Day 2 - Partiremo insieme nel silenzio del mattino – Toscana

After having had a real bed with real cushions and blankets, something we wouldn’t have for a while, we also had a real breakfast. Although, the eggs didn’t seem so real…we tell you, they were so yellow they hurt your eyes. Really!

Driving off the parking lot of Best Western Gianna Style we had some problems because Belgian Bram sent us all over the parking lot of some shopping mall we finally got onto the superstrada to find our way to our first real destination: Follonica. Again driving and driving and driving… Beautiful drive through the Appennino Tosco-Emiliano and little Italian towns. We stopped for a drink at a local bar and had a nice chat with the lady. Once we were all through the mountains, we had to make our way through what seemed to be every seaside town of Tuscany… Mammia mia… Lots of tourists, lots of sun, lots of smells of food. Later on one stop at a local gas station and almost Follonicaaaaaaaa!

Once checked in, we decided to not use our tenda villa style but the small-in-two-seconds-ready-tendina. Getting out all our stuff out of the car which we had to carry up some stairs in the blazing heat was not the nicest part of our trip. Once that was done and we were surrounded by casino (stuff spread around in and outside our tent) we tried to put together our little table for two, which was a real struggle…after all we were still at the beginning of becoming MacGyverine. After that was done we found that the supposedly super-flash-mechanic-pump Coosje bought, wasn’t so super-flash… So Chiara went to ask at the reception if they knew where to get the mattress filled with air and she was sent to a store which was 50 Italian meters away (so 200 meters for real) and off she went with the air mattress in her arms. After finding the store, Coosje found her sitting on the ground waiting for the mattress to be filled:



After that was done we bought a new pump (which was truly super-flash and noisy but more about that later on) and they happily walked back the 50 Italian meters carrying their big two person air mattress. As you can probably imagine people were looking at us weirdly.



After having discovered that the bathrooms were close (although with some steps to walk up and a fence to climb over) we went to pick up Centomila who was waiting at the station. Unfortunately she had to wait a tad longer because apparently everybody decided to leave the beach when we wanted to get to the station. During the time we had to drive about 5km/h we promoted the concert by having her music on volume 40 and the windows wide open. We took Centomila to her hotel, bought some groceries and drove to the venue to plan our strategy to get into prima fila. Some German family drove by the venue and asked us how late the concert would begin (note, there was nobody else there besides us). We had to deliver the message that the concert would be the next day and they drove there that day for nothing. According to the guy: “Die Gianna Nannini ist ja wirklick großartig” (or something along that line). He also told us to convert his kids to Nanninism but one of the girls just said “Wurscht” and rolled her eyes at her dad. We then decided to go back to the camp site to have a picnick by night because then we were starving. At that time we didn’t know yet that this would be our last healthy meal for a while.

(picture coming)

Later we had a walk on the beach were Chiara tried to walk on water Jezus Style (or was it is Mozes?) inspired by the singing camp site animator:

(picture coming)

After a walk along the boulevard with 2947 other people we took Centomila and we decided to make it an early night because the next day would be our first concert. Unfortunately we found our air mattress completely deflated because we were so smart to put our entire luggage on top of it which caused the closing thingie to pop open. This led us to our next MacGyverine Mission which consisted of getting the mattress inflated without waking up the whole campsite because it was after midnight already. So we found ourselves by the side of the street outside trying to get it inflated while some rowdy youth on the balcony across off the street bothered with their really cool laser lamp. Of course we couldn’t stop laughing and even more so when we discovered the battery of the pump failed. So, we had to get the car close to the mattress to recharge the pump and have it work. You can’t imagine the loudness of this new super-flash-shiny pump: hoover volume 1000% We did eventually manage and then crawled in our tent where came to the discovery that we weren’t really that sleepy anymore. Of course we did fall asleep leaving the tent open so we would wake up with a view of the sea.