Tuesday, September 24
We were almost on the road when I realized that I didn’t have my wallet. Was it stolen while I was distracted on a crowded bus? Did I leave it at Villa Enrichetta when we left there on Saturday? Perhaps I’ll never know. But after verifying that it isn’t actually hiding somewhere in my bags (which has happened to me before–our group calls it “pulling a Bill”), we said goodbye to Judy and Lew (who leave later today) and to Lauren and Bill (who leave tomorrow) and headed off on the road.
Fortunately, I kept no money in my wallet, so the only items to be concerned about are the credit cards, which I was able to take care of over the phone while John drove us from Genoa to Fiumicino. That’s the location of the airport: we don’t fly out until tomorrow, but we needed to return the car to EuropCar there by 2:30. We made it with time to spare. From the airport to Aran Blu Hotel in Ostia was a matter of a short taxi ride, and then we were back where we first arrived from the airport twelve days ago.
We had snacked on the way, but by this time we had skipped a meal, which is against the rules in Italy. We headed up the beach to Sotto Vente, where we shared our first meal in Italy, but André wasn’t there. Once again they had closed their kitchen early, but we enjoyed some wine and a salad and headed off in search of something more substantial. We walked further north along the beach, but found the same situation at the restaurants there. Back at the hotel, we were advised to head to the town center, some two miles to the south. Since it was a lovely afternoon, we decided to walk there, and were rewarded by finding at Ora di Napoli, a pizzeria suggested by the hotel staff. A couple of hours later, and we were walking our pizza off on our way back to the hotel.
Noël and I did some reorganizing of the items in our bags and settled in for our last night in Italy, with the window open and hearing the surf.
