Tuesday June 29, 2004
First thing in the morning, right after breakfast, was to find our way to the Ferrari Factory. Unfortunately, it's not open to the public anymore, so we are just taking pics outside its front gate.
Right across the street is the famed Ferrari store, which will make my wallet a lot thinner after a little time!
Ops! Pavlos has already entered the F1-sounding doors!
Try this for size?! (NO! I didn't buy it! Instead I got a couple of polo shirts for my wife and daughter! A LOT cheaper than this!)
Next on the list is a visit to Galleria Ferrari.
There's a complete pit stop pictured in the ground floor, around an F2002.
Pavlos took about 258 detailed photos in here!
...like this...
On the upper floor there was this lovely wallpaper...
and a few everyday cars: An F50, a 550 spider and...
...an unpainted aluminum F360!
Since we could afford some time before going to the Fiorano track, we tried to have lunch. As Riky had advised, we first tried Montana. And try, we did! First we lost the waypoint TWICE! The darn restaurant is sitting to the side of a bridge, so we drove the bridge up and down, swearing that it SHOULD BE HERE! Then, on our third pass on the bridge, Pavlos realized it was BESIDES and lower to the left! So we did one (more!) u-turn and parked in front of it. We entered Montana, the place was EMPTY, just a table was taken by 3-4 guys, the waiter looked at us with "that" look and declared that there was no table available!
Everything was "reserved". Holy $hit! So, despite Riky's advice, we played it tourists (which we really were, anyway!) and headed for the Cavallino, where the lovely lady not only let us sit and have lunch, but also took this photo of us! Lovely!
We spent a little more time in the cozy ristorante, and we missed Badoer's first round of testing at 2.00pm. Anyway, we found the little gravel road close to the fence, at around 2.05! So, we waited there. Outside the track, of course! We made some Greek Frappe coffee (If you need instructions on how to make one, click here).
Pavlos was indiscreet!
We did some testing for the camera views. Then at around 3pm Badoer arrived in a furious way, changing up to 7th gear clearly just 15 meters in front of our eyes, (and awed ears!) then slowed down from something like 250 km/h turned the left hairpin and disappeared in a glorious sound under the Fiorano bridge... We also took a few small videos! Exciting!
Right after Badoer's pass we mounted our rigs and headed north. Since time was not at a premium, we decided to skip the Autostrada. We easily found SS12 and followed it for about 2 hours, heading north towards Trento, up until Mantova. There was huge traffic and not really any driving interest in that first 100kms of that road, so we turned to the Autostrada for the remaining 90km's. Of course, in typical Trentino fashion we arrived late! At 8 pm, we unload our stuff at Hotel America, and Jim, Verna and Gislain are already leaving for that pizzeria, to meet the Zorats. We were there at 8.30!!!
Back to the start
or
Onwards to Wednesday... going to Bratwurst!