Italy. Day Four

just1idea
Aug 6
3 min read

Updated: Aug 7

Arrivaderci Roma.

So goodbye to my second favourite city.

Behind London, oh and Liverpool, and maybe Naples too. Ok fourth favourite city.

The drive today, would follow the route north for home. But, taking a detour through Pisa. To allow my tourist of a wife to see the leaning tower.

So we plotted a route north from Rome. Leaving Frascati, which we intend to visit again. It's a beautiful little suburb of Rome and a perfect place to stay to visit Rome.

Onto the Via Enrico Fermi. For the short drive to pick up the GRA . Or Grande Raccordo Anulare. Or locally known as "Il Raccordo". (The Junction) Basically the ring road around Rome. Which we will use the eastern section of to get back on the A1 northbound via a small section of the E45.

It was a few hours back in the comfort of the 328 and it was handling the trip much better than I ever imagined. Not missing a beat so far. Pulling strongly when required and the six cylinders making that lovely noise. Actually this car is turning out to be more economical than the 318i I have. Maybe it's the power sapping automatic gearbox on the 318. But I am very surprised by the range on one tank of fuel.

Heading towards Florence on the A1 you only get a slight glimpse of the beauty of the Tuscan countryside.

I've never spent enough time here and never been back to Florence since getting married there in 2006.

Heading on the A1 which circles the west side of Florence. We then took the exit for the SS67 towards Pisa.

Pisa is really just a one trick town. Two if you count the airport. We found the centre quiet and parked easily near the Leaning Tower. Walking towards it. I've only ever seen it by the passing train. The area around the tower and Church called the Piazza del Duomo. Was amazingly clean. I notice this stuff.

There were a few tourists around. . We wanted to carry on driving up to La Spezia to stay. So a quick walk around the Duomo and leaning tower. Took the usual stupid photos and walked back to the car.

Quickly driving north on the S51 to arrive not too late into the darkness The S51 turned into the E80 towards

La Spezia. A place I had heard about and seen on photos which looked amazing. However we arrived in the dark and then had to find out place to stay..

Having booked many hotels and similar. This was a great experience.

All done by WhatsApp. This place, while not a hotel. Was well run. It was not staffed at all. He messaged us a key box number. Gave instructions when inside to find the door which had a code to enter. It was a very good idea and the room was clean, a notice board in the hallway full of yellow post-it notes (Supplied) Where people had added their names and country of origin. The board was full. We read a few. Added our names and London and Fortaleza as our cities, left our bags and went for a walk to see La Spezia.

You can see this is one of those places for example, Positano was 30 years ago. A little gem of a place unspoiled by over tourism. I mean by foreign tourists You could see the beginnings of it though. The odd sign in English. Always a bad thing.