Day 5

Up early! After an anxious sleep… Worried a bit about getting the cars out of the garage. Will they be open early on a Sunday morning? I should have had him write the price I negotiated on the claim ticket. Can we manage to get a ride to the garage maybe from Oksana’s husband or do we have to walk the 25 minutes?

Turns out it was a lot of fretting and fitful sleep for nothing. Nicola was happy to give us a ride to the garage… the garage guy remembered me AND our deal, the cars were right at the front of the garage and we were out of there in 5 minutes.

We were back to the villa to pick up the rest of the tribe and all the bags in 15 minutes. The only real issue was the little old man with the fruit cart who parks in the pull off spot in the crazy road where we turn around, threw a fit when we pulled in to turn around and threatened to call the police. Fine… whatever dude, we pulled out and blocked the road with our 6 point u-turns. Your ulcer, not mine kumquat man.

The drive was remarkably low key! Low traffic, decent weather, GPS was well behaved and we didn’t loose the other half of the group at the toll booth this time. The trick was finding an open gas station and Autogrill on a Sunday. It took a while longer than we had hoped but we found one. It wasn’t the fanciest Autogrill we’ve ever been in by any stretch… but they had decent restrooms and a small but good selection of surprisingly fresh sandwiches. All we needed.

The gas pump guy must have been really bored because no one was using the full service island and so was happy to help the dopey Americans at the self serve island fill their giant cars with diesel. A couple of euros as a thank you elicited a genuine, if raggedy, smile of appreciation.

We arrived at villa number 2 (Villa Murredda) about an hour early… we sat in the car trying to figure out the cell service that we couldn’t get until the ‘manager’ arrived.

The place is huge. This is a good thing. The place has wifi. This is a good thing. The place has 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a pool, an outdoor kitchen and dining area and … a dining table big enough for 10. Nice.

But… remember, it’s Sunday. We need supplies. Breakfast food, dinner for tonight and another night that we will prepare at the villa and wine… boy to we need wine.

We are told that the only place open for groceries on a Sunday is in Ostuni. Supposedly about 10 or 12 kilometers away. Ok only about 6 or 7 miles, what’s the big deal? We have Waze and Google Maps. Well, southern Italian cell service coverage (for roaming American’s anyway) is uh … hit or miss… mostly miss.

Off we go. 26 round-abouts, and 25 minutes later GPS tells us we are at our location. There is a hardware store (closed), a cement statue factory (closed), several unidentifiable businesses (closed) and a bowling alley (Open!). We pull in the bowling alley parking lot with our giant car blocking 3 parking spots and I jump out to go in and ask where the heck the grocery is.

The girl at the counter obviously feels a certain pity for someone as obviously simple as me and brings up google maps on her phone. (gee, wish we had thought of that…) she explains the map on her phone, which mysteriously shows a different location than our Google map… Hmmm. She explains, “google map, google map”. I take a picture of the map on her phone with my phone and go back out to the car. We head off back the direction we came. St. Adoophus must have been looking out for us because we finally found the only grocery in the world open on a Sunday… We stocked up, got dinner supplies and WINE and somehow found our way back to the villa before midnight.

Dinner is cheese and salami, prosciutto, crackers, fruit and caprese salad…. oh and wine.

Jack gives a quick Nespresso machine lesson for those who may want to make themselves a cup of coffee in the morning and we are settled in.