Italy - Somewhere between Alessandria and Parma Tuesday 14th September See ya Alessandria!..... oh damn!

On Saturday 11th, we actually had the hire car for another day, and we were going to drive down to a lake, but Beth and Edie made a big fuss about driving for about 1 hour and a half, so we drove to a famous river. We were going to rent a small boat, like a punting boat, but when daddy, Beth and Edie went to check out the boat hiring places, guess what? They were all private, surprise surprise. They went to a small boat hiring place first, and it was closed for their four hour lunch break. So they went to another down the river side, that was private. They told them to go to the boat hiring place they had just been too! So after our picnic lunch (in a park, not a boat), they went back to the first boat place, and the man (who was finally back) said that that place was private and they only rented out boats to people in a private club! Typical Italy, every where's either private or too much money! So we drove back to the hostel to find a baptism party going on! Random! I guess there was a big church next to the hostel, so it sort of made sense!

Sunday was very much the same as the other Sunday's - a complete ghost town. But when we were driving on Saturday to the river, daddy got a text from Jon Wheater (my godfather) saying that the Grand Prix that weekend was ninety minutes away from where we were staying! Mummy and daddy really wanted to go to see the race, but it would have cost about €500. So we passed on that idea, but we did find a bar which had the race on on a TV, so that was fine. It was a very dramatic race if you didn't watch it. Lewis Hamilton crashed in the first half our!! Jenson Button came second, so all in all, not too bad. The day was relaxing (well, I guess the previous two weeks have been relaxing as well) but we weren't calling the garage about the van, although I wasn't holding my breath that they would fix the van on the Monday!

When Monday morning did come around, daddy actually decided to sacrifice his day at the pool, to go to the garage for the whole day. Then at least he would tell them to crack on if they weren't fixing it! Turned out, they did fix it and we had it back by 5pm that night! Woo hoo! During the day, me, Beth, Edie and mummy went back to the cool pool, and no one was there! There was one guy sunbathing on a deck chair, but the pool was deserted. Except it was quite cold - but we had good fun anyway! We all arrived back at the hostel around 5pm that night, and it was good to see the campervan was back in full swing! We decided to stay at the hostel another night, because it would have been pointless driving for an hour in the night.

So Tuesday the 14th was the day we left Alessandria! It's a shame, because I was just starting to like it - not! Any way, we drove about an hour out of Alessandria, to hear the same noise it was making the last time it broke down. So we drove down some random country road and stopped so daddy could look at the engine. He noticed that there were some air bubbles in the fuel pipe, which of course, isn't meant to happen. So we rung our local mechanic (again) and told him the same noises were happening and the air bubbles in the fuel pipe. He told us what to check and if they were all in order. They were. So we kept on driving at a steady pace and, as if by magic, a VW garage turned up! And it was REALLY plush! It was the most posh garage I have ever been to! It had Porsches, really plush Golfs and Audi TTs! It was incredible. Any way, a guy came along, (who looked very much like Hugh Laurie) and looked at the van. About twenty minutes later, he came back to tell us that it wasn't the turbo, but the fuel filter in the fuel tank! So we spent about loads of cash for nothing. When he change the fuel filter, the van ran smoothly. Typical - Alessandria is RUBBISH.

Any way, the day only got randomer. As we didn't want to over do the van driving it, we didn't go all the way to Pisa. We sort of stopped halfway in somewhere called Paderna and 'framped'. It's daddy's new word combining 'free' and 'camping' to equal 'framping'! It's catching on! Start using it! Any way, we pulled up outside a church practically, in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, if you looked all around, there was field after field, a small house and then another field. Hardly any cars drove past. We pitched up with the small tent for the bags and popped the roof up and at 20:45, we had pasta. At 21:00, a car pulled up the other side of the church, but we didn't see who got out. As we started to think it was just the vicar grabbing a cassock or something, ALL of the church lights went on. As mummy and daddy had a whispering fight with mummy telling daddy to go and talk to them, another car pulled up. More people went in to the church and mummy just got to say: 'right, you go ask them if we can stay here or we leave', loads more cars came into the car park where we were. Daddy went and asked a woman what was going on, and she told us there was a choir rehearsing for a wedding on the following Sunday! Seriously, what are the chances? Any way, we actually went and listened and met the bride and groom, Federica and Stefano. The choir were INCREDIBLE and they were all so friendly. Federica and Stefano spoke really good English, and it juts got more random. At the end of the whole rehearsal, Stefano asked us if we wanted to go to his parents house on the Wednesday for dinner with him and Federica! What nice people, you meet someone for 45 minutes and then invite us for dinner! You would never get that in England. Just a little added thing - Stefano's a dentist and federica an English teacher at high school. So we thought that we would accept their invitation and went off to sleep in the van after a very unexpected evening!