Bush Hospital Foundation - Jersey to Monte Carlo - Day 7 & 8

Hello again everybody.

Well you may have noticed that we didn’t mail you yesterday or the day before – well, we thought you deserved a break – and it absolutely had nothing to do with us being completely exhausted on Tuesday, and even more so last night – or anything to do with not managing to find anywhere to stay until 3am this morning.

Nothing at all.

But now we are back with a vengeance!

Since we last updated you, we’ve travelled 480 miles (on Tuesday) and 542 miles (yesterday), have been down Italy and up the other side, popped into San Marino...

but as it was very foggy, we left fairly sharpish..

We also got caught in the middle of some protest or other, so thanks to the infallible Autoroute/GPS/Mike combination, took a shortcut in a country we’d never been too, and made a sharp exit!), and finally last night, having spent the entire day driving in rain on some very water logged roads (nothing like a bit of sideways aquaplaning into the lane next to you that happens to have a jugger-nought in it to wake you up!) we finally ended up in Switzerland – a much more refined country!

Only problem is, trying to get a room involved the ability to speak about 4 different languages! (the ease with which the night porter slipped between German, Italian, English and French was quite remarkable, if not a little confusing!).

Tuesday we climbed an active Volcano (as you do) – Vesuvius...

– very impressive and extremely hard work – and that was just the drive up the side to get to the parking! The walk was even worse, but well worth the effort and you could see for miles around...

The steam coming from the summit was a little disturbing, but hey, that’s life!

We drove through Rome on the way...

... but in a car it’s a complete nightmare – if you think driving in London is bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet! So we navigated our way out of Rome and continued South towards Naples, stopping at Vesuvius, and popped into Pompei, but unfortunately the old ruins were shut for the day (besides the fact we had no energy to walk any further by this time!)

By this time, we had gone as far South as we wanted to, so we cut across Italy to the East coast....

... and managed to find a town called CastelNeuvo della Daunia where we stopped of Pizza! Upon leaving there, we then hit the foggiest fog I’ve ever seen and barely managed to keep going in a forwards direction – the Italians don’t believe in using much paint on their roads, so it was a real struggle to make out the side of it.

We eventually stopped in a place call Termoli in a Hotel Europa, which we stumbled across (with the help of Autoroute) at around midnight – and gratefully gave the man our money and hit the sack.

We left there bright and early (well, early) yesterday morning, and headed to San Marino, more fog, lots of rain, and no sign of a Grand Prix circuit. Managed to find coffee at 4pm but no food, so decided to head onwards and back into Italy.

Stopped for tea at Modena in a nice Restaurant on the side of the main road, then decided to find somewhere to stop for the night, nice and early! Alas, on arrival at our first intended Hotel in Parma, we discovered that there was a food festival on, and all hotels in the area were fully booked, so head onwards, around Milano, where we thought we would try a Holiday Inn, but that was also full. Fortunate really, as we found out it costs 170 euros per night, which compared to our 60 euros the previous night, was slightly out of our financial reach!

So onwards we went, still raining, and tried numerous hotels on the way, which were either shut (it was getting late by now) or full, and eventually found ourselves in Switzerland! Still more full hotels, but at least it was out of Cities and into much more beautiful areas – even if it was still raining! We finally stopped at 3am in a place called Lake Lugarno, and paid out 227 Swiss Francs (we have no idea how much this is worth, but we needed sleep, and besides, with a toilet like this one, who could refuse....!)

So that’s if for now, and once again, a few piccys are enclosed for your enjoyment and perusal.

Garry and Mike