The body in the minibar was taken away with the stained roller suitcase once the Italian version of scene-of-crime officers had swept the rooms for evidence and fingerprints.

The Swedish couple who were booked into that suite next, seemed a touch reluctant to occupy the accommodations; well there was no other vacant room, so they had no choice. We popped in to cheer them up and we all had drinks together from the minibar.

Maybe there is no connection at all between these events – different M.O. , different locations, etc but same result each time and it all adds to the crime statistics for the region.

There was a phenomenally beautiful young woman at an adjacent table during breakfast, and kept looking at me and seemed to be mouthing some silent but very urgent words, with her lips. But then I thought it might be the sugared croissants, because there were no plain ones.
We finally bumped into each other at the muesli and cereals table of the self-serve breakfast. She whispered to me, almost imperceptibly: “Be careful, they will try to frame you for Napolitani. Beware Firenze.”

Well, we didn’t want to hang around in that locality any longer and the Inspettore had only said not to leave the country. So we made a quick get-away with a dash to the railway stazione. Now we were aiming to go on the lam, looking to lay low for a few days at Hotel Berchielli in Firenze.

There were some funny SMS messages while we waited for the train, but you know the trouble I’ve been having with technology, so I took no notice. Then, on the train, as were going through Monte Carlo, a really surprising thing happened. A woman hawking herbal remedies and organic cosmetics from a basket in the carriage, suddenly threw down the raffia container on the floor and it exploded into flames right in front of us. Very odd.

We managed to extinguish the fire with a few bottles of San Pellegrino (regrettably my favourite – the Arancia amura flavour). But people were looking at us strangely now.

at last, finally we say A ROOM WITH A VIEW
How do you ike that view?

The town is simply crawling with day-trippers and tourists from every corner AND an awful lot of people take the xtra day off from Liberation Day until Monday morning. It’s brilliant for hiding out in the crowd, but very exhausting. There is a pic of police stopping people in the street in the search for us.

The old bridge was built by Romans but it collapsed in a flood in 117 and again in 1333. It was rebuilt by Taddeo Galdi and was a base for wool dealers and butchers and greengrocers. However in 1590 the Grabd Duke Ferdinando was had a hand in the precious metals trade, decreed that only silver and gold could be traded on the bridge, and so it remains to this day.