Old age or overexcitement? I have been confusing things (1) italian autostrada signs are GREEN not blue like french autotoute ones,(2) two is 2 and four is 4. The first caused lou to shout at me and the second caused the big breakfast mixup. I had been very clear with our breakfast requests, written as instructed on a large yellow post-it and attached to the notice board. I even went over the details with the lovely eva, daughter of the household. When we presented ourselves for breakfast, breakfast there  was not! Eva’s mum came through from the family’s part of the house and told me we didn’t want breakfast, we had told her husband so the night before. I was a bit nonplussed as i remembered the conversation we had had with milo as he overtook us climbing up the hill and breakfast wasn’t mentioned. I insisted we had ordered it so she told us it would be made but there would be a wait. The door shut and we sat down at the table. The door opened and out came milo, looking fairly triumphant, i have to say. He was clutching my post-it and, there in the corner, in my handwriting, was ‘Room 4’. Oops, red face with egg on it! There followed rather a lot of to-ing and fro-ing through the ‘family’ door as milo laid the table and told us how he had tried to press my order on the american couple who were truly in room 4 and not in room 2 as we were! We did a lot of apologising and he did a lot of excusing and his wife did a lot of pan clattering. When breakfast arrived it was a feast. As almost no account had been taken of the, by now, infamous post-it. Lou’s order of one egg and bacon arrived as two eggs and bacon; my ‘bacon only’ came with about a packet of sliced cheese and two portions of tuna (pate?) nestled on lettuce leaves. Lovely juice, good coffee, croissants for lou, a huge mug with christmas snowmen on for my tea but my pancake with fruit was two thick pancakes sandwiched together with cream and forest fruits jam plus a generous topping of the same cream and jam combo, about half a jamjar’s worth. What to do but try and eat everything! I had a go but the cheese disappeared into a tissue in my bag, the tuna was tried but i can’t do tuna at breakfast and i left a good quarter of the pancakes as every one of my sensitive teeth was protesting at the unexpected sugar overload.

Milo, bless him, ignored the leftover food and gave us lots of advice about quiet border crossings, places to take good photos, to visit and an insistence we visit his friend’s restaurant near budva, along the coast from kotor. I asked to see his wife to apologise once more for the confusion and she was very gracious. Milo, an enthusiastic speaker as ever was, encouraged us to come again and to please go on booking.com and give them a ten. I reckon i will, i feel i owe it to them both. Those croissants had to be fetched from the baker at the bottom of that blessed hill!