To take a break from hiking we spent the next day around the little towns below Modena. These were cute but not very interesting. We visited a natural park featuring odd mud volcanoes and took a siesta in an empty parking lot. Then we let ourselves be majorly impressed (/s) by a ceramics museum in a old castle. We drove on a bit to spend the night next to a sort of farm, surrounded by seemingly hundreds of birds.

The next morning we had to get up early to head to the garage outside the city, to try and get our AC fixed. We arrived late ("Italian on-time") because of morning traffic, but the mechanics seemed helpful. And very curious about us. We left Vespa in their care for the day, taking our toothbrushes with us in case we would have to sleep outside the van. We took a bus into Modena, here we had our breakfast in a cafe and strolled through the small streets. We climbed a tower, had lunch in a tiny trattoria, ate ice cream, visited a Salvador Dalì exposition and stretched a single espresso for an hour to rest up in a bar. Modena is gorgeous and surprisingly quiet. It's very walkable, I'm pretty sure we've walked each street and alley at least twice. By 17:00 we called the mechanics and they had actually found and fixed the problem! So no fancy last-minute hotel for us. Taking a bus back we picked up the van (and were again interrogated by the rest of the garage staff). We drove north for an hour and settled on another farm campsite.