Day Two of Hotel Belvedere

Obtaining food and drink in places where you don't speak the language can be fraught with uncertainty. We went to the bar last night and ordered two glasses of rose wine. One would expect the bartender to open a bottle of said wine and pour it in a glass. No, this is not what happened. The bar back was sent for ice, ice was placed in two large wine glasses. Next came a healthy shot of Aperol, followed by a slice of orange, champagne was added, topped off by a shot of seltzer water. We ventured one weak protest that what we really wanted was a glass of rose, but we were shushed by the bartender, so we took our drinks away to see what we had. They actually were not bad, there was a hint of bitters and orange. However, we think we will stick to red or white when ordering wine.

 

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The hotel has been deluged with arrivals. At 9:00 last night people were still waiting to be given a bike. There was one woman doing the check in and one poor guy doing the wrenching on the bikes. I felt very badly for him. One does wonder why they did not staff up for the deluge, but one does not ask these questions.

There is assigned seating at dinner. Jim and I, Don and Jamie did not have any place assigned. We asked the head woman what we should do. She kept deferring the issue to one of the wait staff who would then cruise the restaurant, confirm that we had no assigned seating and then report back. After three rounds of this, they took the name card off the table of another party of four and put us there. I do not know if they got dinner or not. The food here is very good and very plentiful. There will be constant vigilance in order not to exceed the day's caloric expenditures at dinner.

 

It's very early in the morning.  I've been up since 5:30, but have not been moving about much so Jim can sleep.   I was going to use the new led flashlight for reading, but I just about blinded myself with it earlier.  That thing is bright.  I have the screen on the pc tilted down so it illuminates my keyboard.  I'm feeling very Abe Lincoln-ish as I type be screen light.  Soon the alarm will go off and we can go down to breakfast

Later the same day...  we now have a place to sit for meals.  The nice staff has allocated  a 6 person table for our use.  Things are looking up.  Jim and Don are still feeling grisly so we went for a restorative walk.  Don also came down with the crud shortly before departure.
There is a lovely shopping area with a pedestrian mall near the hotel.  It's Sunday, so many people were out strolling and window shopping.

Many people use bicycles for transportation.

Two guys having a chat.

I think this is the start of the Riccione beach.  

The swimming pool at a hotel up the street from us.  This is novel.  It's about 12 feet off the ground.

Now we are resting up before lunch.  After lunch there will be a brief bike ride to fine tune the saddle positions.  I believe I will post this while the force of the internet is strong.