Breakfast table

Italian hotels are not famous for their breakfasts. But Le Case is a place where they take food really seriously. Last night we had a brilliant dinner - the food was reasonably priced and absolutely delicious. And Alf treated us to a really good bottle of wine - a 1998 Montepulciano. This was selected from a serious book containing well over 1000 wines available in their cellar. So I wasn't surprised to find that breakfast was also excellent - in an Italian sort of way. That is, it was primarily comprised of sweet things, but these were home made brownie type things, and tray bakes, and cakes. I tried a small piece of a lemony cheesy cake type thing (visible in the thumbnail), but Mr A manfully tried to eat his way through a small piece of more or less every different cake. There was also local ham (from their own farm), honey, fruit, and freshly squeezed red orange juice.

And one of the reviews on tripadvisor dared to criticise the breakfast choice. No way.

A last day of wandering through the countryside (see extra). We passed through Cingoli, and got caught by the edge of an epic rainstorm up in the mountains which was still hanging around Ancona (see extra) by the time we took the coast road south to find Ancona airport and drop off the car. Taxi back to the hotel, and we've located a pretty good restaurant for one last dinner that is literally 2 minutes walk from here.

Great to have been able to add two weekends and a couple of days leave to a conference trip involving a hard-to-reach location. I wouldn't have gone to the conference if I hadn't been able to do it this way, as getting there was just too complicated. But I'm glad I did, as I enjoyed the conference and the network, even though I didn't much enjoy Macerata.

There's an album on flickr for those who are interested.