It was dark when we disembarked at Brindisi and we spent our first night in a nearby retail park. We had a useful app called Park4Night which was really helpful when arriving after dark in a strange city. We always felt safe overnighting with the HGV drivers and their huge trucks that travelled all over Europe. The following day we drove south west into Calabria, heading towards Sicily.
We were accustomed to seeing unsightly rubbish dumps in many of the countries we visited but we were truly shocked at the amount of fly tipping we encountered in southern Italy. As we drove along the motorway almost every emergency bay was filled with bags of detritus, some were dumped recently but some bags had obviously been there for months. Shame on those who illegally fly tipped rubbish but bigger shame on the authorities who failed to clear up the mess.
It was the weekend and Tony’s birthday (he was 78 since you ask!), the sun was shining and we hoped to find a nice hotel where we could have a leisurely lunch, perhaps staying overnight in their car park. Unfortunately no such hotel could be found although we left the motorway several times to check out the local towns, but suitable hotels were there none.
As the afternoon wore on we began to get tired. Park4Night came to the rescue and we found a lorry park on the outskirts of Cosenza. We were greeted by friendly staff who moved several vans away from our truck so we had “privacy”. There was a pizza restaurant next door which opened at 7 pm – quite a challenge as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast – but it was well worth the wait for freshly cooked pizza and a plate of grilled vegetables drizzled in olive oil and scattered with aromatic herbs. The cost of the meal was €23.
