Orbatello Scalo and Suvereto

Before we left for Orbatello Scalo on Monday morning we got the van ready, paid for our site and purchased a bottle of butane. It looks as though we won’t be able to purchase propane until Germany. To our pleasant surprise upon leaving the sosta we passed an Agip gas station (cheapest gas in Italy) and a Lidl (our favourite grocery store in Italy), since we were nearly out of gas and completely out of food, this was indeed a great find. We added a stop, Ostia Antica, which is another buried city located 30km west of Rome. However, it was closed because it was a Monday so we made our way to Orbatello Scalo which is a small town located right on the coast. It provides campers with a secure place to park for the night. It was however, difficult to find. We drove all over this town with no luck and almost slept in a highway turn off lane before making another attempt at the town. This time we saw the signs leading us towards the parking area and when we arrived there was another camper. The German guy wasn’t sure as to where we could park (Julie and I didn’t know either) but he did say that he tried to speak to the policemen earlier. It was late and Julie wanted to stop for the night so she marched over to the police car and asked if the field behind the car park was okay to park our campers (she did this in a mix of French/English/Spanish) and it seems that we were all correct in our assumptions. I guess the only reason we didn’t think it was the spot was all the tiny concrete blocks poking up out of the ground and a small driveway that had a no entry sign. The concrete blocks were spot markers and the no entry sign was intended for cars, not campers. The following day we drove to an even smaller town called Suvereto. We learnt that Phil isn’t heading into Milan until February 28th, and it is only February 19th so we spent a few hours trying to figure out where we could spend the extra time but found there aren’t many cities to visit along the coast between Rome and Pisa. Suvereto has room for 5 campers, dump station and fresh water and unlike Orbetello, it does not have a time limit. There were no free sostas after Pisa so it was logical for us to spend 3 days in Suvereto. It was boring, but we made due with reading and playing games.