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| Italy: Spring 2003: Monday April 28: Day 6: Sansepolcro | ||||
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| Sansepolcro (Tuscany) Monday, April 28, 2003 Day 6 We decide to change hotels....so after the mediocre breakfast in the attractive breakfast room, we drive over to the more modern hotel on the other side of town. Even the unrenovated rooms are bright and cheery so we decide to make the switch. We go back, pack up and check in at the Hotel Balestra. While unpacking, I find that I have left my laptop in the drawer at the other hotel, so I have to hop in the car, drive across town and retrieve the computer. Luckily it is still in the drawer. Our next mission is to locate a laundry where we might leave our dirty clothes and reclaim them in two days. Jonathan really wants to find a laundromat and lobbies for driving to Perugia (about 45 minutes) and doing our laundry and also trying to find a TIM telephone store that could help us get the mobile phone working as a modem. Jonathan prevails and we head off to Perugia. We reach Perugia very quickly; as navigator, I find a good direct back road that gets us close to the laundromat that is at the bottom of the street that Seth had lived on when he studied in Perugia. Perugia is a very difficult town to drive around...it is very hilly and many roads are one way and access to the center is quite restricted. We circle the town and finally access the centro from the south looking for a TIM store. We stop at one of the major hotels and find an address, which turns out to be back down the hill. We reach the store with ten minutes to spare and, although there is no one who can help us there, we are directed to another store--called TIM Tecnotel--that is likely to have a technician who would be more equipped to solve our problem. To make a long story shorter, we try to find the Tecnotel store (even though it would now be closed for lunch), make our way back to the laundromat, do the laundry, have a sandwich at a bar while we wait, collect our laundry and then head back down to find the Tenotel store. The directions that we were given by the woman at the first TIM store were sketchy at best....we are searching for the road beyond the station but we are getting increasingly impatient. We even call Maureen in Rome for internet assistance....but just before we are ready to give up, Jonathan spies the place--next to a gas station and at the intersection with ring road around Perugia. We have thirty minutes to kill before the shop reopens after lunch, so we cross the busy street to sit in the lobby of the modern Perugia Plaza Hotel. Just across from where we are sitting is a meeting room where a Weight Watchers meeting is going on. Diana thinks about going in but decides not to....another missed opportunity. We walk into the stor and explain the problem (in English and Italian) with the phone and the computer to the store person (we later learn his name is Stefano). Stefano seems to understand and begins to play with settings and tries to make it work. He has a similar mobile phone and is able to test out the connection with his phone and my computer and cable. He gets my phone and computer working using the infrared connection but can't make it work with the cable. After about an hour of testing, he decides that the problem is with the drivers for the cable connection. He says that if we leave the phone and the computer with him overnight, he will be able to get it working properly. He seems to know what he is doing, but I am a little reluctant to leave the computer with all my records and data behind in Perugia. In the end, we leave it...no receipt, no ticket. Stefano is doing this a favor to me and as a personal project of his own--I think he finds it a challenge to make it work. We will come back the next afternoon to pick it up. It is a fast trip back to Sansepolcro....we stop for a gelato on the way back and then rest up at the hotel for a while, a little reading, a little resting, a little e-mail. We have dinner at the Hotel Fiorentino in the middle of Sanspolcro...it has gotten good writeups in all the guidebooks. We have a very good meal....the room is very pleasant and the host is very friendly. Among the highlights of the meal is a bean and farro soup, some very good bruschetta, a bistecca fiorentina with roast potatoes, stewed lamb, and pasta with an artichoke sauce. We even have room for dessert...a torta della nonna for Diana and a panna cotta (excellent) that Jonathan and I split. Tomorrow, the countryside of eastern Tuscany, some art, and the mystery--will the computer be fixed? |
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