We have our hot air balloon ride for the four of us scheduled for tomorrow morning in a field outside of Florence about an hour away from where we are staying in Pergine Valdarno.  In our experience, we sometimes have a difficult time finding cities on our own, so the idea of finding a field in the Italian countryside without an address seemed daunting….at least to me.  We must be there no later than 6:40 am.  We figured it would be prudent to make a practice run and try and find the field TODAY so it can be smoother sailing and less stress tomorrow morning.  The balloon people gave very precise directions in their email to me so we decided to give them a try.  With our Mercedes upgrade vehicle, we also got a navigation system thrown in for free and that is a plus.  Our only difficulty with the navigation system is that the lady navigation voice only speaks to us in Italian.  We haven’t been able to find a way to change it, so, even using the navigation can become an adventure.  We left Pergine Valdarno at 11:05 am on our practice run and 49 miles or 80 kilometers later, we drove onto the prescribed dirt road between the vineyard at 12:00 noon.  We should be all set for tomorrow.  (Nevermind.  The balloon people just emailed and due to fog anticipated tomorrow morning with zero visibility, the ride has been cancelled.)  Doug is shaking his head.  He remembers the last time he went hot air ballooning, it was in the dark of night in a thunderstorm with gale force winds.  I seem to recall the same experience, except neither one of us has ever been hot air ballooning before.  Perhaps we are mistaken.  We are waiting to hear back from the balloon people about Monday morning.

In any event, with our possible launch site now found, we stopped at a refueling station and did some map viewing.  We thought about heading for the west coast of Italy for the sea shore, so Barb can do some beach walking.  Our Italian atlas is a good one but it is broken down in various pages that must be combined so it is difficult to know how far away we are from our current location.  I know I say, let’s use our Italian navigation system and see how far away some of these cities are from us now.  We push the nav button and the voice command becomes available.  “Trova citta” (find city) we say.  It asks us to name the Italian city we want to go to.  Remember, I speak fluent Italospanglish.  We’ve now discovered the navigation lady clearly does not speak Italospanglish.  I would say an Italian city by the sea shore (Collelungo), and nav lady would bring up 4 or 5 options that are nothing like the city I said.  Each failed attempt, Doug would touch the “back button” and I would try again.  We tried this a few times without success.  Doug tried a few times as well.  I said, let’s pick a city that’s easier to pronounce.  How about San Rabino.  Same result…it brought up San Tarino or something not relevant.  We hit the back button again and tried a different city.  Doug started scouring the map for a simple sounding Italian city by the sea.  How about Greve he offers.  We tried (phonetically) Greeve; Grayvay; Grave; Grehve; Grehvay; We tried 4 or 5 different variations of the name.  Nothing.  With our wives standing outside the open car door as Doug and I are throwing out names of Italian cities and Nav lady seemingly purposely offering nothing even close to what we’re requesting, we all just started laughing.  People coming and going in the cars next to ours were wondering what was going on that was so funny to us.  Oh well, Nav lady got the best of us this time.  Finally Doug offers, “Pergine Valdarno” and Nav lady gets it.  She charts a course for us to go back home.  We start heading back to our village but lunch has not yet been had and an exit for a little town of San Casciano in Val di Pesa looms in front of us.  We take that to do a little exploring and to get a bite to eat.

This little town of San Casciano was easy to enter and parking was available without much difficulty.  It was now after 1:00 pm and our ladies were on an urgent mission to find something to eat before the pausa hits and everything closes down.  They found a gem:  Osteria Cucina Casalinga.  Food was wonderful, and the staff was helpful and friendly.  With our hunger sated, we explored the town a little and climbed back into our car to make the trip back to the village.

It is now midnight here in Italy and we haven’t heard back yet whether Monday is a possible date for another attempt at hot air ballooning.  Good night!