Woke up around 05:12, tried to sleep, failed, woke up properly after ~06:15.
Went to the Scottish Restaurant again, against my better judgement. This time the juice machine worked so could get OJ, but still no double cheeseburger, only double cheeseburger with bacon. Fine. Whatever.
Finished getting ready and out the door at 09:30. Hopped on a blue line train. Just after Bologna I realised we were on the wrong train. The lines divert and we'd taken the wrong one. So we had to go to the next station, turn around, go back, and then go forward again. Wasted twenty minutes. I'd allowed ourselves forty or so minutes at Tiburtina to find the bus. And suddenly we'd just lost twenty minutes because I'm an idiot. So got to Tiburtina but it wasn't really obvious where to go, and I was already having a panic attack. Asked at a café, and the dude was super helpful and pointed the right direction. Got to the bus station and the indicator boards were all black and I couldn't find a Prontobus office and did I mention I was having a panic attack? Went and asked an official looking ticket place and they said bay 12. So ok. Went over there. Further down I could see an info board that actually had stuff on it, but when I got closer the text was so faint and it was so tiny I could barely read it. And then I went back to one of the main boards and found it wasn't actually black, but it was literally unreadable. Sigh.
Anyways. Got on bus, and it left on time.
The first half of the trip was actually quite pleasant. Mum and I had window seats to ourselves and there was only one annoying person playing crap on their iPad but that stopped pretty quickly. It was a lovely trip through the hills of Italy.
Concorso Fotografico Castel Madama
Town of Roviano on a hill
View over Carsoli to Castello di Carsoli
View over the E80 to Pietrasecca
Then half way through we stopped and more people got on. Including two sick people that sat right in front of us (Mum had to move, but at least the newcomers had FFP2 masks on the whole time) and someone who spent half the time on her phone, and I didn't have any room to spread out and so I was restricted and my legs were all restless and it was all kinds of torture.
Sigh.
But the bus arrived in Pescara right on time so that was good.
Went into the station and got tickets and off we went to Ortona.
Had sandwiches we bought in Rome for lunch on the train. They were a lot better than the ones we had in La Spezia.
At Ortona the dude from the B&B picked us up in his car, which was lovely, because there's not really any taxi service in Ortona.
Mum and me at Ortona train station
Dumped our stuff then headed out for a walk around town. There's a lovely terrace to walk along, and a pretty cool castle on the point which is free to walk around. Also walked back through town looking for the places we can get breakfast, and anywhere for dinner. I also found a café selling bottled beer so might have bought one.
Me at a fountain near our B&B in Ortona
Promenade on the eastern edge of Ortona
Teatro Francesco Paolo Tosti
Promenade on the eastern edge of Ortona
View down to Ortona station
Castello Aragonese (Ortona Castle)
View to the docks and the Adriatic from the castle
Photo by Mum
Porto di Ortona (Ortona Port)
Ramparts of Ortona Castle
Courtyard in Ortona Castle
Tunnel in Ortona Castle
Edge of the cliff next to Ortona Castle
View towards Cattedrale San Tommaso Apostolo (Cathedral of St Thomas the Apostle) from Ortona Castle
Me at Ortona Castle
Photo by Mum
Castello Aragonese (Ortona Castle)
Cute rocking chair we saw on the way through town
Cattedrale San Tommaso Apostolo (Cathedral of St Thomas the Apostle)
Interior of Cattedrale San Tommaso Apostolo
Chapel in the cathedral with the urn of St Thomas
Urn supposedly containing the bones of St Thomas
Chiesa del Purgatorio
Museo Civico Arte Contemporanea Palazzo Farnese
Corso Vittorio Emanuele
Back to the room to have said beer and get changed and ready then headed out again for dinner.
There's really not a lot of places to eat in Ortona, and they're quite spread out, not on the main road. So it was a challenge finding something. But Mum liked the look of a very bright pizzeria so got a quattro formaggio pizza that was nice enough.
The back to the room to fight with my phone. Since last night it's been having awful trouble copying files off. I keep getting errors "The Requested Value Cannot Be Determined". And it might copy with wrong numbering or with a fraction of the file size. It's very upsetting and time consuming and I don't have time for this crap. Sigh.
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