Blogs from Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Europe - page 3

The virus has been around for seven months now. The UK has recently relaxed its lockdown rules. The European infection rate declined during the lock down. However, since the reopening of most businesses, the infection rate has started to creep up from three to four hundred new cases per day to just over one thousand. At a time when certain European countries seem to be having a ‘second wave’ and they have now appeared on the UK’s ‘naughty’ list, Italy has remained consistently low with two to three hundred new infections per day and as for their deaths; the daily count can be counted on one hand even if you’d lost you thumb in a freak lumberjacking accident!! Spain, France and Belgium are countries that require self-isolation for fourteen days on return to the UK. Our ... read more

Are we RICH? In order to take a trip like this? We don’t consider ourselves rich, but we are grateful that we can afford to pay our credit card bill each month. For timely payments, Capitol One grants us options: points or cash back. We choose points. We saved until we had enough points to pay for both airline fares AND a rental car for three months. Through trustedhousesitters.com, we found a person to care for our dogs in exchange for a place to stay for three months. Through SERVAS, we meet people in their own environments. And when all else fails, we use booking.com to find a really cheap place to stay...we aim for under $50/night, and that often, but not always, includes breakfast. We carry a box of cereal, cheese, etc., and of course, ... read more

Today was our final full day in Italy before our two days of travel to return to the UK. After a good breakfast, which also included cake, we headed off back to the city to follow the map we had been sent from our Tailor Made Rail. We were to start from the Neptune statue - our first port of call was the Salaborsa, once the economic centre, now a place of culture. In this building, you could see some of the old city below through a glass floor. We did do this a little later than planned, as opening times in the summer are a little later 14:30 not 10:30 when we got there. It is worth a look, however some of the glass could do with a clean to have a better look. Heading ... read more

On the way from Barolo to Verona, we stopped at Parma, aka the home of Parmesan cheese. We went on a tour of a cheese dairy. Inside the place where they stored and aged the cheese, it smelled a lot like aged cheese. After the tour, the laid out a a bunch of their cheeses as well as homemade preserves and homegrown fruits, of which included the best apricots I have ever eaten. After the dairy, we went a nearby farm that had a bunch of cows and we fed them. I like cows, they go moooo. Then we left to continue our way to Verona.... read more

I am excited today, as we have booked a factory tour of the Ducati plant and Museum. Sorry there will be no photos of this, as we had to lock the camera in a locker and the phones were provided with "No Camera" stickers to cover both lenses so we could not take photos of the factory. You will have to take my word when I say that this tour is well worth the effort to see. I have been quite taken by the Scrambler range of bikes they have. These are a cross over bike with semi road tyres that would be great in a forest dirt track. The Museum on the other hand was a bit average compared with Porsche or Michelin, but a great chronology of Ducati's history. After the Museum we planned ... read more