Tuscany in our DB9 Volante

[Rosanne]

Pericoloso said:

If you're in Turin and doing car museums,the national motor museum is near the

Lingotto building.

I have checked their website. Their collection is fantastic. They even have a Bugatti Type 35 B. Hubby has a passion for Bugatti's, ever since he hired a Veyron for two weeks in Florida earlier this year. He says that it's air conditioning was not much good, though.

We'll definitely go to the Turin museum. Thanks for the tip.

[Rosanne]

Bobajobbob said:

I think we’d all love to see a picture of Hubby sitting in the Aston wearing his new watch with the Tuscan hills or Italian alps in the background!

I can't oblige, amigo, at least not as far as the Tuscan hills are concerned. We are now in Turin
and are a long way from the Tuscan hills. We leave here for Dijon tomorrow, but I'll see what I can do. Hubby may be masked, since, although we raise pedigree beef cattle, his main line of business is high level, high risk security.

Keep watching this space !

[Rosanne]

yanyan said:

It took me a while; normally I can suss wind-up merchants fairly quickly. Rosanne - now I know you're "at it" - fill this thread with as much fantastical nonsense as you can. I am now enjoying reading your posts.

Dear yanyan.

Will your enjoyment be spoiled if I tell you that every thing I post is true ? I'll see if I can support my comments with some pics.

Ciao.

[Rosanne]

Going back to Hubbie's hiring of the Veyron in Florida. He drove from Ocala in the North down to Miami. It was a very hot day and the Veyron's air con wasn't much cop. He was also hungover from the night before, and whatever road he was on was very flat,very straight and very boring.

He fell asleep at the wheel and only woke up when he found the car spinning violently on the dirt hard shoulder. Luckily it collided with nothing, but he found that upon braking or accelerating he could hear a lot of clattering from underneath. Carrying on very gingerly to Miami, when he got to his hotel he told the valet parking guy that he would pay him $500 if he could fix the clattering by the next morning. It was fixed and the valet guy only wanted $100. Hubby gave him the full five hundred. The excess on the insurance was $50,000.

Better than that, though, back in 1985 Hubby drove a Lynx "D" Type Jaguar replica to Geneva for the celebration of the release of the "E" Type many years earlier. His co-driver was a famous motor racing driver. Coming back via the Cote d'Azure and with both of them a tad pissed from a very vinous lunch, the famous motor racing driver drove the Jag off the road and into the sea in Monte Carlo. It cost not a lot to crane it out, but it cost thousands of dollars to spark up and move ten super yachts out of the way

[Rosanne]

Bobajobbob said:

I think we’d all love to see a picture of Hubby sitting in the Aston wearing his new watch with the Tuscan hills or Italian alps in the background!

Here's a couple of pics. The Aston parked at our hotel in Pistoia with a bit of the Tuscan hills behind it, and one of it parked outside the Alfa Romeo museum in Milan, both taken yesterday.

The watch pic will follow tomorrow. The watch in in the hotels safe and Hubby can't be arsed to go and get it.

[Rosanne]

Oops, here's the second picture !

[Rosanne]

Oh, Mr Tremlini,

My fat husband (aka " El Chubbo " ) asks me to report that even he is humbled by your eloquence, vivid description, and life time experience. Or at least he would have if Chiari the bar maid at our hotel, the Grand Citea, Via Carlo Alberto, Turin, hadn't been kind or foolish enough to offer him samples of every single malt on offer. Right now he is prostrate on the bath room floor. When I ask him if he is alright, he seems to either groaning or stating that he is praying to the Chief Distiller of the Lagavulin Distillery, whose 16 year old malt he states to be beyond praise.

Two days after we get back to England, he and three mates are pushing off in a very elderly Disco to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland for two weeks. At the last count the holiday largely comprised visits to nine distilleries and four breweries. I expect never to hear from any of them ever again..........hopefully!

Ciao, and thanks for your fascinating and amusing post

[Rosanne]

Hubby is still puwling and muwling on the bathroom floor. He tells of a story that happened back in the '70's. At the time he had a Series one SP250 Daimler Dart. The early Darts were renowned for having very flexible fibre glass bodies. Indeed, he used to secure the doors shut tight with bits of string. One night in an attempt to impress a real hotty, he drove the car at very high speed into a select and exclusive road in Marlow where she lived. Taking a corner on two wheels, the door flew open, and not having seat belts, the girl was rocketed out through a low privet hedge and into an ornamental fishpond. He then reversed and confirmed that she was alright and that she was where she lived. She was. Despite that she still married him.

[Rosanne]

Mr.Tremlini said:

This is most intriguing Rosanne, as I once met an "El Chubbo" in a small fondue bar in Zermatt in the late naughties, so small it was in fact, that he had had to enter through the skylight, but in the time that we had together there was a small amount of conversation between us, and a huge degree of imbibing, and sure enough we found ourselves sitting on top of the same hostess, comparing our Swiss timepieces and laughing uproariously at the very concept of a quartz watch, and at this juncture he admitted that his actual name was El Gordo, and that El Chubbo was a colloquialism from a his regular life.
How could a life be regular, I asked, as he quaffed snifter after snifter of Dalmore 64 Trinitas while mocking the neighbouring guests who languished with some Laphroaig Quarter Cask?
At this point he was whisked out through the skylight and the thrum of helicopter blades beating in the direction of Monte Rosa and the wonders of Italy beyond, was all I had as an answer.
Could you, when your El Chubbo relinquishes his grip on the Turin tiles, ask him if he has any recollection of this encounter? I would be most grateful as it would satisfy a curiosity that I have had for the last two decades!

I am intrigued ! I married El Chubbo in 1998. He was slim, lithe and very tanned then, but mysteriously vague about his past. Although I was a bit put off by his car ( pearlescent white DBSV8 with a Leopard skin interior, and acquired in a poker game at the PlayBoy Club ), I permitted his courtship to continue. Yes, he had lived in Switzerland, and I don't doubt that he had allowed a lot of hostesses to take liberties with his person ( and v.v, I suspect ). What most intrigued me was that every time I met him in those days ( about every six weeks ) he had a different limb encased in plaster. He explained this by saying that he had a fondness for paragliding off the mountains behind Geneva, but was not much good at it. He even produced a Polaroid showing him in skintight Lycra standing on a wooden ramp with a parachute contraption strapped on. I particularly noticed two things- his helmet was a disgustingly lurid
shade of orange, and that his Persol sunglasses covered nearly all of his upper face. Indeed,
were it not for the fact that he clutched a bottle of very expensive Stolichnya vodka in his hand,
I would not even have believed it to be him. I must go, we are heading for Dijon soon and I can hear him demanding that I run him a bath.

T.B.C.

[Rosanne]

David W. said:

Hubby usually uses that cognac as a mouthwash after cleaning his teeth with a tooth paste made from pearls dissolved in Hungarian Tokay. The is a perfumer living in a garret in the 14th. Arrondissement in Paris that lives only for the day when Hubby returns to choose his pearls for the next consignments.

[Rosanne]

Apologies for our absence of late. We have been beetling back homewards from Turin.
This pic is prior to our stuffing the car with artworks given to us by the staff of the Uffizi in Florence, who, as usual, ritually sacrificed three chickens and a sewer rat in honour of our visit.Hubby asked that a virgin be included, but they replied that they couldn't find one after his his last visit.

We've made good going. Six hours from Turin to Dijon. We would have done it faster had we not stopped in Chambery for a light lunch of hand picked Ortolans, washed down by a delightful Sauterne from the proprietors own cellar. The proprietor gave us a case of fine wine since Hubby correctly guessed how long he had steeped his buntings in Armagnac. Of course, we would have had to remove a Michelango sculpture in order to fit the case in the Aston, so Hubby, with his usual generosity, told Pascal to distribute the wine to the poor of Chambery,
and please don't name a street in Chambery after us like they did on a previous visit.
Of course, being stopped at the Frejus checkpoint for twenty minutes didn't help. Hubby could find neither his passport not driving licence. In the end he discovered them in his
wash-bag( thank Christ he hadn't put them in his laundry bag ; we'd have been refused entry had the documents been tainted by any of his three week unwashed skivvies ). In the end, though, it was almost as bad, since the top was loose on his bottle of Trumpers " Eucris " and his passport had been liberally splashed with what appears to the uninitiated as something between green slime and dog snot.
But, the whole incident was greatly lightened by a female French border guard clad in parachute boots and body armour ( just how Hubby likes 'em ) who chortled " His name is Bond, James Bond " or " Mr. Bond, I presume ? ".

[Rosanne]

Incidentally, my criticism of Italian motorways is not entirely founded. The A43 road from Turin to Frejus is spectacular. The mountains on either side are utterly stunning and we only saw four cars throughout that whole trip. There were, of course, some heavy lorries, but their discipline was excellent, so we only had to use our multiple air horns and orange strobe lights fitted behind the grille about three times.

One of the few cars we saw was a brand new Matt grey Vantage. It was barely visible at the speed it passed us. At the next Peage we approached the occupants, but they appeared to be Saudi teenagers and not very sociable.
The Vantage had an orange interior trimmed with grey. Striking ? Yes. Tasteful ? Maybe.

When we got to our hotel ( pics below ) I trapped a Fiat 500 in a corner of the courtyard. Venting my spleen upon it for all the irritations they caused me in Italy ( pic. enclosed ), I thrashed it to death with Hubbie's sjambok. He was not best pleased, since it is now covered in red paint.

[Rosanne]

RSbandit said:

did you have that third Ortolan?

Three ! Three ! By the time the patron has wrapped Hubby up in four tablecloths, you just try to get him to eat only three of the little buggers !

[Rosanne]

ruhall said:

Each to their own; does the stripe carry on over the soft top? Serious question.

Good Lord, no! That would be vulgar.

Talking of vulgarity. Hubby has been complaining throughout the holiday that one of the several parking valets must have nicked his Bottega Veneta driving gloves. Good luck to that valet, since unless he has only three fingers on his left hand, they'll be no bloody use to him; Hubby lost those fingers when trying to change the red hot barrel of his M60 machine gun without using an asbestos glove, and the Bottega gloves were tailor made for him.
BUT, the under gardener has just reported that he found a dead rat amongst Hubbie's laundry
( which, with the rat ,had to be burned, since a three week tour of the Continent renders them fit for little else ) . Raking through the ashes, I found a fragment of his gloves. So, the old scrote has once more been up to his old tricks, i.e. stuffing his gloves down the front of his underpants to impress hotel chambermaids.

[Rosanne]

For three weeks we've just driven through France and Italy at speeds rarely less than
100 MPH and frequently much greater. We've just gotten home to find a speeding ticket from
Essex Police for doing 58 MPH in a 50 MPH stretch of the A282 Trunk Road Dartford - Thurrock crossing approach to the Dartford Crossing bridge. They must be raking it in.
Welcome home to dear Old England !

What's my chances of getting a Speed Awareness Course or WTF they call it nowadays?

[Rosanne]

Here's a pic of the Aston the Chateau Gilly near Dijon. We parked in their car park until the owner of the hotel asked us to park the Aston by the main entrance
As you may imagine the bar here was magnificent, although a large Cardhu single malt cost over sixty quid. I'll send a few more pics of the hotel etc.

[Rosanne]

Hubby crawling back into the daylight from the ditch that is his preferred nocturnal habitat.

[Rosanne]

Goobye Chateau Gilly.

[Rosanne]

And hello to the VIP car park at EuroTunnel and the Rolls Royce 4 X 4 parked there.

[Rosanne]

Panerai Radiomir 1940 Limited Edition.

Here's what Hubbie's looks like. The spare strap they give you costs more than most ordinary watches.