Day 11 - 26 April, 2005: Maranello, Bolzano

It was another lazy morning. After breakfast, we spent the morning packing and loading the trucklet, and waiting for our call from BMW Roadside Assistance with their plan for helping me get a new tire. They called around 9:30 or 10 and had made arrangements for us to get the tire replaced at a garage on the north side of Florence (Sesta Fiorentino), on the autostrada heading north out of town. That was the good news. The bad news was that the tire had to be couriered to the shop and wouldn't get there until after the siesta, at 3pm. Suck! Once we got the call, we really slowed our packing pace down and decided to go back up to Fiesole so Angela could check out that little shop she saw yesterday.

As an aside, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I've seen more Snooker on TV than I care to admit. Sports are universal, and the Eurosport channel was one of my favorites, even though it was in German.

We grabbed a bite to eat from the same place as yesterday; chatting up the proprietor again. She was really friendly. It's always nice to be able to have a real conversation in your native tongue.

Since our post-tire change schedule was really tight (I wanted to get to Maranello in time to see the Galleria Ferrari), we decided to try to find the garage where our tire was supposed to be changed. After getting some guidance from the hotel desk clerk, we headed out. Driving around Florence, while a little nervewracking, wasn't really that bad. Of course, I never went anywhere near the historic district, so I'm sure that helped. Our directions were good; I couldn't get the address inputted into the NAV system quite right, so I just put in "Maranello" and hoped that we would pass by the correct exit. It took a little deductive reasoning, and a fair bit of "fuzzy logic," but we found the place around 1:30pm and proceeded to wait until the staff returned from their siestas.

Around 2:15 or so, the employees began filtering back to the shop, and one of them motioned that it would be about 10 more minutes. Of course, none of them spoke English, so my attempts to find the proprietor to confirm that, yes, he was the one with whom BMW had arranged to handle my repair were a bit feeble. One old, grizzled mechanic saw my spare on, and got his jack out to remove it. I gave him the blownout tire/wheel and he asked me if I wanted a new one (I only know that because I recognized the Italian word for "new"). I said "si," and he went into the back of the shop and must have figured out what the deal was. He communicated "3pm" as the time when the new tire would get there (apparently, the couriers go on siesta, too). By 3:30, we were all settled up with the shop and on the road towards Maranello.

The trip up to Maranello was pretty easy, although there was some thick fog in places. Maranello is a pretty small town, and on our way toward the "Galleria Ferrari," we could hear the wailing of F1 engines testing at Ferrari's private test track, Fiorano. Angela wasn't super-interested in the museum, so we kind of went through pretty quickly. It's basically a shrine to Ferrari's Formula 1 heritage, with a couple "seminal" Ferrari models on display, too. I asked the desk clerk where we could get a view of the test track, and they pointed us to the end of the road, where there is a decent vantage point of one of the corners. After we left, I was disappointed to not hear the now familiar F1 music. It was getting late, so we headed out of town when I heard it again, the siren song. We managed to stumble across the very popular spectating spot and I was able to catch Sauber's Felipe Massa testing the car

We finally got on the road towards Bolzano around 6pm. It took much longer to get there than we expected, but the drive was gorgeous. Apparently, the northern region of Italy is famous for growing, of all things, citrus fruit and Pinot Griggio grapes. Every open square meter of ground was covered with vines or citrus trees. Getting to our hotel in Bolzano (Hotel Greif) was challenging, since our NAV system didn't have it in the database. We floundered around for about 10 minutes driving through what we found out later to be pedestrian-only streets until we stumbled across it.

It's dark, so we can't really tell too much about the town, but it definitely smacks of Bavaria. The town is immaculately clean; a stark departure from some of the other towns we've visited in Italy. Not too surprising, though, since this part of Italy (in Austria, known as the Sudtirol) was part of Austria until after WW1 redrew all the national borders in Europe. Dinner was in a terrific restaurant serving a mix of German and Italian fare. We're strongly considering cancelling our night tomorrow in Innsbruck to stay here an extra day. Our hotel room is fabulous; very modern and spacious with a very comfortable bed and a large bathroom. They even supply notebook computers for guests.