Advertisement
Published: September 28th 2011
Dressing in Italian Style
Tour Leader Brendan (centre) and driver Mario model the special shiirts designed by Kay. See last Blog for detailsWELCOME TO ITALY
We had an easy start to the day; we needed to be ready to disembark the Ferry by 11.30am so were able to have a bit of a sleep in and a latish breakfast. Our breakfasts on this Ferry were sit down table service-the first time we had anything other than a buffet breakfast on tour. It was standard fair – bacon, eggs etc except it wasn’t the hottest. Not to worry everyone was very excited about finally reaching Italian soil.
In the end we arrived an hour late so departed the ship at 12.30. It was all very exciting, Italia, the winner of 4 FIFA Football World Cups, the home country of Inter and AC Milan, Roma, Juventus etc. Players such as Totti, Zola, Rossi, De Canio the list goes on. To be fair not everyone in the group would have been thinking the same way as me. The history, the wine, the food, the scenery seemed to be the major topics of conversation. But for me being in the home of the Azzurri was something very special, of course I’m interested in all the other stuff as well.
TOUGH TRIP
It was a
Italy here we come
View from the top deck of our Ferry very long bus trip from Ancona down to Sorrento, our expected time of arrival was around 7pm. The trip became a bit eventful when the bus blew its turbo, leaving the guys down the back with a noisy trip and a very hot floor! We also came close to running out of petrol. The company that own the coach would only let their drivers fill up using the proper company fuel card and we were in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t find a service station that accepted the card. In the end with a few drops left in the tank we did and were able to fill up and continue on our merry way.
There was a lot of traffic around Napoli and down to Sorrento which slowed us down a bit, however in the end despite everything we arrived at our Hotel close to our 7pm estimated time of arrival.
HOTEL
The Hotel – The Grand Hotel Vesuvius. It wasn’t our originally scheduled Hotel and it’s the worst by some distance of the places we have stayed. Last time we had a late hotel change there was a major problem with the rooms. It seems changes
Happy Birthday Norma
Celebrating Norma's 70th birthday att he hotel in Sorrento away from original hotels are a recipe for problems. Our rooms are about 2/3 star; there is no proper shower in our room, just a hand held one. One couples shower was so clogged with mouldit couldn’t be used and another had their ceiling collapse on them in the middle of the night! Not a great look for the Hotel or Insight, having said that up until now the standard of our accommodation has been exceptional.
The problem with the hotels is created because even though they are booked European law allows the hotels to offload bookings if they can sell their rooms at a better rate to someone else. In theory the rooms should be of ‘at least as good a standard’ as the original hotel – but I think this time at least that is unlikely.
At dinner it was one of our fellow travellers Norma (wife of Pete - Hercules) 70th birthday, a lovely cake was arranged to celebrate the occasion.
Tomorrow we get out and explore the area around Sorrento so I’m sure that will get people smiling again!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.149s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.103s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
