8:30am (2:30 am NH time) and ready for the road!

We’ve made in home successfully, after a 17-hour day involving a vaporetto, two planes, two buses, and a car.  And a LOT of TV.  This time we were on Delta rather than Alitalia, which meant a substantial downgrade in the quality of the food and coffee, but a large improvement in the amount of English-language programming available.  The girls watched approximately a year’s worth of TV on the trip home.

Now that we’re back, and our traumatic driving experiences are beginning to fade into memory, I want to revisit an earlier portion of our trip.  During our many hours of driving in the Tuscan countryside, closely scanning the surrounding landscape for clues as to where we were or bystanders from whom we could ask directions, we had the opportunity to observe a lot of road signs.  The Italians seem to really like signs (though not signs that tell you useful things like “Rt 55 North”).  Here are some of my favorites.

    

This set of five signs, depicting various road hazards, appeared approximately every 50 feet in Tuscany.  If the Italian government could just tell everyone, “Look, anywhere in Tuscany, at any time you’re likely to encounter sharp turns, skidding cars, rain, snow, gracefully prancing animals, and falling rocks,” they could save themselves a lot of time and trouble.  The “winding roads” one is particularly comical to anyone who’s every driven in Tuscany.

Also, fleeing tourists!  No, wait.  We eventually figured out that this sign was for a school bus stop.

Below is another one I liked.  You’ll see that the version on the left says “frana,” which presumably gives Italian speakers some clue as to what they’re meant to be excited about.  But we saw those like the one on the right multiple times, too — just a random exclamation point on the side of the road.  “Be vaguely alarmed!  About some unspecified danger!”

Also, what’s that up and down arrow thing on the bottom supposed to mean? Speed limit is 30, more or less?

These are the girls’ “alarmed” faces.

This one I never figured out.  We saw it a lot.  Sometimes there was one lump, sometimes two.

And I’ve saved the best for last.  We came across this one in Florence.  I have absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to represent, but I’ll offer an award for the best guess.  (Without the strange blue man and the hearts, it would be a standard “do not enter” sign in Italy.)  Anyone?

And lest you should think that cars have all the fun, here’s the type of warning sign that you’ll see in car-free Venice.  There was actually a fair-sized series of signs where a winged lion was stopping tourists from doing something stupid.  At least it’s not just the Americans that they think are stupid.  That’s not even our flag!  It’s the BRITISH people who are stupid.

P.S.  And when we got home, this is who was waiting for us at our neighbor’s house.  4 out of our 6  new additions have been named in honor of our Italy trip: Siena, Lucolena (for the village nearest our villa), Joya (for the villa dog), and Pulcina (“chick” in Italian).