Albarella another quiet day

What a lovely day. We stayed on the boat and had a lovely day. Only a 2 hour sail to the lovely private island of Albarella where Christopher and I had a lovely day. We did a small amount of cycling and sun bathing, drinking and napping.

Quiet day in Ferrara

The most excitement I had today was attempting to purchase stamps for the postcards I wrote days ago.

You can't see it, but my number to get a stamp was 50. The 'now serving' number was 23. Let me just say, the post cards are written, but I'm not going to be able to mail them any time soon.

 As you can see, the weather continues awful.

 World's cheapest wine - 3.14 for two bottles.

Ferrara is a bicycle town. Everyone has lovely old school city bikes and manages to ride them in heels, with bags, children and suits.

On the Boat in Mantova

Our access to the internet will be sporadic over the next week. We'll post when we can.  I also had the most hilarous autoflushing incident ever. I really had to pee. For 20 cents I was granted entry into this Tardis like public wash room. Remember i really had to pee. The door wasn't closing, and the entire parking lot would have been watching me use the potty wihtout the door closed. So, in some extremis, I hit what appeared to be the door closing mechanism, dropped my drawers and assumed the position. Mere moments later Christopher reported he heard a squee! That was when the autoflush began. It began at the sink... then the toilet, where I was still perched emptying my bladder. I hope you can imagine the surprise I experienced to have my ass washed. To be clear, this is an entirely self cleaning unit, the whole thing gets a rinse, top to bottom. When the door opened - without any intervention from me or Chris - I was cowering in the corner holding my undies screaming and laughing. Chris wished he had video of this event. To give him credit he was very nice about it and helped me quickly exit while covering me from the eyes in the parking lot (and near by buildings). Fair warning - avoid the Tardis Toilet! Unless you want autoflushing operations done to your nether regions.

Mantova is a surprisingly lovely little city. We enjoyed a wonderful bike ride today.

Mantova Food

We took a recommendation to try a local high end restaurant's local menu. Well, it was not a success. The food was good, but not to our taste. They had won awards for their pumpkin filled pasta (tortellini). To us, it tasted like pumpkin pie filling in pasta. Weird. The main was pot roast. Sigh. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Chris was very disappointed. The locally made sparkling red wine (Lambrusco) was very tasty.

Fast Train, Slow Train

Today was a journey day, starting in Rome and ending in Mantova.First we took the super fast Frecciargento to Padova. From Padova we took the slow regional train to Mantova. We enjoyed the regional train more.

Trevi Fountain

Our first night in Rome and after a satisfying meals we headed towards Trevi fountain. Along the way we succumbed to gelato.

Lufthansa 1st class

I must say, our Lufthansa first class seats were the best ever. Huge amounts of room, 2 air stewards for 8 people. Meals, beverages, etc. Here's a few photos for just an idea.