No flying today, instead we have an excellent programme laid on by Riccardo. The weather was beautiful – sunny and warm (hot even). After a leisurely wake-up and breakfast, Riccardo started ferrying forumites out to a very eclectic museum called ‘Piana delle Orme’. This was a series of large hangar type sheds, each with a theme. One was a toy museum, one was the story of how the Pontine marshes were drained in the 1920’s (I found this fascinating I’m afraid), vintage tractors, then the story of WW2 with stacks of military vehicles of every shape and size.
We wandered around by ourselves here until 13:00, then Riccardo picked us up again and back to the hotel for a few beers and a HUGE lunch, again with many courses. If you think we spent vast amounts of time eating vast amounts of food – you would be right!
This kept us going until 15:30, then off in the coach to some lovely gardens at Ninfa. We had a guided tour of the gardens and had them completely to ourselves. They are set in a ruined town and are quite beautiful.
Following this, we were picked up again by the coach and taken to the old hilltop town of Simonetta. Basically we walked up to the main square and parked ourselves outside at a bar and had a few beers. Most of us then maode our way to the lookout point to watch sunset over the Pontine plain. Again it struck me how the whole area looked like a series of grass landing strips!
Back to the bar to pick up Dan and Ben who had meanwhile witnessed a fight between apparently rival youths of different family clans (shades of Romeo and Juliet).
We found a local pizza restaurant but with 13 or so of us, Riccardo wanted to make sure they could cope. The owner said he would just check to see if he had enough pizza bases first (shades of the Monty Pythons cheese shop sketch I thought!). In the event, they obviously didn’t have enough ovens either as we were served the pizzas three at a time. I am certainly not complaining, I just thought it quaint.
After this, we were ferried back to the hotel and I went straight to bed. I don’t know whether others stayed up at the bar, but not me with a long over-water leg tomorrow, not to mention a grass strip take-off.
