Departed Hobart on time Sunday afternoon and went through to the Emirates departure lounge very easily. It was the fastest immigration transit ever.

We enjoyed a coffee and did a bit of people watching and I bought Si by Georgio Armani (birthday money from Nick), Mili found a little purse in a souvenir shop so I bought her that. We boarded our flight and settled in for our 14 hour flight to Dubai. It was the best long haul flight I've ever done, the A380 Dreamliner is aptly named. The fed us really nice food accompanied by French wine and the ICE entertainment system is brilliant. I watched a movie after dinner and settled in for some sleep. I was able to get 5 hours then another two hours which was good. The seats are very comfortable and much bigger than other airlines. Breakfast was also delicious and the coffee was hot and strong. I caught up with all the Big Bang Theory episodes I had missed from the latest season and we arrived in Dubai. Wow, flying in over Dubai in the early morning was quite stunning, the Burj Khalifa was easy to spot! What an amazing airport - it was so clean and is the biggest "shopping centre" I've ever been in. I tracked down my pre-ordered duty free (2 x 1lt Dansk Vodka) and got a free one! Lovely vodka unavailable in Australia. It comes in an aluminium flask - perfect for the freezer!

We boarded our flight to Rome and once again were fed and wined. Liam Neeson kept me entertained on that leg. Arrival at Rome Fiuminco airport was easy and reasonably quick. We spent an hour trying to find Avis to pick up our hire car. We sure made up for our lack of exercise in the preceding 22 hours, we finally found it and Sonia got us fast tracked - the place was packed with people waiting to collect their cars and we would have been hours but as we had prepaid and had a long drive to the village we got bumped. A nice black Fiat Punto got us on track for the 450 kms drive south to Montano Antilia. Sonia did an amazing job driving us, on the other side of the road! When I got in the front passenger's seat Mili said "is Heather driving?" I pointed to the steering wheel on the other side..... So, the child who slept only 2 hours out of 22 flying finally crashed! She slept the whole 5 hour drive except when we stopped for food - my first real pizza in 30 years! Sublime, cheap and fresh. We drove on and took a wrong turn, we went up a mountain then down the other side, arriving at Sapri and had to detour through back streets as there was a fiesta along the seafront. We finally arrived at the villetta at 10 pm and only had enough energy to shower and crawl into a proper bed. Heaven!

This morning we woke to a beautiful sunny day and after a breakfast of fresh peaches we gathered our thoughts and did some unpacking and all sat down to call home and update our blogs.

Italy - my thoughts so far:- beautiful green countryside, mad drivers who don't indicate and drive like maniacs, cute villages hugging hillsides and pretty beaches, excellent pizza and coffee, old houses and churches.