Mystic pizza

Our plan for today was simply, have a relaxed morning, then walk into Passignano and have a pizza for lunch. We are in Italy, this was not exactly an ambitious plan, nevertheless, we failed. If we had a pizza for lunch we would only need a light evening meal we decided. Gill peered in the fridge and noted the eggs needed to be eaten. A Fritatta this evening would require more mint as the plant we had was looking sad and somewhat spindly.  So we headed to the small supermarket on the far side of town. It took us down some backstreets. 

Passignano is truly a lovely place, not picture postcard pretty, but comely with a clutch of small shops selling local produce, an ancient hilltop fortress and a pleasant lakeside promenade with panoramic views of the lake and the cone shaped mountains to the south. 

I suppose even tranquil places have dark histories and I happened upon a plaque commemorating Passignano's. The railway line between Firenze and Perugia passes through the town, or to be more accurate under the centre through a tunnel beneath the castle's rocky outcrop. On the the 16th September 1944, in an attempt to slow the progress of the retreating German army, allied aircraft attempted to block the tunnel entrances by bombing the cliffs above them. Most of the bombs missed and dropped into lake. A number hit the town and 48 civilians were killed. The railway was undamaged. Perhaps this explains why the main church is modern, but the buildings surrounding it are ancient. 

These small reminders of Europe's war-torn past are important and makes the current rise of nationalism all the more depressing.

We found the well reviewed pizza place and discovered it was closed. There was another a few doors up the street. The only outside tables available were on the pavement by the main road. Needs must we thought, and sat down. After ten minutes of us being ignored Gill checked the reviews of the place on her phone, slow service and unfriendly staff seemed to be a recurring theme. After a further five minutes we gave up. It was a lovely day, we could just as easily have a monoxide free lunch with a lakeside view by the van. We headed back to the camping Kursal with our shopping. Of course the thing we forgot to buy was what we went for in the first place - a mint plant. 

Nevertheless, Gill managed to squeeze  flavour out of the pathetic few mint leaves we had and our fritatta was delicious, we'll have a pizza when we get to Garda, we agreed.

By now it was mid-afternoon, one of those bright autumn days where it is warm in the sun but chilly in the shade. A doing day rather than a lazing around one. We unloaded bikes and took a short trip along the unmetalled cycle track that runs along the lakeside. 

The shadows were lengthening by fiveish, the days are definitely 'drawing in', as my grandmother would say. Clouds were gathering as we got back to the van. Like yesterday the light was spectacular.

We speculated that the lake may have its own microclimate. It is Italy's fourth largest, the biggest outside the Alpine region, surrounded by high land and equidistant from the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic coasts, it may well be a magnet for active pressure systems. It certainly looked that way this evening.

Tomorrow we head north. After a stopover in a sosta we know in Modena we plan to finish our trip with five or six days by lake Garda. 'We must book the tunnel', we keep saying, but never quite get around to it.