Bergamo

In the morning we had a walk around Bergamo lower town before leaving to return to Lenno. Some shopping was done in Bergamo, though not by me, I restricted myself to taking photographs.

Now long after we joined the autostrada we had a puncture. We were still unloading the car to get at the spare tyre when the police pulled up behind us to check what we were up to. They offered to help us change the tyre, and without their assistance we would never have got the wheel off, and even they struggled to remove it..

After about 45 minutes we set off again, however the spare was an emergency tyre so we were not supposed to exceed 80 kph. We slowly headed over to the car rental agency at Milan's Linate airport where they had told us already they could give us a substitute vehicle.

While I was filling the car's petrol tank at the airport service station I had my credit card stolen. Back at the car hire we had a long wait until a spare vehicle became available. It is certainly a better car than the vehicle I had had previously.

A journey which should have taken about two hours instead took about six hours, much of the time spent sitting in Linate airport waiting for a new vehicle to become available. The first one they had planned to give us turned out to have been sold, though it was still in the vehicle park, this caused a further delay in the process of getting a replacement vehicle.

The police deserved a huge thank you for their help without which we would have been stranded on the autostrada until a roadside assistance vehicle arrived. Who knows how long that would have taken. A new credit card should be waiting for me when I get back to base.