una vacanza italiana

This week, Andy, Selma and I visited Ettore and Elisa in Italy for a few days.

My journey started on Monday morning at 2am after 2 hours of sleep. I had to go to Stansted using three different busses including some time in Kentish Town. I really hate to hang around anywhere with luggage in the middle of the night. I met Beppe in the bus to Liverpool Street and we arrived way too early, so that we had to wait for about an hour for the Stansted bus.

We arrived at about 5am at Stansted. Never saw the airport so crowded at this time. With the new security measures, the hand luggage was reduced to a transparent bag with wallet and passport in it. Looked really stupid. No liquids were allowed and you had to take your shoes off at the security check. Must be great to work at the security check these days with people taking off their smelly shoes.

With three hours delay (because our plane spent the night at Luton) we left Stansted. Although we had the theory that airlines distribute small children all over the plane to annoy everybody equally, our flight was pretty quite. After two hours we arrived in Bologna Forli. A really tiny airport compared to Stansted, 4 planes a day, but I like that.

Luckily, with Beppe we had an Italian speaker and he managed to get us to the train station and into the train to Ancona. The train was really packed, because one of the most important Italian holiday called Ferragosto was one the 15th. We had a chat with an Italian/Canadian woman who told us things about the cities we were passing. The train track is built along the coast, very nice.
At some stop, people came in and left again after one minute. Then our "guide" discovered that they took her wallet. So she had to leave the train to talk to the police. Not a nice expierence :-(

Elisa and Ettore picked us up from Ancona and one hour later we arrived in Tolentino where we met Ettore's parents and grandparents. In the afternoon we had a nice walk through the city. Parts of it reminded me of an old Counterstrike map called "cs_italy". I know, I know, that's geeky, but look for yourself :D
In the evening we had our first tasty Italian dinner followed by home made cake to celebrate Andy's birthday. Actually, there was always cake, but at this time I didn't know that :D

The next day, we got up early to get to the beach in time. Since it was Ferragosto we expected it to be crowded. The place was called Portonovo, really nice beach, but have a look at the pictures. Of course, coming straight from the office, I got a really nice sunburn ;-)

To cool down, we spent the evening in the mountains with food, wine and live music. Yes, great place Tolentino, beach and mountains very close. Very convenient.

Wednesday, we visited Ettore's other grandparents in the mountains in a place called Croce (hope that's right, Ettore) They showed us a parts of the village and also how they make their own wine. Of course we were invited for cookies and wine :-)
We spent the rest of the day driving around in the mountains and relaxing at a lake.

In the evening we had yet another dinner and and amazing chocolate cake. Don't know what the technique is called to compress chocolate so efficiently, but I was suprised that there weren't any satellite cookies in its orbit...

Thursday was already the last day and we planned to take the train around 4pm. So we had some time to do a bit of shopping to bring some Italian food and wine back to England. After some time in a supermarket we visited a winery. Although with our 4 bottles of wine we probably haven't been the biggest customers, they invited us to have a look around. So we got a free tour and saw how the first grapes were picked and processed and also the huge barrels in the basement.
Afterwards it was already time to say goodbye. We took the train back to Forli and from their with one hour delay the plane to London Stansted. Of course, upon arrival in London it was raining :-(

I really enjoyed my time in Italy. Great fun and tasty Italian food (A LOT ;-) Having a grandma that used to run a bakery is really dangerous. Especially, when she's producing the same amount of cakes after retirement. But now that I am back, I miss cakes after lunch and dinner...

Thanks Ettore, Elisa and Ettore's (grand)-parents for these lovely days. I felt very welcome. The only thing that has to get better next time is my Italian :-)