I was confidently and sweatily expecting Monica Bellucci, but alas, alas, this seems to be a myth, no more. I didn't even see the very entertaining Giancarlo Giannini, but oddly, I did get to meet Gerard Depardieu, who was busy pretending to be a surly airline steward. Oh well. At least the Fiat Grande Punto 1.3 Multijet is a nice car.
Small comfort, I know, but right now, sitting in Florence, on a bench in a tiny, perfect park, replete after a heart-warming espresso, it doesn't seem a particularly raw deal. Even the fact that our mildly epic journey was cut short by a crash doesn't make this trip seem any less worthwhile.
The crash is best left for later, I feel. It may make more sense to explain exactly what we were doing there. We Dhaval, our long-suffering photographer and 1- were trying to figure out just why Italy, and Fiat in particular, is so bloody good at making small cars. We had a choice between the car of the moment, the cuddly new 500 (chink-uh-chen-toe, say it!) and the more mundane but more relevant Punto diesel. Sadly giving up our chances with one of the most wonderful new cars, we decided to check out the one that'll be available to Indian buyers from March - see what we do for you?
The idea was to land in Milan, pick the car up, then drive across a good chunk of northern Italy. We'd first go to Turin, home of Italian automobiles, for lunch at Fiat, then to the Ligurian Sea coast at Genoa. Florence would be the first real highlight, a city so cultured and beautiful we should've been asked to wipe our feet before we stepped in. Next, onto Bologna and Modena, a not very large area that contains entirely too much exciting metal- Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati all live here and finally back to Milan.
Rome would have been the coup de grace, a little slice of Roman Holiday to round off the Italian experience, but I am not Gregory Peck, and Dhaval is certainly not Audrey Hepburn. Also, we didn't have enough money. Or time.
We were going to do this the tourist way: six days, no luxury money, Italian food all the way, no clue about the language, and consequently, no idea whether the man giving us directions was telling us to take the second left or eulogising about the cherry tart he had for lunch. We would be like children. Stupid children. I couldn't wait.
Milan starts off unpromisingly. We collect the car, and immediately get lost. We know we have to find the autostrada, Italy's version of the Expressway (except there are many more of them), but we get nowhere until we realise we have to look for green signs that point to the highway; everything else is blue. Job done, next stop Turin.
Ah, but where in Turin, exactly? We’ve been given a street name, but no one seems to know it. And how would we find the car again once we'd parked it? Fiat's given us a five-door Grande Punto (only the best-selling car in Italy), in a singularly unmemorable shade - some kind of pasty yellowy-greeny-grey that we wouldn't be able to identify in a million years and in Italy, every, and I mean every parking slot is taken. To make things worse, in Turin, the tram-lines mean you can't park to the side on some streets but have to park dead centre, which does our nerves no good at all.
And Turin, so far, has given us no real clue we were in Italy. The autostrada is fast, smooth efficient and has cut us off completely from the countryside, and the city seems, so far, like anything else in Europe. Where are the people flinging pizzas, talking with their hands and driving like lunatics? Where arc the monuments, the ice creams, the Ferraris? Where, in short, is Italy?
Then, as we get increasingly lost and have to keep asking for directions, we start to fall in love with the place. The people, for one, are frankly wonderful. Everyone, from hobbling old grandmas to unbearably good looking couples, are helpful and kind, attempting English, and pointing carefully as we, in Forrest Gump fashion, watch their mouths moving in the hope that it'll all make sense. Second, the architecture's getting prettier as we move towards the centre of the city, brownstone and the odd gargoyle hiding behind expensive-looking shops. And third, Italy's a great place to be in autumn. The trees are somewhere between bright yellow and orange, and just the sheer number of them - in an industrial city! - is a delight.
Again, naturally, we get lost - and this, let me tell you, is a feat. By the end of the trip, we've managed to get lost in every city we've visited - and no more so than in our first night halt, Genoa. The car's proved itself quite well so far: it's as stable and solid as you'd expect on the highways (where, by the way, 40kph above the posted limit is considered perfectly acceptable), and trundling along at night in Genoa, looking for a hotel, it works beautifully through narrow lanes. Perfect size, really, this just-short-of-four-metres thing, big enough for most India! Italian needs small enough to squeeze into restricted parking spaces. Our Punto even has rear parking sensors and a dual-zone climate control system - will these make it to India?
Genoa's surprisingly pretty, and very considerate. There are little white signs all over the place, telling you not only where the nearest hotels are, but what stars those hotels have earned. What a good idea.
We, however, are running very low on luck: the only room we've found that isn't very expensive is in a hotel run by a Sri Lankan expert, whose Italian is worse than ours, makes strange bleating noises and cheerfully swindles us of sixty euro for a room that a toothbrush would have difficulty fitting into.
We decline a tip early the next morning, and head out. It's really astonishingly nice: perfect blue sea, tiny, cobbled roads, rocky cliff, peach-coloured houses clinging to the hillside.
Dhaval spots a nice little alley.
"Vardhan, can you go up the road, go round and find a way into that alley so you return facing me?
“Sure."
Famous last words. The road does not turn back: it winds upwards, one-way, for ten kilometers.
By the time I find a turnoff, I'm outside Genoa, and have no clue how to get back. Dhaval, wisely, has decided to stay put and SMS me a landmark; unwisely, the landmark is a pharmacy that's part of a chain, so the six people I ask give me six different directions. It takes two and a half hours - without breakfast - before I find him again, wringing his hands. We're not going to separate again, we decide, because this was a little nerve-racking.
We leave Genoa immediately not out of mortal terror, but out of an honest desire to actually get some photography done in the seaside villages. We go through Recco, which had looked nice enough the previous night, but looks less so in the searing Italian sunlight. The light here in this season actually hurts, it's that clear and sharp.
The first priority is some kind of Sustenance we find a restaurant by the coastal highway, but it won't open until noon. Fifteen minutes. "Can we sit inside?" I ask, for my pidgin Italian is coming on a treat, and I'm told we can't, not until the restaurant is officially open. Eh, what's this? I didn't know the Italians were that hard-boiled. I'd expected a merry welcome and a booted of Chianti, not North European strictness; then again, we're not terribly far from Switzerland here, which may explain this.
Anyway, we wait bickering in the car, and then go inside for a quite astonishing meal. Italians tend to eat vast meals: a small starter, a pasta or rice first course to limber up the stomach, a meat or fish second course, followed by dessert, fruit, possibly cheese and the inevitable espresso. All washed down with wine. There's no way we can manage all that, but the ravioli and steak with calvados sauce that we try are both very good, and the tiramisu is frankly astounding. And this in a middle-of now here place that looks like it gets the same customers every lunchtime. Awesome.
The coastal villages are all very pretty, but there's absolutely no place to park. We can see the sea shimmering just beyond, and are dying to either Stop and shoot the car, or park and shoot the place, but there's no place whatsoever to park the one closed parking facility in the village of Camogli fills up Just as we reach it - and the streets are far too narrow to Stop and fiddle with the cam. We can’t take the cat into Porrofino either (oh, the romance of that name!). Oh well, on we go.
The road's stunning, a typically Mediterranean Coast road flowing along hills that reach right down to the sea, and it takes us to the European beach experience: take your car a fairly long way, grumble for three hours about parking, almost back your car into an innocent Punto containing innocent Indian journalists, spend half an hour with gavel and really cold Water, and feel very pleased with yourself as you get stuck in traffic on the way home. Listen, never complain about Indian beaches again, y'understand? They're heaven compared to this.
The road also, in a very satisfying manner, takes us through some terrific, shockingly cold hills as we head inland - the Punto isn't great here, grippy but without any particular level of finesse - and then, a couple of hills and a very rapid stretch of highway later, we're in Florence.
Allow me a sigh here. I could live in this city, starting now. And spend every day of the rest of my life discovering some niche or corner so beautiful I could weep. The people here are probably the sweetest I've met in Italy too - and that's saying something. The hotel landlady lets us in at one in the morning, calls me "My love" and gives us a huge room. The waiter at the restaurant almost pats me on the head when I correctly guess that the rabbit, sausage and fowl dish on the English menu is stufato alla cacciatore, the hunter's stew. (It's delicious by the way, as is the Chianti Classico we allow ourselves.) The police gently stop an American tourist who's blundered in his Fiat next to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, on a pedestrianised lane, and instead of beating him about the kidneys, give him directions and possibly the name of a good bar nearby.
We spend two nights here, both driving around and getting horribly lost, naturally - and walking on empty streets at night to the Palazzo Vecchio and the statue of David. Italy, at least in autumn, has been shutting down at seven, so Florence is pretty much ours, to gape at until our tongues freeze in the six-degree temperatures.
The cool thing is, the Punto doesn't disgrace itself amid all this visual glory. It's a damned good looking car, not in the least ostentatious, but just handsome. As are so many Italian cars here, in fact. You can't know how good an Alfa looks until you see it in its natural habitat, all stylish and elegant, totally overwhelming the forced BMW that's alongside it. And remember this: the minute '60s Cinquecento is mega. The coolest car in the world, even when driven by a really fat old lady in tweed.
Leaving Florence is a wrench, and harrowing. We're leaving through Monday morning traffic, and out of nowhere, a police car yodels past, clipping the left wing mirror in the process. I'm outraged the car could have been damaged. How ironic.
Two hours later, headed out of the university town of Bologna (said to be extremely pretty) and towards Lamborghini, we're at a T-junction. I'm craning my neck, trying to read the one badly sited road sign in all of Italy, wander too far onto the main road and with a desperate groan and an F1 style shedding of bodywork, the Punto's left side disintegrates as a truck goes into us. No one's hurt, but oh bloody, bloody hell.
Of course, everyone - the truck driver, the people at the shop who let us use their phone, the tow-truck guy (who looks like Mike Gascoyne) and the chaps at the workshop are all perfectly friendly and helpful, determined to keep our love for Italy intact. It works, though the next two days are a blur: going to Lamborghini, going to Ferrari, staying in Modena, which is unexpectedly pretty but has no forex places at all, and then taking the train to Milan and staying at an outrageously expensive hotel near the station, run by a little professor of a man who probably spends his days teaching children manners on the bus.
Our Grande Punto, but naturally, is back in the tender care of Fiat, and what a shame that it should end this way. It wasn't quite the most exhilarating traveling companion, but it was a good, practical one. And it was perfectly representative of the Italian small-car phenomenon, which, after all, is what we were here to analyse.
In the end, it's simple. The cars are small because the roads are tiny - and the roads ate far too pretty to be widened, so they accept the situation. And the cars are wonderful because Italians expect every aspect of life to be so: the food, the architecture, the music, the general quality of life are all terrific, and it's only fair to ask that their cars match this standard. And who cares if they're a bit cranky or not built, to Teutonic tolerances? It's all part of the fun. It's very Italian. And therefore, perfect.