form (lesson - never be in a hurry).  We had full insurance so we didn't care.

Anyway no other issues, had our last Italian lunch - probably pizza again - and climbed on our EasyJet plane.  It was cheap and I wasn't expecting much - but the plane was new and clean, the staff friendly, and it was on time.  The only downside was them trying to sell stuff.  But I can ignore people with the best of them.

A memory from Firenze - Ponte Vecchio.
-The end of our Italian Journey-

We arrived OK in Gatwick.  Mike and I being foreigners had to go a different way, walking for miles.  But there was no queue and we went straight in.  Met the ladies and wandered off to pick up our next car.  Which we did with no problems.  Fired up TomTom and set off.  Seemed strange driving back on the correct side of the road.  The car was a Ford S-Max - the bigger brother of the C-Max we had in Italy.  This one had a 1.8 turbo diesel.  Terrible thing really.  great for travelling in, but the gearchange was 'interesting' and because of the engine it had a tendency to stall if you weren't in the right gear which was easy because of that gearbox.  Still we were used to that from the C-Max.

Made it through the rush hour (stop start) and found our next location.  This was the Hilton at St Anne's Manor in Wokingham.  Not a bad place for budget travellers!  This place was a business conference centre, and we had lucked into the cheap weekend rate.  Great value.

Yes - we did stay in a Hilton...really.

Went somewhere for tea - was it that nice Indian???  It wasn't Italian anyway.

Tricia said:

Left Italy this afternoon by EasyJet.  Good flight.  Picked up car.  Drove to Wokingham.  St Anne's Hilton lovely.