Day 5 - Sublime to the Ridiculous

Today I woke up & went through my morning routine of reading the news then the gov.uk website to check on the travel restrictions for the countries we were planning to visit.

When I woke up we were intending to get to Brindisi on the heel of Italy to catch a ferry across to Greece, however the Greeks were putting in place more & more restrictions to enter the country. Greece had effectively closed all land borders apart from one in Bulgaria & if we travelled by ferry, we would have had to have worn a mask for the entire 9 hour journey & completed an online declaration form 24 hours in advance. They could have also either refused us entry or insisted we went into 14 day quarantine if they didn’t like where we had come from. This was a particular concern considering France has had a major spike in cases.

I broke the news to Jackie & we made the difficult decision that it just was not worth the effort. If we got in, we may get stuck there, because the Covid cases in Greece were increasing. A joint decision was made that we would now travel drive around the top of the Adriatic Sea to Croatia. Not the end of the world!

At 9am we attended the breakfast room, where Sylvia had put out quite a spread. We ate our way through as much as we could. Again another superb breakfast & Jackie has declared that she preferred this B&B to that of the previous night. Quite an accolade!

After bandage changing, we said goodbye to Sylvia & hit the road. Our first stop was to the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari at Imola to visit the Ayrton Senna Memorial. We drove through a tunnel under the track, past the grandstand & parked up at the entrance to a park. We walked past a tennis club, an athletics stadium & a park before arriving at the exact spot where poor Ayrton hit the wall whilst leading the San Marino Grand Prix on the 1st May 1994. He died instantly, but was formerly pronounced dead at Bologna Hospital. There was a life sized statue of Ayrton dat on a plinth & the fence to the race track was adorned with flags and other tributes. It was quite a moving experience being so close to the scene of his death.

One sad fact is that another F1 driver, Ronald Ratzenburger, was killed the previous day in practice & there appears to be no mention of him at the track.

We continued onwards to San Marino which was over 30 miles away & clearly does not host the San Marino Grand Prix. En-route, we had to make an emergency pit stop at a McDonald’s for a milkshake because I was now suffering a ‘dickie’ stomach.

We were running low on fuel, but after googling fuel prices, we decided we could just make it to San Marino where the cost was cheaper. What I didn’t take in to account was that we would have to climb steeply for several miles to reach the San Marino border. As we chugged up to San Marino our fuel gauge plummeted dramatically until we were driving on fumes. The 1st petrol station in San Marino was closed & I lost my bottle & coasted back down into Italy to fill up.

With a full tank, we continued up to one of the many car parks below the medieval walled old town atop Monte Titano. We paid our €3 for two hours parking, then climbed up through the narrow cobblestone streets to Guaita Fortress, the oldest of three towers on Monte Titano. We didn’t pay to go in, but instead visited the Basilica of San Marino - Pieve, where Jackie lit a candle for her mum. We also looked at Palazzo Pubblico, the government building where there is an hourly changing of the guard & numerous other churches, statues & squares. We finished off our visit with a well earned beer. All in all it was a very pleasant visit to a country we hadn’t visited before.

For the record : San Marino (Officially the Republic of San Marino) is Europe’s 3rd smallest state, but the world’s oldest republic. It is 61.2 sq km and lies 657 metres above sea level. It has a cable car & some odd museums including a Vampire Museum, a Torture Museum, Curiosities Museum & an Ancient Weapons Museum.

Around 4.00pm, we set off & drove the 10 miles or so to Rimini. The roads were quiet because everyone was on the beach. We drove along the beach front road and saw that the beach consisted of thousands and thousands of sun beds & umbrellas divided by into sections or clubs. Our idea of hell. It was here that Jackie reminded me that The Alarm had sung a song about Rimini!

We couldn’t leave Rimini quick enough & headed north up the coast road to our intended destination somewhere in or around Ravenna about an hour away. We soon discovered that this stretch of coast was where it seemed millions of Italians had flocked to on this Saturday afternoon. Cars were abandoned everywhere where along the side of the road & I had to remain alert to avoid people of ALL ages returning to their cars in skimpy bikinis & Speedos. It was a nightmare & at one point, a car we was following was rammed by a car coming out of a side road. We drove around the debris without stopping!

Throughout this chaos, Jackie was trawling through Booking.com & other similar sights for some accommodation for the night. It wasn’t going well & she announced that she was prepared to sleep in the tent & have a takeaway pizza. This turned out not to even be an option, because all campsites were massive and full.

By now we were getting slightly desperate so we decided to continue on to a town called Mesola another hour up the coast & revaluate our options. Around 7.30pm we pulled into Mesola, a town dominated by it’s Este Castle, a huge hunting lodge built in 1583. The castle is surrounded by a large fortified wall with towers & a cobbled courtyard now containing a couple of attractive looking restaurants. We chose Ristorante Pizzeria Al Castello, which had just one male diner in, but waitresses laying up multiple tables.

We sat down & ordered a pizza each & a beer from the Italian language menu, then scrolled through available accommodation near to us. We chose a B&B just 10 miles away in Berra, that was cheap & had good reviews. Perfect!

The large pizzas arrived. Jackie had a cheese & mushroom based one, whilst I had ham & potato. They were nice, but not exceptional. By 8.00pm, the restaurant was full with Italians all dressed up in their finest. It was clearly the place to be in these parts!

During our meal, the owner of the B&B sent us a message enquiring when we were arriving. We replied, but this just prompted further messages & instructions that didn’t really make sense.

After our dinner, we paid up & headed towards our B&B in Berra. We were requested to meet the owner in the street. Unconventional! Luckily for us we stood out a mile with our top box & cycles & we were flagged down by the owner. The B&B was not what we expected, our room & 4 others were above a restaurant and we didn’t have an en-suite bathroom.

The husband & wife owners spoke no English & we communicated through google translate. The wife told us that the bathroom was being used by someone at the moment & she would then clean it for us. This was not what we had signed up for.

After a shower & a bottle of wine, things didn’t seem quite so bad, but we had made the decision to head straight to Croatia tomorrow, despite it being Jackie’s birthday. The evening ended with me writing my blog & Jackie researching Croatia.

Song of the Day : Bells of Rhymney by The Alarm.Read more