Moving on to Italy

We packed our bags and cleaned up the house rental so we were ready to get up and hit the road by 4:30am. We had a three hour 15 min drive to get to the airport. We had gone over the maps and printed out direction for Dan and Diane (Jason's parents) so that they would be able to get to the airport without any problems. We hoped it would be easier for them going back to the airport than it was when they arrived. The road signs in France are difficult to follow if you aren't familiar with them so we wanted to make it as easy as possible. We had our trusty TOMTOM to guide us but Dan and Diane had to rely on good old fashion maps and directions. This can be difficult when you are driving in the dark. Anyway, we had separate cars and went our own routes to get to the airport. We arrived at the airport and Dan and Diane weren't there yet. We started to worry as it was getting closer and closer to boarding time but alas, they made it just in time!

We flew Ryan Air to Rome. It was our first flight on Ryan Air and it went fine. We ended up with seats mostly together. They do not do seat assignments so it is first come first serve. The plane was configured with 3 and 3 seats so Ali, Diane and I sat together and Sofia, Jason and Dan sat together. We were separated by two rows so not too bad. Ali ended up falling asleep on me and I dozed off for a little bit which was nice. It was a quick 2 hour flight and then we were in Rome. We rented our car and hopped on the van to go to the rental car location. We got our car and they installed the car seats. We fixed the installation since they were really lose. Then we had to have them come back over and adjust the straps since they would not loosen. After we got that out of the way and got the kids in their seats we started to head out we noticed the gas tank was almost empty so we had to stop and talk to the Hertz guy again. He marked our rental agreement and we were off to find a gas station. We almost had a heart attack at the gas station. IT was a full service station and we had a diesel car and we looked and we see the guy has a gasoline pump!! I opened the door and started to panic and he told me no problem. Apparently they pump diesel out of the pump that says "gas"! Oh well, at least it wasn't a problem.

Our original plan was to stop in Orvieto along the way to our rental in Montepulciano but we were starving and we wanted to stop at one of the Autogrills along the highway. We had good memories of prosciutto/mozzarella sandwiches from the Autogrill on our last trip to Italy. We missed the exit for the first Autogrill so we stopped at the next available option which was not an Autogrill but it served its purpose and gave us food. After eating lunch we realized we wouldn't have time to see Orvieto on the drive to the apartment so we just skipped it and continued on to Montepulciano.