Goodbye Sardinia, hello Italy and (maybe) Slovenia

When we picked up the keys for the villa at the start of our stay, the lady said that there was no one in straight after us, so we could leave at 4 or 5ish. This message did not get through to the cleaning team, who huffed and puffed and got their supervisor on the phone to speak to our German neighbour (who had been told the same), and then us, to say they needed us out. We were about 80% packed anyway so managed to get out fairly promptly, which gave us the problem of how to kill the time until 8pm when we had to be at the ferry port. We chose a doggie beach and spent a lovely, albeit baking, few hours by the sea before getting to the ferry. We stopped at a little rural restaurant for a pizza on the way, where we were greeted in the car park by a friendly waiter called Ivor who was half Ukrainian and half Italian. Weird, but all good in the end. The restaurant dog, a male Jack Terrier, got very fond of Winnie. He had to stand on tip-toe just to get a sniff of Winnie’s rear end, and she was more interested in chasing a ball so little Jack had to run as fast as his little legs could carry him just to keep up.

At port security we experienced a bit of user error - I forgot to add the van details to the internet booking - so we had to go out the queue to their ticket office, add the van, pay €22, get a printed ticket and then go round a second time to get through security. Once through, there was the usual long wait in a queue, in the “middle sized van” queue, watching all the smug small cars go ahead of us, but we were soon on the boat and parked, thanks to the very shouty hi-vis guy. There was also a lorry load of cows in the car deck, who presumably had to spend the ten hours stood where they were packed, mooing fairly loudly, which did upset Jane a bit.

We got to our cabin then went up to the top deck, the doggie deck, for a bit of a walk before going to bed. 

The cabin was perfectly fine, the mattress less so. We both had stiff necks and backs next day. We were off the ferry by 7.30am and on our way to our site. 

We are at a site that has its own waterfall, but don’t get too excited. It is in the Futa Pass, which was the scene of some fierce battles during the war. A 5 minute walk took us to a German Military Cemetery and War Memorial, with the grave stones of thirty thousand men (and boys). Quite sobering. It is now used to teach children about war, and much more importantly peace. I know we were on the other side and all that, but wandering round seeing the gravestones so many young men (two to a stone) was quite evocative. Let’s try not to do that again eh?