Sunday 18 May 2003

Our adventure began with the taxi ride from the airport to our villa. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the taxi driver spoke as little English as we spoke Italian. Fortunately we were both proficient in the universal language of pointing: aided by our having the directions to our honeymoon villa printed on the booking confirmation. After reading the directions, the taxi driver smiled and got in the car – an indication (we thought) that he knew where he was going. How wrong we were. After a number of precarious u-turns and a lot of Italian mumbling, we had a very strong suspicion that our taxi driver was not as confident about our destination as we thought. Our suspicions were confirmed when the taxi driver flagged down a police car to ask for directions. When the police did not know the way either, the taxi driver borrowed the police mobile phone to call the owner for directions. A few minutes later, it became apparent that we were not actually that far away and the taxi driver handed back the mobile to the policeman who then proceeded to escort us to the villa. We arrived feeling like very important people.

The villa – Casa Mimosa – looked like the place in this picture...

... it had no kettle (though we did find a deep fat fryer and an electric egg beater – strange people these Italians). Feeling a little peckish after our exciting journey, we asked the owner (who lived in a house in the same grounds) where to find the local shop for us to purchase some supper. A short, pleasant walk later we found ourselves with rumbling tummies looking through the window of a very shut supermarket. Thankfully we had not been that hungry (hence the loud rumbles now) on the plane and so our plane sandwiches became tea along with some wedding cake which Mum insisted we take with us.

We went to bed and engaged in our honeymoon activities.