DAY 5

Day 5 - Life after the Clues

After the exhausting activities of the past 4 days, we actually had a relatively early night last night - in true "Garry and Mike" celebration style, we decided to baby-sit for Chips' 9 year old son Seth, who helped me write last nights article and choose the pictures.

Bed by 1am ish, only 1 glass of wine this time, and a room EACH (not because we had an argument - but when someone offers you your own personal room in a 5 Star luxury hotel, you simply don't say no!!), we both had a lie-in in our air-conditioned rooms, waking up around 9.30am ish. (at which time it was still pitch black in the room owing to the electric motorised blinds blocking out all light through the windows!)

After a relaxing soak in the Jucuzzi bath (one each obviously!), we met upstairs on the 10th Floor Terrace for a spot of breakfast overlooking Monte Carlo....

After breakfast, Mike decided to go for a quick dip in the salt-water Swimming Pool on the 4th Floor...

In this hotel, the swimming pool actually extends into the Bar, with under-water seating provided, as the picture shows!!

We checked-out and waited for the Concierge to bring the car around (we were slightly concerned as we had previously watched one of them bring a Mercedes up from the carpark and reverse it into another guests' car!!)

However, no such problem with the Evo...

After loading up our luggage, tipping the Concierge and plotting our days' driving, we finally left Monte Carlo at around 12.30 ish, stopping for fuel in what ended up being the most expensive fuel stop in Monte Carlo.. we only realised this as in the next 2 miles, each filling station got progressively cheaper! (despite what it looks like, the filler neck on my car doesn't come out of the front grill, however you have correctly surmised that the previous customer did in fact attempt to fill up their broom!)

 We then made our way along the coast into Italy, passing some lovely sights along the way...

After a break for lunch in San Remo, (during which we lost count of how many people tried to sell us watches and bags whilst we ate our real Italian Pizza) (we both prefer the Pizza's we have in Jersey, but thats just our opinion), we joined a motorway headed towards Genova, before turning North, past Alessandria and in the direction of Milan.

During the next 100 miles or so we came to realise that the Italians have absolutely no regard for the speed limit (still, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.... right?), and we managed to cover a fair amount of ground - although we did hit a lot of heavy traffic on the motorways, especially around Genova and Milan - but as long as we had music, water and air-conditioning, we were happy! (Oh, and fuel helps to... and Italy has this wonderful Shell fuel called V-Power....mmmmmmm high Octane....)

To aleviate the boredom, we asked a local to climb on the bonnet and take a picture of us whilst doing 130km/h... here is the resulting photo..

We're not sure what happened to him - unfortuantely we had to break sharply to avoid hitting a Citroen!

We decided to make a fairly early night stop, and Mike set to work with our navigational aids locating a Hotel that didn't take us to far off our intended route, and soon found a Novotel less than a mile off the motorway, so we headed straight to it (funnily enough, this turned out to be the most expensive Novotel in the whole of Italy... (i'm seeing a pattern here...), and arrived at around 7.30pm

We enjoyed a relaxing meal in the restuarant, and for those of you who have noticed the new improved formatting of tonights update, the Hotel also has unlimited free Internet access in the Lobby, so tonights' update comes to you free of charge! (this PC has a DVD drive, floppy Drive AND free USB ports, and despite being tightly tied down, we've managed to upload all our photo's! (we may attempt to see just how secure it is after we're done here!)

Tomorrow should see us in Austria by lunchtime, and if we're lucky enough to have Internet access there too, you can be sure you'll be getting another update (if it doesn't, it will depend on the call-charge price and whether we have any Euro's left.... that isn't a ploy to get money out of you, but if you're feeling generous, i'm more than happy to forward you my bank account details!!)

Until the next exciting installment, Arrivè-derci!

Garry and Mike