When i finally arrive i realise i was right in that i picked a large town (i was hoping for a car hire company). This place is huge! and dark and deserted and seemingly in the middle of no-where. i do get a taxi driver who rips me off (the second one to do so in the last 12 hours) but is extremely nice about it and finds me a hotel within my budget.
Local knowledge...it gets me into more trouble. unlike my hotel staffs belief that there is a tourist information and there are car hire places where they say. GRRR! its a lot of walking around to find this out. there is however 2 places at the train station - one closed and one which doesn't have any cars. In the latter she actually looked at me with a straight face, looked at the computer screen and then said "the computer says no". i do eventually find a car after nearly being in a fight with a taxi driver for ripping me off (again) and set off for Cotronei at about 12pm, not quite as early as i would have liked. I then spend the next hour driving around in the wrong direction...oops.
Cotronei is a town a visited about 15 years ago as part of a cultural student exchange thingy. I remember i had a great time, fell for a girl for the first time and had my first 'adult' life changing experience. It seems that's about all i remember however as i walk and drive through the town with no memories of it what-so-ever :) I do find the church in the old centre of it and then i have my first memory as i can see in my head a picture of me outside the church - apparently there had been a wedding, i was wearing a dreadful shell suit and got a 'prize' for the 'best dressed to a wedding'. Straight after this i went into a sort of trance, I've never experienced anything like it. i couldn't form a clear memory picture of where i was but i walked through a labyrinth of little streets, seemingly remembering my way, and yet i wasn't clearly remembering - it was like it was all foggy and i couldn't see clearly. Eventually i stopped at what i was sure was the convent/summer school where we stayed for 2 weeks...it did not look familiar AT ALL. :(
Ive seen a lot of Cosenza in two days, mostly from a car at high speed while narrowly missing pedestrians and other cars. i cant say i like it, its a huge sprawling mass but it does have a good min shopping street.
With the car hire business and driving about 250km (all at speed... like a lunatic... like the locals) it was a long day. Made more so that it took me 3 hours to find the car hire company - i had no map only the locals help...
