Nancy and Peter in Sicily
Nancy Bellantoni & Peter Galipault
our second week in sicily
It's pretty wild. We have new stories every day. Yesterday we drove to Siracusa, to a Toyota dealership, to look at a used car, a Yaris Cross Hybrid/Gasoline. It's a small SUV type of car that Nancy said it wasn't too big. All of a sudden one of the guys who works on the lot, probably as a kind of valet who brings the cars around for customers to test drive, comes screaming into the showroom, shouting about a rental car that exploded or something. No one really speaks English in this dealership. So we didn't understand what was going on. Turns out our rental, which we parked next to a charging station for electric cars, blew out the right front tire. Just sitting there. Totally exploded right next to someone sitting in her Prius, waiting while it was charging. Probably scared the ever living daylights out of her.
The following was a kind of screwed up scenario. Where I'm trying to call the car rental company and test drive the car we're interested in at the same time. I had success with the test drive. It's a perfectly fine car but getting someone on the phone to come and deal with the rental was another story. I did manage to get a tow truck to arrive to take it away but we didn't have a car to get home in. We were 45 minutes away from where we live and 45 minutes away from the airport where we rented the car. The phone number for the car rental could only connect me to roadside assistance but not to anyone who could help with getting a replacement car.
Luckily our sales guy, Marco, after much effort, was finally able to connect with someone who was able to help us. But the solution was we had to get a taxi to take us to the airport in Catania to get a replacement car. I'd say he earned his commission. The tow truck driver called someone to pick us up. By that time it was 5:45. We had been at the dealership since they opened at 3:00. Massimo, who was driving a large Mercedes van at about 150 km/h (90mph) got us to the airport rental car agency around 6:15. It cost 140 Euros. They must have felt bad for us because they gave us a brand new BMW small SUV. Then we drove an hour and a half back to our town, arriving a little after 8:00. That was a long day! I had been awake since before 5:00 am that morning.
Don’t ask me about the weather. At least it isn’t sub zero F and snowing!
So that's it for now. More to tell you about later! Ciao!!
Peter & Nancy in Sicily
