After a brief nap and a gauntlet run through wristwatch-peddling vendors (good price, real rolex!), we arrive hours early at the airport on yesterdays unpunched tickets. Italy is relaxed about most everything, particularly public transit and saturated fats, and you can get great mileage off a single purchase, especially if you look all doe eyed and foreign. And travel with pretty girls helps too, va bene. I get a baleful eye from customs as my passport is unstamped; why am I not stamped with entry to Italy? Because the Rome guy didn’t stamp me; I want a stamp! I just got a new, grafitti free virgin of a passport, stamp it! Clearing with a mere one exit stamp, albeit from Pisa, I mount the plane hoping for a peaceful transition through uk immigration, I have plenty more pages to spare. Still a bit jittery about uk customs, as they appear rather distrustful of the truth; that I have a bit of cash in the bank and am travelling for the sheer joy of it. I make it through unscathed, grateful for the officials cheery aplomb once I told him my purpose for the 3 week visit in Italy. Weeding. In a monastery no less. “do you plan to do any weeding during your stay in the UK?”.
