From Ello to La Spezia

Sunday 8 July 2012  - Saying goodbye and back on the road.

Day 86 and 73 to go

With a good rest we were ready to start our day. Paul as always was anxious to get the show on the road. We had a shower and he began preparing the van for our trip. We joined Ezio, Luigia, Angelo and Sylvanna for breakfast. They had come up with brioches to share so we could all sit and chat. It was lovely to have some more time with them again, though it was too short.

I used Ezio’s computer to check the campgrounds in La Spezia and Florence along with the route we should take. Mara. Luca and their 18month old Carlo, also came to say hello and goodbye. It was great to see everyone, but sad that we didn’t have more time.

At 9.50am we did our final round of goodbyes before jumping in the van and driving on down the road. I set the GPS for Genova so that we would take the coast road through to La Spezia.

We made it quite easily onto the autostrada. We stopped at a dump point so we could empty to loo that was really beginning to stink out the van. It was much more pleasant driving with it empty. 50km out of Genova we stopped for fuel and then continued our journey. 

Once we had made it to the Genova region we followed the coast known as the Italian Riviera. Unfortunately we were only afforded glimpses of the glittering coastline, where I could see sail boats and marinas. It looked divine, but we did not deviate off the highway and at 1.30pm we were pulling into our campsite at Happy River in La Spezia.

This campsite was not on the coast but situated on a river in the woods. The office wasn’t open until 3pm so we pulled in anyway and found ourselves a park. I made lunch. We were both hungry and glad for the rest.

Once done, we did a wander of the campsite locating the amenities and then the two pools that were crowded with holidaymakers. The view across the river to the mountains was beautiful.

We returned to our van and read until 3pm when we returned to reception and booked in. We then returned to the van and changed into our bathers and headed to the pool.  We were able to find chairs to lay our towels and then we bought beautiful bathing hats to wear before jumping in and enjoying the refreshing cool down. We really did look like idiots, but then so did everybody else.

Once cooled down we retreated to our lounge chairs and continued reading while enjoying the warm. I felt like I was really on holiday and it was nice to have our own time to chill out.

By 4 we returned to the van and I went to the wifi hotspot to catch up on emails, Facebook, bills and the blog. Time didn’t take long to disappear as I sorted through everything. With square eyes I returned to the van where Paul was making Spag bog for dinner. We ate and then I did the washing up before we enjoyed some small pastries that Angelo and Sylvanna had bought us for our trip. Yum!

We played star rummy with me being completely trounced by Paul. We then went for a wander as the sun disappeared and night took hold. We wandered down one of the roads before returning to the van. I read a little more before retiring for the night.

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