Sunday 3 March 2019

Cinque Terre hit by storms, Cortina, Scotland and back to Cinque Terre....

wow it's been a while......dear reader, I apologise most heart-felt-edly. Well you know what I mean.

A few days before we were scheduled to leave for Cinque Terre, a terrific storm hit a line of Northern Italy from West to East, bringing havoc and destruction to especially Portofino and Rapallo. We lost power here for most of the night and to Art by Three's chagrin, Wifi/Internet obliterated. (Their words not mine). In order for them to be able to watch a film, they fell upon my laptop, which still can only keep about 2 hours of battery life.... DVD usage drains it considerably so I almost had to resort to military action to regain control of my unsaved data files...

Anyway, there was no point going to Cinque Terre when most of the harbours' contents had been unceremoniously dumped 200 metres into the villages...also roads had been pummelled with fallen trees. So we cancelled the trip. We stuck 5 fingers into the map to see where we could go instead. Due to some awkward geographical miscalculations, we sadly had to rule out Libya and a small, uninhabited island in the Baltic Sea....

So North-eastern Italy clinched it and we headed for the picturesque town of  Cortina d'Ampezzo. Just  4 days but what a beautiful place. We hit the mountains and stumbled upon Ristorante Ghedina, my assistant will place a photo here....






A potential disaster on the last evening there upon remembering our supplies had run out in our apartment, an epic trek across the main road to the local 'bar' saved the day. Although a 'bar', my wife advised that they should have stamps that we could send a postcard. So, my motives somewhat disguised, I managed to order a glass of wine, a small brandy and coke (medicinal for the cold air, of course), a stamp and a large bag of crisps for 6 euros. Happy days.

Our drive back to base camp resulted in a diversion up a cable car to Cinque Torri. The most incredible views with the bluest, blue, blue skies.

Our thoughts subsequently returned to our trip back to London for a few weeks mid December...we had booked a property near Inverness, Scotland for a week early January... I'll update you, dear reader, tomorrow.