Sometimes its the journey that matters,with the destination being runner up.As the Florence train pulled with even greater determination to get away from Rome the horror of that idea was beginning to take hold and grabbing some of my oxygen. Mr.  & Mrs American Traveller never made it to this train. When I last saw them,they had left me on the correct platform in search of 'official' help to make sure they were where they should be when the train stopped. Unfortunately they ended up where they shouldn't have been (l presume), missed the train, and deprived me of further lurid details of their marathon. My schadenfreude  was going to have a bleak time too.
Getting off at Chiusi meant that my journey's end was only a taxi ride away, and 'subito' l was looking at beautiful green rolling countryside with those stunning terracotta and hewn stone country houses and farms.
The taxi driver told me that "il Sasso" received students from all over the world and was very well liked by them. I thought in my complete ignorance it would probably be a small school and that l might find myself alone much of the time. Now it seemed more and more, that my great organisation was  a greater disorganisation than anything that had come before.
Montepulciano sat like a magnificent and proud potentate on a huge slab of rock as we came closer at which point the heavens opened up. Going into the 'centro storico' on the one cobbled road which was now running with torrents of water seemed a fitting end to a journey that seemed to have been going on for much longer than my prostate was ever meant to deal with, and that running water almost put me out of action for good as any male above a certain age can understand.
I had tried to ring my family from Chiusi but got the recorded voice of the operator telling me that l had dialled incorrectly. That turned out to be true but l was sure it was another example of the dark forces working against me. Would my family be in when l got out of the taxi, and if not what on this earth was l going to do?
 My inner chaos returned, BUT Montepulciano looked so beautiful that for the first time l didn't care because l really had arrived.