Thursday 13th May

I staggered up at 6.45 and the manager said the car wouldn’t be a problem for an hour or so. Wish he’d said it the night before! The room was a fair size, but no bathroom, only basin and bidet with uncompromising notice above it not to use it as a loo! See pic for previous day. As my friend Mary would say, “pit of despair”. Shared bathroom (for whole floor) down the hall, not too bad I suppose. Another continental breakfast although not nearly as nice as in France. Rosie hated peeing on the pavement. Off at 9.50.
Got another taxi to lead us to the motorway. Thank goodness we did – we’d still be driving around Milan! The taxi driver was great “Follow Bologna” with a couple of do’s and don’ts such as take the second ramp, not the first “non primo” etc. So we did…. Brilliant.

Stopping off places not nearly as nice in Italy as in France. We obviously had to stop for Rosie but we’d really been spoilt through France with the glorioius grass, decent food and lovely picnic areas. Italy was awful, plain motorways with no pleasant restaurants or food places.

As we drove along we were rather aware of not having booked anywhere to stay the night. It was so rushed as we left England that Richard was only able to book the first two nights. I think we thought we’d come across an internet café or a hotel-that-takes-dogs fairy. We spoke to Alan who was driving our furniture in the truck who was ahead of us. He said he was booked in but his hotel was full. He gave us a name “The Jolly” in Ancona to try. We found this hotel somehow – I have no idea what happened, we had stopped at a junction leading to the main road wondering which way to turn (literally!) and two women were passing and one said (in English) “the hotel is up there!” pointing off to the right. How on earth they knew, but they were right! I went in to see if we could book in. It looked a little grand but we simply didn’t care at this point! There was a fishing exhibition on in Ancona so no rooms! The somewhat patronising manager kindly phoned a mate and got us booked in (we had no idea how much we were going to be charged, nor did I care!) down the road in Porto Novo. I checked, and yes they allowed dogs. So off we went again and found La Fonte.

Booked in and were taken to a lovely room with great balcony. Massive bed. The hotel is in a lovely setting, surrounded by trees and there’s a pool and so on.

We decided we weren't going to worry about price - sod it! The bathroom was amazing - there were two of everything, one for disabled, the other not. The shower was odd though. The curtain was on an affair like a rake, with the spikes movable. They were all tangled and the floor was awash the next morning! Ate in the hotel. We'd had a couple of brandy and cokes in the room, bottle of wine with dinner and the waiter twisted our arms to have a grappa. Ugh! Had splitting head the next morning! Surprisingly there was no a la carte menu, nor room service. We began to realise that it was a conference centre mostly so possibly not quite as expensive as we'd thought. Rosie played football on the grass and a couple with their little boy joined in. The father told me they had been told that the doctors had said "playing with a dog will be good for the child". Hmm, I had to wonder when I saw him refusing to get into the car later and being coaxed...