Wed 13th - Sat 16th October : Au revoir France and hello Italy....

So Wednesday dawned through our great big ancient shutters.....

We left our beautiful bedrooms, lovely white cotton linen, huge stone bathrooms and amazing hosts .....and back to the car and our air of gypsy circus. A bee line route out of France and straight to Venice to get the ferry to Greece. 

All the campsites in Northern Italy are closed so we stopped for 2 nights at a B&B outside Cremona. Typically only we could find a place like this. Bizarre owner who was intensely shy, yoga obsessed and kept doing prayer stances all the time. We were in the tiniest hamlet and would have expected a big burly Italian farmer and his wife – instead it was incense and thai themes and oh so many mosquitoes. Two bedrooms though – so that was a bonus -  and a bathroom between us which was very modern. We had the worst night ever the first night being eaten alive by mossies and hearing that “eeeeeeeee” in our ears. So the day spent touring around the Cremona area was slightly jaded by itchy blotches, sleep deprivation and following the tour guide advice of the owner of what was a “must see “ if you only had one day. One look at her flowing clothes, shamanic tattoos and the decor and books around the house should obviously have warned us. We went off on a wild goose chase to a village she claimed was THE thing to see in the area. We found a 100year old man made medieval theme village which was all shops of cartoon and kitsch wizards, sweets, medieval weapons and closed gift shops. Within 30ms of arriving Euan fell into a puddle of mud up to his waist and that was the outing over. Even his underwear was mud soaked and although he was quite game for continuing sight seeing naked it was only 13degrees and perhaps inappropriate.  

So a quick trip to a supermarket where i whizzed round alone and collected larder items that you feel you must buy if in Italy – gorgonzola, olive oil, amazing pasta....and back to the B&B. 

Left Cremona on Friday morning and headed to Venice. Italian motorways are officially pretty hair raising and the closer we got to Venice the crazier it became. You are charged a small fortune to use the motorways and then feel you have just taken your life into your own hands. 3 lanes – the slow lane all gigantic lorries nose to tail thundering along at 110kph (although the sticker on their back door would claim they were limited to 80) with every truck driver clutching his mobile phone. The middle lane was for all the even faster lorries overtaking  and the fast lane was for very new, very big and very fast cars which went ape if you were doing anything under 150kmph. We were between a rock and a hard place ;-)

Anyway, tonight we are in a Novotel, outside of Venice. It was the same price as a static caravan at the nearby campsite – that was not a difficult choice! Went into Venice centre by bus today and wandered around and ate pizza and pasta next to the canal. Not quite sure how and where we get to the port tomorrow for the ferry to Greece....the instructions for the greek travel agent were fairly vague, actually non existent...but we seem to have to drive back into Venice...which appears to be a car free city. Well, tomorrow is a whole new day.
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