Note to self...

...diesel engines require diesel. Simple enough, you might think. Well, not simple enough for the Edwards family. How it's possible for a diesel engine to run for 5 days on gasoline is beyond me, but it did.

In Venice we rented a car and for the next 5 days we travelled to Verona, Padova, Trieste and Belluno, stopping twice to fill her up with GASOLINE. The most logical thing would have been to look at the big print on the fuel cap that said DIESEL before lifting the green, non-leaded gas pump instead of the black one, but that would have been too easy. We thought it would be much more interesting to sit for 2 hours at a gas station with a car that wouldn't run before deciding to call a tow truck, whose driver only spoke really fast Italian (Jose went a long way with the two Italian cassette tapes he had listened to years ago...imagine if he had listened to all sixteen!).

If you've ever seen a tow truck you know that there is only room for 2 maybe 3 people in the cab. We were five total (including the driver). My parents volunteered to ride in the car on top of the tow truck. All the people stared at my two very American parents being towed through a small Italian village. Good times. You have to laugh, cause otherwise you'll cry.

In Italy (and Spain for that matter), "I'll be there in five minutes" is a downright lie. Five minutes is like a milli-second on the Italian schedule. As said so exquisitely on the Princess Bride, 5 minutes is just "inconceivable". Our "five minute" wait for the only taxi available in the entire town to take us to the car rental place turned out to be around and hour wait in tow truck garage with mosquito assassins.

Needless to say, we finally got to the car rental counter at the Treviso airport to pick up a new car. Final words to the car rental man as we left the parking lot: "Diesel?" His response: "Diesel."