After a nice shower and quick breakfast I got on the bike and rode into Cavour.  I took a quick circuit of the ‘Rock of Cavour’ then made a small detour to see the painted cow.  She has a new paint job that’s quite different from last year’s.

I ended up at the Fontana Cafe, which is where is spent many hours last year, sometimes going there twice in a day.  They have wi-fi whereas the campground doesn’t, although it’s not very fast. The waiter recognized me and seemed very happy to see me again.  I had a cappuccino while waiting for Colin and Mo to arrive, then had another once they’d joined me. Church had gotten out while I was there and the place was hopping busy, at least for awhile.  I mentioned to Colin that the cafe seems to have two names – maybe it changed names but they kept the black cups and saucers that said ‘Caffe Vergnano 1882’. Colin thought that was pretty funny – that is the kind of coffee the cafe serves and they get all kinds of things from the coffee company to promote their brand.  Now that I’m thinking of it I believe they had the same cups at the cafe we stopped at in Saint Vincent – ha ha!

It was kind of sad for me to leave Cavour as it’s one of my favourite places from last year’s trip, but I hope to be back again at some point.

We headed southeast and entered the motorway not far from Fossano and reached the coast at Savona.  From there it was northeast to Genova where it veared southeast again. We passed Carrara, where all the beautiful marble comes from – you can see the mountains that have been hacked almost in half from the quarrying  – if you didn’t know different you might think it was snow, and there are stone-mason places everywhere.

We left that motorway and got onto another one just north of Pisa and headed east towards Firenza where we then headed south past Siena.  Somewhere along the way Colin told me to look at what was passing us on the left – there were 5 Ferraris in a row (all just beautiful, of course – red, red, yellow, red, silver).  A short while later there were two more – maybe stopped for gas or something so got separated.

At some point in the long day’s driving the toll-slip that we got when we entered the motorway had disappeared but when we exited it was at a place that actually had people at the booths rather than just machines.  Colin told the fellow where we’d gotten on and showed him our map – he did a quick calculation and let us on our way (after Colin paid, of course). I figured that if someone was going to lie about how far they’d come they would have said ‘oh – I only entered the motorway 20 km ago’ not the several hundred we honestly admitted to so he believed us.

Before actually going home to Papiano we went into Marsciano for food supplies, and arrived back at the house in the early evening.  The kitchen looks spectacular and the terrace outside is lovely and very inviting.

Had a nice dinner and early to bed – even tho I wasn’t driving it was still a long day.

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