Tuesday 27th September 2022
We have finished our competition (I will get to the last 2 days posts soon) and are having a rest day at Riccione in our cabin to start organising the rest of our travels. Unfortunately today was a pain, David finally found out how tough, expensive and annoying trying to book a car for this holiday has been. I have tried so many times, and spent many, many hours to no avail. He tried from about 6am until 4pm when he ditched the whole task altogether with the cranks. He had found a cheap alternative with Avis with limited kms only 4500km close by, or Europcar with unlimited kms but about $300 more from Florence and not available until 29th. Decisions, decisions. We are not very good at them. Also it doesn’t pay to know the rules, as it causes more grief. Once we finally made the decision, he went to book, the prices had gone up 50% from $2000AUD to $3000 for both options. A very cranky David turned off his computer and we went for a walk for a gelato. Yummy! So we had spent all day and nothing had been gained or booked.

We had made some inroads on what to do. The plans currently are hire a car in Italy for 4 weeks, pickup somewhere from Rimini or a bit further north and head to the Dolomites, then try to meet the surf gang at Bellagio in a weeks time, then head to the south of Italy, maybe via Milan as we missed that, then head as far south as Sicily. At 4 weeks we will drop the car back at Bari in Italy and catch the ferry to Dubrovnik Croatia, hire a car for 2 weeks and drive north to Zagreb. We will then catch a flixbus to Dresden and a train to Benny in Chemnitz about 9th November. That is our current lose plan which could change at any stage.

We enjoyed a lovely walk, gelato and the restored calm. When we got back to our cabin, we resumed looking for options, we could get a cheap car in Florence but not until 30th now, which would have been ok, we could have gone there for my birthday and picked the car up on 30th. I wasn’t too keen as we had been to Florence last time. In hinsdsight it may have been a good idea. I then managed to find a car from Bologna tomorrow for $2000AUD with 4500 limited kms through Avis. I could also book a reasonable train to Bologna. So thats what we decided to do. At this stage not sure where we will stay. We had our first home cooked meal since our omelette in Milan. Stir fry veges and chicken, YUMMY! It is amazing how quickly you miss home cooked food.

Anyway, I did a quick pack up and clean up after dinner, semi organised for an early departure in the morning.