"Trenta sei" anni fa!

"36 years ago" the Brig and I drove to Italy from England for a very short holiday. Started off well, until the boy decided to consume "steak tartare" for lunch on the Belgium Car Ferry during our Channel crossing - do you mind raw Belgium horse meat on a car ferry???? Four hours later he was deep into "food poisening". Fortunately for me, the German motorways were superb to drive on, we went into Austria and stayed (which he doesn't remember) then into Venice for 2 nights (this he doesn't remember either) and eventually we arrived at Porto San Giorgio. By this time his food poisening had completed its course, and we were happy and well again, ready to relax and holiday. I have no idea why we chose Porto San Giorgio, it looked nice I guess, it was early May, so well before the peak summer season, and this huge 4 kilometer beach was just empty. It had a great little camping ground right next to the beach, the only thing separating us from the actual beach was a honeysuckle hedge. Below is a post card of how it looked 36 years ago in peak season.

It was a truly lovely simple week, we, in a tiny little "pup tent" with a camping stove and a couple of sleeping bags. We walked to the markets, chose our rather yellow looking "free range"pollo to cook each evening , enjoyed some local "rossa" and the whole week in this campground cost us UK7 Pounds total - food, vino and camping fees. We travelled home via Florence - longish stop then a quick dash along the toll roads in France to the Channel Ferry

I had to laugh when I found this photo of our abode and dining room - yes even my Denby pottery pepper shaker and the Brig's HP sauce accompanied us on this little sojourn.

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It was always our plan to go back to Italy, have been talking about it forever, and fantastic - now we are - mid April for 4 weeks, have all kinds of things planned, more on that later - and it will be a fun way to celebrate our 35th Wedding Anniversary in Amalfi. It will be Pasta and Pizza this trip, my man has never entertained eating steak tartare again, he totally ignored it during our trips to France. A lesson well learned.