Day 05 –Monte Carlo to Memminger

You join us on our extended Tour de Liberation; most sensible people from the Tour will probably be enjoying a second night in our wonderful Monte Carlo Hotel, recovering from the exhaustion of the last 4 days, but not us. Oh no.

Today has seen us break all previous years' records and cover 7 countries in one day.

Starting from Monaco, we headed back into France, then on to Italy…

… into Switzerland, via Litchenstein…

Onwards to Austria…

Then across ze border into ze Fatherland (waving our Schumi flags out of the window as we drove obviously)

All of those countries and we only managed 450 miles today!

Well, it was a late start to the day; we didn't want to say goodbye to our posh hotel, so we put off leaving as long as we could – a lie in, a leisurely breakfast with proper coffee..

Then a half hour wait for the right car to turn up at the front door (they tried to palm us off with a Mercedes.. honestly, I ask you!)

Once we finally got underway, it was 12.30, and we foolishly thought we'd try and be cheapskates by not filling up with petrol in Monaco. However, having failed to find a station once leaving there until well into Italy, things were starting to get a little desperate. The Italians lack of Super Unleaded 98 meant we actually filled up with our reserve 10 litre jerry can in a motorway station rather than insult the car with the cheap stuff.

I'm sure the locals thought it most odd, with all these petrol pumps just behind us!

But just as well we didn't chance it, as we wouldn't have made it on what we had, and eventually we found a station selling real fuel and filled both tanks up.

The car happy, we stopped a little further along for Pizza and Chips…

…and then got stuck into the driving.

As we skirted around Milan we got stuck in a lot of heavy traffic which impeded our progress somewhat, but eventually it cleared, and many of these later..

… and no shortage of fabulous views…

…and after seeing temperatures vary from 25deg C down to 7 deg C as we travelled up the Alps…

…we decided to make a small detour to our original planned route and pop into Liechtenstein (Vaduz) for dinner. Fortunately, our German linguistic skills weren't called on as the menu had English translation.

You MAY be interested to know that Liechtenstein, which is officially known as "Principality of Liechtenstein",(which translates to German as Fürstentum Liechtenstein) is a tiny European principality, located between Switzerland and Austria; it has an area of only 62 square miles (160 square km). The national capital is at Vaduz.

It is a constitutional monarchy in which governmental power derives from both the prince and the populace. Succession to the throne is hereditary through the male line and is determined by the regulations of the princely house. The constitution of 1921 provides for a unicameral Landtag, or parliament, composed of 15 members who are elected for four-year terms. The franchise extends to all male citizens over 20 years of age. In 1984 female citizens over 20 years of age were granted the right to vote on national, but not on local, issues.

Conversely, you may NOT be interested in the above.

But as we bring this information to you for no extra charge, there's little point in complaining. We're just not interested.

But all in all, it's a very clean and pleasant place, although we did find people just lying around doing nothing…

Anyway, we soon found ourselves back on the road and heading back into Switzerland, then out the other side into Austria for a brief time, then into Germany.

By this time it was dark, and extremely heavy rain slowed down our progress owing to the fact I could barely see the road, so things were a little scary for a while.

Mike began his search of Autoroute for the nights accommodation, and came up with a cracking Hotel in Memminger¸ so he phoned ahead, spoke fluent German to the lady on reception (ok, she spoke fluent English fortunately for us, else I suspect we may have ended up with a Zimmer frame for the night) and booked us in.

We arrived right outside the door 30 minutes later just in time for a quick beer in the bar before heading to our room and beginning work on today's exciting update.

Ok, perhaps not so exciting – after all, we have spent from 12.30 to 22.30 driving, and we have felt slightly at a loss with no clues to crack.

The update looked like it was going to have to be a small one – no GPRS service on any of the 4 GSM providers in the area… but just for a laugh I thought I'd scan for wireless access, and lo and behold, T-Mobile have a Hotspot here, bless their cottons!!

So the good news is, you get to see our route for the 5th day running! Oh joy I hear you cry.

So here it is – study it closely, we may ask questions tomorrow!

So a very good night from me and… Zzzz Zzzz from Mike!

Tune in tomorrow night and find out where we have got to – it's like a magical mystery tour – even I don't know where we'll end up!

And we're loving the Guest book comments...keep it up!!