Salanches to Romana di Lombardia

We had found it difficult, when planning our journey, to decide on places to stay. I had thought of Aosta for the night that we spent in Sallanches and we soon discovered how good a decision Sallanches was. To get to Aosta would have required going through the Mont Blanc tunnel and, after our night in Sallonches, we found that required quite a long wait in queue (not to talk of the toll which was over 40 euro). Talking of tolls, this form of travel costs a fortune and involves much fumbling for cash or card while storing of mobile phone, map and guide book and then extending of left arm beyond the extension that a previously broken elbow allows. Muttered obscenities were generally directed at Jim who responded in kind! Anyway, we finally got through (minimum speed 50km, maximum speed 70km) and entered Italy. It was amazing that the countryside on the other side of Mont Blanc, while still mountainous, no longer had a French feel.

I had previously thought that Bergamo might be a good stopover, as it was just 2 hours from Rovigo and would give us enough time to be organised for meeting up with Gloria and Piero to leave our car, have lunch and get the train to Venice. However, Jim was reluctant to negotiate a city when we had time constraints. We finally chosen Romana di Lombardia and I had booked on line with the Mariet Hotel in the centre of town. This was a much more modern experience than the previous 2 nights but a very good choice - reasonably priced, clean white lines, a really nice male receptionist cum factotem who had good English and was more than helpful. Organising ourselves required numerous trips from floor 3 to the car in order to repack for our 4 days in Venice and 1 night with Gloria and Pietro but we managed it all. Time for another town investigation to discover that it was very pretty. Jim was in search of draught beer and we found a bar that obviously was the haunt of the young cool dudes. We were obviously out of place but Jim got his birra alla spina (having elicited the Italian term from the bar tender) and I was satisfied with a white wine. We had a quick look at the local castle.

The restaurants in town didn't tempt and we returned to the hotel to avail of the 13 euro menu for residents to discover  that it was really popular - a good sign that the food is good. When we got back to the hotel before dinner our friendly receptionist had been replaced by a diminutive, ancient and rather formidable Italian Mama who was quite unhappy to find us confidently making our way to the lift. Jim had to produce the room card before we could proceed. Dinner, as on all nights since we left Ireland was a l'exterieure and was very good - Pappardelle with a chicken ragu, followed by a slice of beef  and chips for Jim and tagliatelle with tomato and basil, followed by a beautifully seasoned chicken breast and wing. House wine was good so all was well with the ancient Kings!