Today the alarm buzzed as scheduled so we were in the breakfast room with plenty of time to spare. We arrived to find that there was only one piece of toasting bread, no other bread and insufficient slices of cheese, salami and ham.

I enquired about the bread and was told it had finished… Not quite what we were hoping for as a breakfast experience.

After our ‘not quite’ breakfast we drove to the nearby British military cemetery and war memorial. This was the main reason for our visit to Cassino; Mr C’s grandfather is listed on one of the tablets that commemorates soldiers missing in action during WWII. Mr C’s grandfather lost his life during the invasion of Sicily in 1943. The glider that he was in fell short of land off the coast of Syracuse and, sadly, he was drowned.

Whilst visiting the memorial site Mr C took the opportunity to locate the Shropshire Yeomanry graves. Whilst Mr C was doing this, I was asked to take a photograph by someone wearing a ‘Help for Heroes tee-shirt. Later we found that he was part way through a charity cycle race from Tunisia to South Yorkshire.

We returned to town for a late lunch. By this time, we were beginning to realize that many cafés do not open until 2pm and most restaurants don’t open until 8pm. We had lunch in Café Reale where I chose a delicious mozzarella and tuna roll.

We returned to the hotel, where Mr C read his book for a while, before then heading back into town for refreshments. We had intended to walk to the nearby Lord Baden Powell Garden but instead we headed back to the hotel where we had an appointment with the proprietor Pino for a to talk about the battle of Cassino. Pino has extensively researched the battle and had his own personal story to tell as did Mauro who joined the talk. Then of course Mr C had come with his own personal story to tell. This led to conversations about the battle from three different perspectives. I will elaborate on the talks and conversations in a separate post.

Afterwards it was time to walk back into town for our evening meal. We dined in Pan ‘Unto steakhouse where the food was delicious but we found the portions to be enormous and over facing.

We finished the evening at the Botanical cocktail bar where the proprietor remembered us from the previous evening even down to the detail of which drinks we had ordered. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect service.