22nd Jan – First Impressions (Mum)

Well I finally arrived in Casoli after a very long flight. The plane was quite comfy and I had so much entertainment at my fingertips, I didn’t even touch my crossword puzzles. Emirates have TV on demand and various computer games at the individual seat, even in economy.

It was great to see Mark and Tam waiting for me at Rome Fiumincino airport after the long flight. I must say I was very surprised by how lax Customs seemed to be in every stopover except Singapore, where I had to take off my vest.

It’s a 3-hour drive to Casoli from Rome, completely on the other side of Italy. We went through lots of mountain ranges and it was quite pretty, although it did rain for about half the trip.

When Mark finally reached Casoli, we parked in the middle of town, which is set on a steep hill and then had to walk the bags up to the house (about ¾ of the way up the slope). Well, you can imagine that I was pretty exhausted by this stage, so I wasn’t feeling the greatest. The whole town has cobble-stone streets and the original Castle and Church right on the peak are over 500 yrs old.

The house is over 2-storeys, with Mark and Tam on the top floor and I’m sleeping downstairs in the lounge room (next to the kitchen). It’s very warm which is great as the weather is quite different to Melbourne (we heard it’s been 40-degrees plus for the last few days!)

Our sleep has not always been consistent as Mark and Tam can hear my snoring and we have a strange local guy who calls out very loudly at 7am, 8am and 9am and in the afternoon as well for his cat to come and eat. It’s extremely noisy and we wish he’d just get rid of the cat!

It’s been lovely seeing Italy with Mark and Tam and they are looking after me. They’ll put more on about what we’ve seen in the last few days.

PS. I’m now starting to manage that steep climb – quite proud of myself.