Week 5 – Wednesday July 28 – Ferry to Rome / Ciao

Today is Thursday, I'm sitting in a square in Frascati, which is an ancient town on a hill to the South West of Rome – just outside the Rome ring road. This is my last blog entry because we're now in wind down mode and having a relaxing day wandering round Frascati, looking in motor bike shops and preparing to pack our stuff for the long flight home. We drop the car at the Peugeot barn in the middle of gravel pit near to Rome's Fumicino airport eraly in the morning to leave for Singapore at Midday. We have a day in Singapore at the Transit Hotel, before flying home to New Zealand, where we expect to be home by mid-afternoon on Sunday, having cleared out tent through customs and negotiated the different luggage limits between internation and national air travel. We are OK internationally, not so good nationally so let's see how that goes after 36 hours of travel.

Yesterday we took the ferry from Olbia to Civitavecchia. Strangely enough, despite all the ferry routes that Moby runs to all the different locations at all the different times, the boat the we ended up on for travelling from Olbia to Civitavecchia is the same boat that we took from Genova to Bastia about 3 weeks ago. As per the last trip, the sailing was dead flat, with absolutely no wind. Even the seat we got was the same seat that we had last time, OK, it was 10 feet away, but that was by choice. The ferry left 10 minutes early, sailed on a sea that was like a mirror and docked 45 minutes late – how does that work? Maybe it was the tides – I don't know.

Getting on the ferry at the ground floor, and having parked two levels higher on the previous trip, I mistakenly believed that I was as low as I could go, until the man directing traffic told me to drive down the ramp. I'm not sure how far below the water line we were parked, but it was a long, hot, claustaphobia inducing climb up the stairs to our seats on the 8^th floor.

The drive from Civitavecchia to the hotel was about 100ks and getting back into mainland traffic on a busy arterial road and ring road, was a bit of an eye opener after weeks of cruising round on the slow roads of Corsica and Sardinia. We stopped off 5ks short of the hotel at our favourite shop in Europe – Decathlon to stock up on some sports tops, then headed round to our hotel in Frascati. Frascati is another of these cobble-stoned towns, but the roads are less even, narrower and steeper than just about anywhere else we've driven and the convoluted nature of the town threw the GPS into a bit of a tail spin, but we negotiated our way around that. Having just described how tricky the roads are, a Ferarri 308GTS has just cruised by on them, so they can't be too bad. I guess it's what you're used to.

So that's it. We've had a great time. We're looking forward to getting back home, cheap and cheerful aisan meals on Sunday nights and having a big juicy steak.,

See you all soon.

Ciao.

Week 5 – Tuesday July 27 – Olbia

As I write this, I'm sitting on the ferry going from Olbia to Civitavecchia, the port to the west of Rome. We spent Tuesday in Olbia, which was a town that appears to only be alive when the sun goes down, or when the boat comes in – and when the boats come in, they come in massive bursts. Arriving at the port to catch our ferry, there were already four boats in port and while we were waiting to board, another 4 large ferries arrived. It's great watching the marshalls directing all the cars that are coming and going. If you're not quick enough, you get a blast.

We checked out of the Hotel Monti Di Mola in Porto Cervo late in the morning and drove the short distance to Olbia to stay the night at the imaginatively named “Hotel For You”, which is right in the centre of Olbia and only a minute from the Ferry Terminal. We went for a walk around the centre of Olbia in the early afternoon, and while it appeared nice enough, there was virtually nobody around, it was the same at 6pm when we went out for a snack and even at 8:30 when we went out for dinner, it was still very quiet.

We did manage to find a very nice restaurant at the side of a square and had a really nice meal. They did have an interesting surpise to add interest to the evening. When we were seated the waitress came out with two small plates, each with a little pill on it that looked like a big asprin with the restaurants initials on it, which she offered firstly to Anne. “What is it?”. The waitress poured water on in it and the large pill expanded to about twice its width and four times its height to reveal that it was infact a face towell. OK, so the result isn't that that interesting, but the way that it was presented was.

After dinner, we sat in the square listening to a guitar duo playing some Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd songs. The guitar work was really good, even if the singing wasn't quite so good. Walking back to the hotel via the same quiet streets we'd walked along to get to the restaurant, we were amazed at the transformation. All the cobbled streets had been closed off and a large night market had started up, about 20 restaurants had stretched out into the mall area and there were people everywhere – it was great and we wandered around amongst the throng for about an hour before retiring to the hotel to prepare our stuff for an early departure in the morning.

Week 5 – Monday July 26 – Porto Cervo

Today is a day by the pool, but that doesn't mean I have nothing to tell you about. This hotel is really lovely – tiny at only 21 rooms and all built around a swimming pool. The room is a good size, airconditioned, with french doors opening out to the pool area and a good decent sized bathroom. So why the world's smallest shower? It looks like a sci-fi work of art, a semi-circular shape, with two doors in the middle that open regally to let you enter and exit, all manner or shelves to put things on, even a seat, but it barely manages to make it into the third dimension, so once you've slid the two doors apart, entered, and closed them, there is barely enough room to turn around, let alone get your hands above your head to wash your hair. If you are the sort of person that likes to shave your legs, the only way you can do this is to turn around to face the wall, lift your foot, place it on the seat, then reach behind you, fling the doors open, then stick your bum out the door as you bend over to carry out your business. Flinging the door open was discovered as Anne's second attempt as the first attempt resulted in a perfect pressed ham against the shower doors, which was immediately followed by a bump as she hit her head against the wall. This morning, when I finished my shower, I flung the doors open and announced “Thanks for beaming me up, Scotty. Not only have I arrived, but I have been delivered clean”.

This afternoon, having spent considerable time lying by the pool, reading and swimming, I retired to our room to lie down in the cool of the room and read my book. Anne was sitting outside the open French doors and there was no one else around, so we had the place to ourselves. An hour later, still lying on the bed reading, I had my own “Man from the other end of the shower block” moment, when Anne came in and kicked me and said....... “Do you mind, there's about 20 people sitting out here”. Goodness, I thought as I emerged from the room to find that indeed the popluation levels had increased considerably and they were all sitting there reading, minding their own business – it was like the place was a library, but for the odd interuption.

End of Week 4 – Sunday July 25 – Porto Cervo

Sadly / happily, camping is over for this holiday. Sadly, because we've really enjoyed the camping and it's made the times that we've stayed in hotels seem really special. Happily because our last 5 days of the holiday will be in hotels in Sardinia and just out of Rome.

We've been sweeping the outside of the tent everyday for the last few days to get all the bugs, pine needles and dust of it, so that it's very clean when we bring it back into New Zealand. This morning we were up at 7am to do our final washing for the holiday, before packing up the tent for the final time. We did the best job yet and it's all very neatly folded away and we're very expert at it now, so if customs want to see it when we come back, we can errect it and dismantle it very quickly. We threw away the ground sheet and the airbed and gave our table and two chairs to the family beside us, who didn't have any and they seemed very appreciative for the extra equipment.

There were naturally enough a few formalities to complete before we were allowed to leave the campground, but once they were done, we were on the road to Porto Cervo and two days in a 21 room hotel. I've put some photos of it up, and it really is lovely. We are on the ground floor, with direct access to the pool, which we are spending quite a lot of time beside.

We had lunch at the Porto Cervo Marina, which was totally dead. This is where all the rich and famous hang out (Paris was night clubbing here last week) and what shops there are are very upmarket, but what is rich one year, is not so much another year, and this is obviously one of those not-so-rich years. After 4 weeks of pasta, pizza and seafood, the offer of club sandwich and cheese burger and chips from the Lord Nelson Pub was to good to turn down. There were some big boats in the marina, but the one that caught my eye was the Rigid Hull Inflatable with 3 x 350 HP outboards on the back of it. That's over 1,000HP – quick, you bet!

For dinner we walked to Trattoria Caprese and had a stunning meal with a whole fresh fish to accompany my spagghetti, tomatoes, parsley, garlic etc. etc. It was quite an expensive option (but I didn't figure that till it arrived), but the staff obviously appreciated it because they gave us a bottle of Limoncello and Meloncello each to finish the meal and ourselves off.

Week 4 – Saturday July 24 – Tempio Pausania

This morning, the pigeons have been silenced, the weather's turned, the wind has come up over night and the temperature has plumetted to 26 degrees. Down at the beach nobody is going near the beach as it has turned into a vicious dumping surf that rolls big waves up to about 8 feet that only break when they hit the shore – bone breaking stuff. A few people who know what they're doing are out windsurfing and kitesurfing and look like they're having an absolute blast.

Anne and I headed inland today to the small town of Tempio Pausania. We had great fun when we arrived there, as we followed the signed to the Centro, expecting to find a car park somewhere along the way, but instead in one turn we went from a normal two lane asphalted road to a narrow, winding, cobble-stoned pedestrian infested maze that we had to negotiate our way through. Some of the turns were so tight, that I had to take a couple of bites at it to get the car round. The fact that the inside corner had very menacing looking iron protectors put on them, so that the cars wouldn't damage the stone work made the task all the more hair raising. The total journey would probably only have been half a kilometre, but with a turn every 50 metres and pedestrians everywhere (the concept of a footpath hadn't been invented when this town was built) it was quite a nerve racking experience. The one thing we didn't come across was anywhere to park, so we had to head to the outskirts of town to find somewhere to park and then write down where we were incase we got lost in the maze that is Tempio Pausania.

We went for a walk around the town and stopped at the Tourist Information Centre, to understand where we'd parked the car. There was an english woman in the queue and she was wanting to know where the shops were. The man behind the counter was explaining this to her (Tempio is a small town remember), when she said “and are these large shops”.....”mmmm, not so big” was his reply. Ah, it's a historic town, with a big church and lots of interesting streets and piazzas and other things to look out for – shops – go to Rome.

We've come across a trend in Sardinia – interesting little towns, with no where to eat. After yesterday's less than brilliant lunch we were in no mood to chance it, but Tempio had absolutely nothing that even tempted us, which was a shame as it really is a lovely little town.

We are checking out of the campground tomorrow morning, which meant that we had to pay up this afternoon. The campground appears to have had it's processes designed by the accounting department of the local university, because although they are effective in delivering some form of control, they get a big fat zero for their customer friendliness. When you order a coffee, rather than the person on the till writing your order on a post-it note and sticking it on the coffee machine for the Barista to make, here you are handed a ticker tape of your order which you have to give to the Barista. One morning Anne was the only person there and the cash register driver and the Barista were standing talking to each other while Anne was giving her order and paying for it. When she had finished she went and sat down. “Scoozi, Signora.... where is your ticket”. “What, you were standing there when I ordered – it's two capaccino's, how hard can it be to just make the coffee” is what we thought..... “oooh, sorry, here it is” is what we said of course – too polite some times.

Anyway, I digress.... Checking out.... At 4pm, the day before we checked out, we had to pay up. Now when you check in they always take your passport as a guarantee. When I paid the bill, I of course wanted the passport back, but no, I had to collect that the next morning. Wrong – you have my money, I want my passport. After the third repetition of my side of the argument she relented and gave me the passport back. I figured out the next morning why she wanted to keep it, but basically it is just poor process to make up for inadequate processes elsewhere.

Saw a funny thing in the camp supermarket this afternoon. It's quite a large supermarket for a campground and sells everything – food, water, softdrinks wine, beer, toilettries, camping, beach, and sporting equipment. It's all very well laid out, so that all the toiletries are together, all the drinks together etc. The checkouts show the same lack of customer focus as the rest of the campground and European supermarkets in general, so it always takes a while to get through the queues, and “express lanes” - forget it. Anyway, Anne and I were there with our usual daily – 1 cold beer, 1 cold sparkling mineral water, 1 packet of crisps order waiting patiently in the queue. The couple in front of us were getting their goods scanned, when the husband headed off into the sporting goods section and comes back 30 seconds later and thumps a box down on the counter. With nothing else to do, Anne and I both looked at what the late breaking item of sporting equipment was that had to be purchased....... a 6 pack of condoms. Really, sporting goods.... OK. Anne and I did our best not to look at each other because another immature bout of the giggles felt remarkably imminent. I was tempted to say “we're open until 7:30 if you'll be needing anything else, but kept my comments to myself. As for the size of the box, well, you'd have to be hung like a garden hose to need a box that big for 6 condoms.

I mentioned yesterday that we'd seen the big vats of wine in the little dairy in Maddalena. We saw one of our neighbours in the campground taking a big flask of wine and filtering it into individual bottles. I would have loved to see what the bottles were, because they were all identically labelled and from the looks of the label, it looked quite nice. His secret is safe with us.

Week 4 – Friday July 23 – Maddalena

In our posh campsite, there are a number of camping companies as well as the freedom campers like us, who bring all our own gear. With the camping companies, you just rock up and the tent is all set up and fully kitted out with everything you need for a luxury camping holiday, except your clothes. You can either rent a tent or a small bungalow. We've just been checking out prices and it's not cheap. Eurocamping charge 200 Euros per night for a 2 room bungalow, although with the current economic climate you can get about 400 Euros off per week if you book at the last minute – 1,400 down to 1,000 Euros for a weeks camping. The tent option is currently about 550, down from 800, so still quite pricey, although we'd pay over 300 Euros for our site for a week.

Today we went to Maddalena via ferry from Palua. Getting onto the ferry was a bit of a mission. Firstly, the ticket office closed just as we got to the front of the queue (of 2 people) because the girl was having a smoking break. Getting the hump with her, we went to another ferry operator whose ferry was just about to leave and tried to buy tickets as we got on the boat, but the guy selling the tickets was also directing the cars, so he wanted us to leave our passports with him until he could sell us the tickets. You guessed it, we weren't giving him our passports, so we got the hump with him, so we went back to smoking girl, who by now had had her smoke and was back into customer service mode.

When we got onto the ferry, we tried to climb the stairs to get to the top deck but there was a rope across the stairs, so we went to the other end of the boat and climbed the other set of stairs and then walked round the boat to sit on the seats that were on the top of the stairs with the rope over them. We then spent the next 15 minutes watching everybody climb up the stairs and over the rope to get to the area when we were sitting. When absolutely everybody who could be inconvenienced had either climbed over the rope, or gone to the other end of the boat to climb the other stairs, a member of the crew came along, untied the rope and then took it away...... WTF?

Maddalena is a beautiful town (quite a big town actually), with lots of shops and quaint little streets and piazzas. What it does lack however is a decent restaurant, as Anne and I can now confirm that we have eaten Italy's worst pizza for lunch, but that's OK, you've got to have one dud in 5 weeks of holiday.

Prior to lunch, we walked all around the town and the port area. Finding a small shop, we went in a bought a 1.5litre bottle of Fanta. While we were getting it from the fridge (now that is luxury) we noticed the big vats of wine at the back of the shop, which people obviously come in and fill their flagons with. As we drink pitcher's of wine in the restaurants most of the time, we are well used to seeing them being filled from big dispensers in the restaurants, but this was the first time we'd seen them available to the general public.

The campground has a vast array of restaurants, self-service food areas, bars etc, but they can be a bit Hi-de-hi-ish, so fortunately there is some good pizza restaurants just along the beach from the campground, so we go there each night and have a meal and then there is usually a singer, so we listened to a woman on the terrace overlooking the sea, while people danced and sat around talking, before sauntering off home about midnight for a good night's sleep before the pigeons no doubt get back onto their koo-ing again in the morning.

Week 4 – Thursday July 22 – Palau / San Pantaleo / Porto Cervo

Nobody give me a gun. I am so over these koo-ing bloody pigeons. It doesn't matter where you are in a hotel or a campground, there is always one around doing their incessant koo-ing. I was trying to sleep this morning as the daylight started to drift across the campground and all I could hear was a throng of pigeons koo-ing all around the campground. It didn't help that I got in my head, during my half slumber, that they were all repeating the same thing over and over again – some a bit louder, some abit faster, but always the same thing...... ma balls hurt....., ma balls hurt, they all koo-ed from all corners of the campground, then one would get agitated and start Koo-ing faster..... ma balls hurt, my balls hurt..... then one right above the tent in full volume..... MA BALLS HURT, MA BALLS HURT.... oh well, with all this racket going on, I might as well get up.

I have mentioned my “help me sparky” moment with the pigeons to Anne, and she can confirm that yes inddeed, that does sound like what they are saying. She has also thanked me for introducing her to this information, because now rather than just hearing an annoying bird koo-ing, she can hear something quite different – and offputting. Oh well, you try your hardest.

One thing that I forgot to mention yesterday was that for an extra 11 Euros per night, it is possible to get “private” facilities. A small lockable cubicle that has the full range of amenities – toilet, bidet, hand basin and shower. As the facilities we have are already TOTR, we saved the 11 Euros for other things, although Anne does look longingly at them each time we walk past and comment on how other people have been lucky enough to rent them. Actually, this campground is by far the most expensive one we've stayed in working out at around 50 Euros per night in a classy campground. Sardinia is very expensive even by European standards, so we were expecting to pay more, but this place really is something else. When you arrive, they give you a big brochure all about their campground and the other campgrounds in their group, then they drive you round on golf carts to show you sites that might be “suitable”. Everywhere else we've been shoved a photo copied map into your hand and tells you to “come back with the site number when you've chosen the site you want”. The reception staff like their rules however and it does feel a bit like the army when you arrive, but once you're free of the reception staff, it is a very lovely campground and we do have staff around every day to rake up any pine needles that might have had the audacity to fall from the trees.

Today we visited three places – Palau, San Pantaleo and Porto Cervo. Palau is a small town on the coast that is the leaving point for all the boats that do the island trips around the North Eastern corner of Sardinia. The boat trips leave at 10:30 in the morning, are back at around 6pm and take you to a number of islands where they drop you off for a couple of hours swimming at each place. Having determined that this was the full extent of the entertainment offered by all the boats running the route, we decided we didn't need to do it. For what seems like a fairly sparsely inhabited island, there seems to be an extortionate number of boat services available. 20 minutes ferry sailing from Palau is an island with a largish town in it called Maddalena. There are 3 large car ferry companies servicing this very short route, with 4 – 5 boats that each go a dozen times each way per day (including all through the night on the hour). Between Maddalena and Palua, it feels like the Wellington to Eastbourne ferry, but with bigger boats more often – goodness knows what they are all doing.

After Palau, we visited San Pantaleo, a small historic inland town, that was having a market day when we arrived. It is set below some very dramatic rocky mountains and is a very picturesque setting with all the market umbrellas and the rocky mountains high above them. We stopped for lunch in San Pantaleo, before continuing on to Porto Cervo, which is on the east coast of the island. This is the Port on the Costa Smeralda where all the rich and famous come for their holidays (and where Paris Hilton went nightclubbing with Flavio Briatore about a week ago – sounds like a grandfather and daughter evening).