This morning the window shutters at Roberto’s worked so well that I slept until 7am. The room was the antithesis of Giuseppena’s. Hard concrete floor, spare modern decor, and an ensuite! It was on the 5th floor of a very nice stone building with a cavernous ground floor, marble stairs, and one of those tiny lifts where you open an external door then 2 internal doors to get into the lift, close them all again to get moving, do it all again at the destination. Almost easier to just run up the 5 flights. Roberto had given me a coupon to buy breakfast at the cafe on the piazza nearby. Maybe he owned a stake in it. I turned up armed with this coupon and with some arm waving and pointing, got the standard breakfast: one fried egg with bacon, and one piece of toast, orange juice in a cardboard pack, coffee. The supplied plastic cutlery was so flimsy that the fork broke when I tried to penetrate the rock hard toast. I realised that the people around me were all eating similar fare, with plastic cutlery. Maybe they were all BnB guests, its hard to see why they would be there voluntarily. A picture on the wall of a bowl of fruit, including grapes and strawberries caught my eye and I asked about it. It’s not included, it would be €4. I should have known better, but I was still hungry so I ordered it. When it arrived, the terms were strictly cash on delivery: I was required to pay the €4 immediately. The grapes and strawberries were missing.
Time to hit the road (Anne does not like that expression used in connection with motorcycling). First, up to the rail station to use the toilets there. It was there that I discovered the parking ticket on the bike from when it was parked outside Giuseppena’s for 36 hours. Only €28, but a hassle to pay through the bike rental company. I cruised back down the street to see what the parking restrictions were. None that I could see. The bike had been on the footpath, out of anyone’s way. I’ll have to translate the ticket later, to see what my crime was.
Zumo got me out of La Spezia without too much drama. He’s so slow sometimes. I have had to stop at the apex of a freeway exit several times to let him stabilize and light up which way he wants me to go. I don’t know if he’s short of processing horsepower, or access to the satellites.
On the autostrada, headed south, for Rome. An exit to Carrara, and I could see the marble quarries in the hills to my left. The driver behaviour on the freeways is OK once you get used to cars straddling two lanes, hedging their bets, and changing lanes without indicating. The occasional driver doing 200 in the left lane does not want to slow for anything. It makes things interesting. I realised why cars here, and in France, when they overtake, often drop in about one vehicle length in front of you. If they allow a reasonable distance, some faster car coming up behind may duck in behind and try to overtake in the right lane. I learned to indicate early and make them wait a couple of seconds while I allowed a courteous distance before diverging. Despite their peccadilloes, Italian drivers respect pedestrians. The average French driver would run you down rather than stop at a pedestrian crossing.
At one stage the traffic became congested and stopped. Not knowing how long this would take, and having an alternative, I took to the emergency lane. Workmen had blocked one lane a couple of km ahead. I cruised past dozens of cars, including a black Lamborghini that had recently passed me at the speed of sound. I never saw him again. It’s good being on a bike.
After a couple of hours it was time to get some petrol, I pulled into a servizio, filled up and settled down at a plastic table with a salami roll to decide how far to go, and book a room somewhere. Google maps showed me somewhere near Fonteblanda, on the west coast! I could see the sea. I was supposed to be on the main autostrada running down to Rome. How did Zumo choose this route? It was neither the quickest nor the shortest route. The signs do point to Rome though. I had wondered why the autostrada stopped and turned into an ordinary freeway, then just a road. Zumo may well have saved me enough autostrada tolls to pay my parking fine. I settled on Caserta, 20km from Naples, about 460km away. The rest of the run was actually much better than the autostrada, mostly at 100km/h until we rejoined the freeway skirting Rome, then the autostrada proper to Naples.
One feature of southern Italy is the number of abandoned half-constructed houses. Generally 2 storeys, with concrete columns and slab floors, often with partially infilled walls made from terra cotta “bricks”. They appeared in increasing numbers at the approaches of towns as I moved further south.
My room has an ensuite. The man allowed me to bring the bike in off the street behind locked gates. Dinner was in a Mexican restaurant, El Paradero, 10 minutes walk away that I found on Google maps. It turned out to be as much Spanish as Mexican. The sangria was excellent. All this, including ½ a litre of Sangria for $15.
I booked 2 nights in Palermo, about 730km from here. Now I have to get there.
I’ll get some photos in tomorrow night, it’s 02:30.