Toscana bound

It’s that time of year again where we all pack as much as we can into as little as we can to step onto a plane or ferry to whizz us to foreign soil. This year we had chosen Italy as the Beehive summer destination. But of course, not to be boring and ordinary we needed a reason to visit (of course it was the wine really, but bear with me, we have kids in tow) so this year’s theme was to find the best gelato in Tuscany.

The kids were thrilled with the fact that this year we were flying with BA so there were no rugby scrums for seats and we were given a light meal…for freeeeee (you could almost hear their Gollum-esque squeals!). But nothing in life ever goes that smoothly and part of the travel experience is the ups and the downs.

Pisa airport is relatively small, despite being Tuscany’s hub. This therefore means that it’s even smaller car rental hall is a short walk away in a separate building. Pisa also serves Heathrow and Gatwick and both flights appear to come in within around half an hour of each other. Tuscany, given its location, is best served by self-drive over trains and buses, this means, therefore, there was a queue out of the door when we arrived at the car rental. The kids and I found a spare spot on the floor next to another family who had been there for at least half an hour already and settled down to read and watch the crowd.

Crowd spotting in another country is also fun. Over the years I’ve seen several ‘slebs who probably come to a car rental hall in a slightly off the track part of Italy/Kenya/Mexico etc to avoid being spotted and have a ‘normal’ holiday. Luckily for them, being in a hall full of bored queuing Brits means that they (yes, that’ll be you Ken Clark) are the most exciting thing that’s happened in the past 1.5 hours. Luckily that woman from the telly whose name I can’t remember was shielded by my suitcase, so she was able to continue to sit and be bored with her family like the rest of us. For poor old Ken however, he was accosted by some fan who apparently shares his birthday – and one assumes, with at least a huge percentage of the rest of the population! (ha! Bet he wished he’d decided to be a diva or an MP on expenses in this instance and hire a driver rather than just a car!).

Anyway, moving on….Around an hour later and with a fight with the rental lady who tried to fob us off with a car that was too small for the five of us and our luggage, despite having booked a people carrier, we were given the keys, reluctantly, to ‘a van’ – oh huzzah – and a bill for a whopping £600 for the insurance to ensure with didn’t need to pay the £2000 excess if anything happened. For any of you who have driven in Italy before and seen the attempts at using the roads as Grand Prix practice, would appreciate that the £600 was a wise investment, however, this was a huge dent in our holiday budget that we had NOT been informed about and at least three times the price of any other country in which we’ve hired before!

Still fuming, we went to ‘the van’, which actually happened to be a Lancia (Chrysler) people carrier – so probably the car we had actually booked in the first place but were close to being fleeced over! Feeling ‘slightly’ better at having won round one and even better that we actually had this car in the US for a short while, so Mr Beehive wouldn’t feel too disorientated driving it, we all flopped in, wound the windows down and set the sat nav for Campiglia Marittima on the South West coast.It’s that time of year again where we all pack as much as we can into as little as we can to step onto a plane or ferry to whizz us to foreign soil. This year we had chosen Italy as the Beehive summer destination. But of course, not to be boring and ordinary we needed a reason to visit (of course it was the wine really, but bear with me, we have kids in tow) so this year’s theme was to find the best gelato in Tuscany.

The kids were thrilled with the fact that this year we were flying with BA so there were no rugby scrums for seats and we were given a light meal…for freeeeee (you could almost hear their Gollum-esque squeals!). But nothing in life ever goes that smoothly and part of the travel experience is the ups and the downs.

Pisa airport is relatively small, despite being Tuscany’s hub. This therefore means that it’s even smaller car rental hall is a short walk away in a separate building. Pisa also serves Heathrow and Gatwick and both flights appear to come in within around half an hour of each other. Tuscany, given its location, is best served by self-drive over trains and buses, this means, therefore, there was a queue out of the door when we arrived at the car rental. The kids and I found a spare spot on the floor next to another family who had been there for at least half an hour already and settled down to read and watch the crowd.

Crowd spotting in another country is also fun. Over the years I’ve seen several ‘slebs who probably come to a car rental hall in a slightly off the track part of Italy/Kenya/Mexico etc to avoid being spotted and have a ‘normal’ holiday. Luckily for them, being in a hall full of bored queuing Brits means that they (yes, that’ll be you Ken Clark) are the most exciting thing that’s happened in the past 1.5 hours. Luckily that woman from the telly whose name I can’t remember was shielded by my suitcase, so she was able to continue to sit and be bored with her family like the rest of us. For poor old Ken however, he was accosted by some fan who apparently shares his birthday – and one assumes, with at least a huge percentage of the rest of the population! (ha! Bet he wished he’d decided to be a diva or an MP on expenses in this instance and hire a driver rather than just a car!).

Anyway, moving on….Around an hour later and with a fight with the rental lady who tried to fob us off with a car that was too small for the five of us and our luggage, despite having booked a people carrier, we were given the keys, reluctantly, to ‘a van’ – oh huzzah – and a bill for a whopping £600 for the insurance to ensure with didn’t need to pay the £2000 excess if anything happened. For any of you who have driven in Italy before and seen the attempts at using the roads as Grand Prix practice, would appreciate that the £600 was a wise investment, however, this was a huge dent in our holiday budget that we had NOT been informed about and at least three times the price of any other country in which we’ve hired before!

Still fuming, we went to ‘the van’, which actually happened to be a Lancia (Chrysler) people carrier – so probably the car we had actually booked in the first place but were close to being fleeced over! Feeling ‘slightly’ better at having won round one and even better that we actually had this car in the US for a short while, so Mr Beehive wouldn’t feel too disorientated driving it, we all flopped in, wound the windows down and set the sat nav for Campiglia Marittima on the South West coast.