6 nights in Sala Mandelli
So from our last post, The Europe adventure begins, we had taken our flight out to Italy with the horrendous RyanAir and eventually picked up our car, a Ford Focus stationwagon, from Goldcar to reach our nice, quaint home in Sala Mandelli for 6 nights. This was our first stop in the Schengen area for which, we as Singaporeans, only have 90 days in. This is actually a small number of days considering how large the Schengen area actually is and how many countries it contains.
A google map we were using to reference during the planning of our trip can be found here. This map can give you all the points you need to be aware of when calculating your 90 days. But let me give you 1 piece of advice. The planning will probably be worthless. It has been for us so far.
Sala Mandelli is small little town near Milan and in the Piacenza province. We managed to book Luca’s home in a very short while and Luca is very, very responsive. His home can be found here: Between Magic and Wellness. Luca was a super person and he took the effort to look for us when we were lost trying to find his home.
Once at his home, he quickly started a fire and got us around it to help us warm up. He also heated some of his pizza for us as we were home pretty late and saw that we had nothing to eat. He took really good care of us on this first night and also gave us a nice breakfast in the morning for which I am very grateful for. We spoke to him about our long trip and he told us some local tips for grocery shopping.
The house itself was really very nice with pretty good WiFi despite being in a really rural place. I must thank Luca for his fantastic recommendations on places to visit. Taking his advise, we ended up visiting
- Piacenza
- Bobbio
- Grazzano Visconti
and quite a few other places. Luca has also ensured that the place he has leased has all the things you would need for your stay including heaters, some utensils for cooking, a proper, fully equipped kitchen and even some cats and other animals to keep you busy if you EVER get bored.
The weather in Sala Mandelli, Piacenza, Italy, at the end of November was not too cold. We were able to roam around with not much on and not much difficulty.
Driving itself was not too difficult. There was only one occasion where we took a route provided by Google which led us through what was barely a road. We were fortunate that it did not rain that day as this path was dirt only and if it was mud, our car would have not made it through.
If you want his contact number for a direct reservation, please do ask for it here and I will gladly send his number to you after I get permission from him. I have also marked his home on google maps and so if you want the exact location, please do ask me and I will provide this as well once Luca agrees to this.
Here are some selected photos from our first week 🙂
Our full album at:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mDrdtaVTFEsmow6f1
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