All roads lead to Rome

Good hearty English breakfast plus continental!  As I drank my juice, I watched the cook in the kitchen crack about two dozen eggs with such skill!  Scrambled eggs on toast, sausages, bacon…. fruit juice, toast and honey, pineapple and melon chunks and cappuccino.  I also took an apple for the road.  Well I did need to get my 6.50’s worth!

Back on the road with George the driver and Matt the guide.  I think he’s Aussie…. about 10 hours in the bus today.  Just had a loo/coffee break somewhere near Bologna.  And who should I find queuing for coffee with me but Amanda and Michael from that stormy Saturday night.  It was good to see them back on Busabout again.   They had found their way to Lido but was a far more tortuous journey than mine, and quite a long way on foot.  Hope to catch up with them later.  This posting will be mainly in note form with a few places names that I can research later so that I can see the route our journey took.

Fields full of sunflowers on either side of the road and many are in full bloom already, big yellow faces all looking in one direction… yeah, at the sun.  Also many fruit tree crops and acres of maize.  Now headed to Ancona for lunch break where I will catch up with Dom again.  She decided on a couple of nights in Ancona to break the journey to Rome.

Been asleep – grey skies as we make our way towards Ancona.  I see the Adriatic Sea to my left.  Lunch stop which I shard with Amanda and Michael, who are getting off at Ancona to take the overnight ferry to Croatia.  Ate far too much but the Mozzerella salad looked so good and I haven’t eaten much green stuff for a while.  Also ate a nice fresh fruit salad so all good….. back on the road to Ancona. Ancona is said to be in one of the poorer areas of Italy and Matt, our guide, certainly didn’t give much to commend it, so probably the right decision to leave it out of my itinerary in favour of an extra couple of days in Venice.  Passed roadsign to Pesaro…. just noticed road sign to Fabriano.  Is this wher the great hot-pressed watercolour paper comes from I wonder. Well we stopped for about half an hour in Ancona…. waved goodbye to storm couple, looked out for Dom getting on but she must be sitting at the back somewhere (unless she’s changed her mind and gone across to Croatia).

Still following the coast after an hour.  GPS says Danderto del Tronto.  The skies have cleared and is now a beautiful sunny afternoon.  Now Ascoli Pisino…. 20 minutes later leaving the freeway through toll and the coast towards Teramo.  Going through a bit of rain now  Frequent signage now to L’Aquila Roma.  Onto another freeway, the skies are very black ahead.  Now much more hilly with many tunnels.  Ooh a huge snow capped mountain has appeared out of the cloud.  That was a very long tunnel – did we go through the mountain?

Last service break – driver needs half an hour out of every two hours driving.  All these breaks however mean too much spending…. I confined myself this time to a bag of m&ms (getting a thing for them) and a bottle of water,

Nasty accident on the freeway.  Bits of metal on fire and guys trying to pull mangled wreckage from the central reservation railings.

5.15 now and it’s raining really heavily.  It felt quite cold at the last service station.  Ok another serious storm – forked lightning in the black clouds on the mountains.  I wonder what it’s like in Rome…. way to go yet…  Hilarious movie on the bus starring Jennifer Enniston…. about a pretend family set up smuggling drugs across border from south America.

Arrived at Plus Roma Hostel in good time at 6.15 and met Dot half way up steps to cabin.  Aah finally arrived…. she was just on her way to meet me from the bus and has a bottle of Italian red and nibbles all ready on the decking outside and we relax and catch up.