The weather has turned out to be a real mixed bag. I'm writing this as gale force winds rattle our apartment. We've prepared for a potential power cut, 'cause if it goes dark around here it gets really dark and the only company you'll have are the wild boar - and they don't usually carry matches (mental note: try not to think about how remote this place is and pyromanical wild boar). I've not seen any yet but heard snorting noises coming from the surrounding woods of a night.
Have spent the last few days exploring San Giminano and Volterra and having a fantastic time. Both towns are perched on the top of hills, although Volterra wins hands-down in this respect. The drive up is a test of nerve especially if you're not used to driving on the wrong side of the road and negotiating multiple switch-backs. If one wanted to describe a typical Italian town both San Gim and Volterra would do: tall buildings, narrow alleys (and yes the locals drive down them. I have the photos), small shops and resturants tucked away and more history than is legal.
Talking of history we went back to Volterra today to visit the two museums we missed. Had lunch at Volterra today and tried a Medieviale Menu. We've been to Italy many times but I still find navigating Italian menus a trying time. The food however is always fantastic, even if todays was a little odd.
Have officially declared getting a 3G connection as 'magic'. It positive it can't be the Mac as I can get a connection - it just takes a random number of (usually > 4) connection attempts before it will work. Once connected the only thing that seems to work reliably is publishing this blog! Tried getting the weather this evening for Florence and it took around half hour to get any pages downloaded. To add insult to injure, my email at home has gone down, probably due to our Virgin connection dropping out for no apparent reason (have I mentioned yet I loath Virgin). I think it's killed the OpenVPN connection I maintain from my home server to my internet server.
The one piece of technology not to have let me down so far (apart from TomTom) is my iTouch. One app in particular has been indispensable and that's the Collins English/Italian dictionary. Having an interactive dictionary that also gives you example sentences has saved us many times to date. It will even conjugate the verbs for you. However, it can't help me speaking Italian in a south-london accent, 'dowaa carfay larrtay' - not exactly the film star accent I was looking for.
That's quite odd we are set for gale force winds too apparently. You must have brought the bad weather with you ;-).
ReplyDeleteOn a holiday with friends (only Cornwall) I had the wonders of a 3G connection an "unlimited" Orange PAYAG one. After a few days it refused to work with my "hacked firmware" Vodafone GPRS card (but would work fine on a phone).. I had changed 0 settings. I rang customer service and complained and they gave their standard "not supported". Orange aren't trained in the art of VPN connection errors ;-).
I in the end decided it must be the fascists at Orange blocking my Globetrotter's 3G/GPRS card.
It can be quite tantalising with a dodgy connection and I sympathise with your "magic" theory.
While it was working we shared the connection using Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing (ICS).. at least you are not having to share yours ;-).