First Hiccup in Italy

The trip to Italy was mooted after my DIL was scheduled to attend a conference in Florence, Italy. Taking advantage of this break, a tour to Italy themed "Italy with Oliva" came into being. Besides sightseeing, the trip aimed to be another "ice breaker" between Oliva and her Sabahan grandparents. Initially, we were hesitant whether to go or not to go. But the key destinations, Tuscany and Sicily made it just impossible to resist. After all, both places have been known for a long time through two movies, "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "The Godfather".

Our first experience with Swiss Air was a pleasant one. The flight was incident-free all the way from Singapore to Florence with just under one hour stopover transit in Zurich.

Tuscany is much greener than I had imagined.

For the first time, we experienced hiccup in the rented car. After picking up our Ford Transit Custom 9-seater van at Zurich Airport from Hertz, it stalled after moving barely half a kilometer from the airport. Stuck at the upward slope of a curved flyover ramp, the car's gears simply refused to engage and move forward. Fortunately, it was just half a kilometer away. I and my wife walked back to the car rental company to report the problem. The staff came and took over the driver seat. To our surprise, the van worked normally with no sign of any problem. Back to the car rental office, they could not offer a replacement because that was the last one available, they claimed. We had no choice but to look for another 9-seater from other car rental companies. By divine intervention, we managed to find another from Europcar. We had to pay more since it was not pre-booked.

This Fiat Ducato performed perfectly throughout the five-day rental period. Until today, I still could not figure out what exactly was the problem of the first 9-seater!

Fiat Ducato 9-seater.