Thursday SEPTEMBER 11,  Bologna-Ancona

Glad that I've realised that it's September and not August.....   Sorry 'bout that!!

High speed train whisked us across the countryside with only a couple of stops, to Ancona.

On the way, we did reach the coast, and for many kms, we sped along, right beside the ocean.

They keep telling us in this neck o' the woods, "the season's finished" and they must be right...   For MANY kms along the coast, there were great clusters of  many hundreds of beach umbrellas, most folded down, but all about 1 metre apart, and many with tables and seats around them....  others with sun lounges or beach chairs beside them. Very colourful, and very sad looking....  Not one person to be seen, and all I could think was "some poor buggers have to disassemble all this" and store it somewhere.....  Towns along the way - large towns indeed, appeared to be almost totally devoid of residents - all the houses and hotels were shuttered up and alone!!!  Sad little camping grounds with maybe one RV parked there, and apparently the managers all gone away too.   Quite odd what happens in Europe once Summer is finished.......

As we were all embarking initially, there boarded an ENORMOUS man - must have weighed at least 250kgs, looked for all the world like a huge bag of jelly, he was so fat......  He sat on one side of a group of four seats, behind and to the side of us.   No problems.....     A woman and her husband then boarded and sat opposite him.....   Still no problems, for a short while......
Then......  he started to snore.    My god, it was unbelievable the noise he made, and nobody made to wake him up....  No matter whether the train slowed down or sped up, he kept up the snoring, and his opposite numbers (the woman and her husband) just slouched down in their seats, trying to concentrate on books.... with fellow passengers giving them pitying looks.......

Finally after more than an hour of this, the woman abandoned her seat and took refuge a few seats away, and unbelievably, he woke up at the next stop, and got off the train.   He hadn't moved until then, how in the hell did he know he was at his destination?

Finally got off the train at Ancona, and had to wait for a bus to take us to the ticket 'place' for the next leg of the journey.    More waiting for another bus, and then more waiting to board the boat for Zadar.

Quite a large ship actually, taking both cars and passengers.    We had paid for dinner, so fronted up to the dining room to partake....    Yay.....   Very sad meal, too ordinary to describe, and too bad to eat as well, but I reckon, all up there might have been 50 passengers on board, most either went without or brought their own food, and the whole ship was empty.....    All the shops, entertainment, personnel, had gone.....   Weird as......

Anyway we fell into bed at about 9.30pm, in our wonderful one up and one down bunk beds(!), and wished the next 9 hours away.  Slept a bit and woke up to a seriously inedible breakfast......... and disembarkation in Zadar.....