Day 06 - Sunday 30th August

The house was very quiet when I got up at about 7:30am. I thought I must have been the only one awake but I found John and Graham sitting in the patio outside the kitchen having a cup of tea. Graham had already been for a walk up the hill. He didn’t go very far on his walk because he heard hunting dogs and hunters shooting at game and so he decided it was safer to keep clear.

Suzy decided to go for a swim in the villa’s pool. Graham joined her and I eventually went in too. The water was cool but refreshing.

We all enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on the patio using the supplies we purchased last evening on the way to Cortona.

I had success this morning in connecting to the internet because I used my mobile phone as a modem. Graham also had success connecting his laptop to the internet using the connection to the villa’s landline phone. He later realised that he was using a different cable today and the problem he had yesterday was a faulty cable.

We decided that today we would visit Lake Trasimeno which is a large inland lake about 20km south of our villa. At about 11:30am, we all climbed into the Peugeot 807 and programmed the TomTom to take us to a lakeside town called Castiglione del Lago.

After driving through the town, we parked the car to explore on foot. Nearby we found a wharf where a ferry had just arrived. Suzy and Joan asked at the ticket office about the ferry and were told it takes people on a 30 minute trip to an island in the middle of the lake that has a small town and a castle. We decided to give it a go.

It was another hot sunny day with no breeze – even on the water. By the time we reached the island we were hungry and managed to get a table in the garden area of a restaurant next to the lake. It was a very relaxed lunch in a pleasant location.

By the time we returned to Castiglione del Lago at 4:15pm, it had started to cloud over and there was a refreshing breeze to cool us down. What originally was going to be a short stroll had ended up being a four-hour adventure. We’d only paid for the minimum 1 hour for the parking but the gods were smiling on us because a parking policewoman turned up just as we were pulling out.

We drove up to see the castle at the top of the hill. This gave us an excellent view of the lake and the green countryside below.

Before we set off to return to our villa, John decided that the dashboard screen must have a sat-nav feature. Not only did he manage to get it to work, he found a way to get instructions in English and programmed it to take us back to Ossaia. So we had both the Peugeot system and the TomTom giving us directions on the journey. It was an interesting test of the navigation systems. Both systems gave us consistent instructions. We got back to the villa at 5pm.

Before dinner we had cheese, nibblies and wine on the patio and then watched the sun set over the valley. Poulla, the housekeeper, had prepared minestrone soup for dinner and our girls supplemented it with a tasty salad.