Yes -Italy – you are almost rehabilitated in my books.
Looking back at yesterday, on my watch, I seemed to have walked a lot of steps. I even closed my rings. It is probably to do with the fact that this hotel has well spread out accommodation so quite a lot of walking is involved.
The night was hot again due to the open/closed windows fiasco. But I caught T out and opened the terrace window without him noticing. In the end, it was myself who woke up with frostbite. The nights are quite cool, whilst the days are very hot. 30C here today.
This morning H and I wandered across the official doggy beach and along a scruffy patch of land beside it. Lots of grubby pebbles and weeds to snuffle around. This scruffy patch borders the stream / river ( aka Foglia Canal) that divides Pesaro … our northern side is much less touristy than the long stretch of sands to the south. Along both sides of this stream are moorings for hundreds of boats. A natural marina I suppose. And there is a purpose built job as well.
H paddled and snuffled and generally amused herself in stinky unpleasant items. It was another serene and warm morning.
T was quite biddable and got showered so that we were not quite the last people down for brekkie.
It was coffee machine time. I took control of the proceedings and got it absolutely spot on today. All was good, until T decided he wanted another cup. I reminded him where the machine was and left him to it. He returned a few minutes later with… not coffee… another plate of cheese, fruit and meat. Oh well done, I thought.
Where is your coffee cup? What cup? Was how the conversation went. The lovely waitress realised he was missing something, a screw perhaps, and very kindly brought him an espresso. Now an espresso is much smaller than the cappuccino he had before. And T knew this and whinged about it.
Off he went again trekking towards the coffee machine and came back with… no no coffee …. a load of fruit. The very, very lovely young waitress brought him another espresso. T whinged to me that he could he hardly see it.
I was about to rescue the situation when another kind waitress brought him a capucinno. It seems all ’coffee’ here is espresso unless you request a capucinno.
While all this was going on, I was dealing with other things.
Prunes …
Now as to the very brown bread that I also mentioned yesterday.
This might be it in roll form…
All the breakfast bread was pre-sliced or in roll form. Post covid I think.
Once brekkie was over, we retreated to our room to recover and catch up with H.
To amuse T today, we took a tour of :
Monte San Bartolo (Parco naturale regionale del Monte San Bartolo)
This is a very beautiful area, bordered to the east by the sea and to the west by hills, crops and other farmland. And of course, we are back in the land of olive trees, as well as signs about snow, and warnings re winter tyres, and muscles on brown legs, and two wheels, and lots of lycra. And no one has batteries and no one seems to be pushing their bikes.
We were stunned by the views and the character of the high villages.
T remains fascinated by the way they serve paper napkins here – or maybe I should say bits of paper for messy people. He certainly was messy in his attempts to eat the ice cream. It dripped, condensation formed on the glass and that dripped, his nose dripped, everything dripped, his fingers were sticky, and the bits of paper for messy people started to disappear. There was quite a lot of huffing and puffing too.
We returned to the hotel by a fortuitously different route. This route returned us close to the hotel along a street of local shops.
Bang in the middle, was a supermarket. It contained lots of beautiful looking fruit and all manner of tempting items in chilled cabinets, and a huge display of wine and spirits, but I was puzzled by the absence of beer and soft drinks, among other things. I wandered around searching, without much luck, for anything that might fulfill our needs.
Then I stumbled on another whole section of the shop busting with shelves of beer and other goodies.
In the middle of the beer display were 3 different types of 00 beer. Heineken and Moretti in bottles, (heavy and require openers) and some cans of something I had never heard of. A name a bit like Eidelweiss.
I added some fruit, nuts and bread sticks to the mix and I reckon that means we will spend less money on the boat. I know, that unlike Patra, the point of departure at the Port of Ancona is terrible, grotty, dirty, with a grim van as a cafe, nasty toilets. Patra departure offers a shiny, well-organised building, with a shop full of fresh fruit and other treats and delights. Maybe Ancona will have improved since 2019.
We relaxed in the hotel and then I took another dip in the pool, flanked by my shadow who was not going to get his toes wet.
After my swim, I went to the car (have I mentioned that the car park is down two flights of steps?) This was to bring one of the nice warm cans of beer for T to enjoy whilst I sorted myself and H out.
We returned and fed H, who ate everything I gave her with gusto. The tin bowl was obviously the problem. She will have another little walk soon.
T has mislaid his beer – I found it nestled amongst his underwear, most of which needs washing because it has been on the road for a week.
I must avoid yesterday’s blog mistake… it didn’t save properly and I lost a load of it.
We walked H, admiring another sunset of intangible atmosphere.
We will not have any / much internet access over the next 48 hours. Maybe at Igoumenitsa very early tomorrow. And as we dick at Patra tomorrow afternoon. Possibly in Piraeus tomorrow evening. We leave Ancona 13.30 local time today.
Thought for the Day
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