The 'adventure' part of our European travels are over - no more lazing on the beach or hiking for us (well, at least for a while anyway). We now have a week in southern France with Tamlyn and Sami for their wedding, then a week in Paris with cousin Stef & Vanessa and our baby godson Jack.
Now to just get from southern Austria to southern France - 1,400km. First day: Southern Austria to Turin in Western Italy - 700km, and supposedly a nice easy 7 1/2 hour drive. Second day: Turin to Carcassonne in southern France - again, around 700km, and about 7 hour's driving. Easy peasy, aye.
Haha, nah, just jokes - of course nothing went quite as planned. It is us after all.
Leaving behind Austria's Hohe Tauern national park, our favourite camping spot and the superbly relaxed Virgental valley, we tootled into the Defereggen valley, then headed up and over the Austrian / Italian border pass on the crazily-winding Defereggentalstraße. The road is so narrow and sinuous that traffic is single file only, with each direction timed by traffic lights on each half hour. We made it past the green light at the top of the pass with only about two minutes to spare. Today's driving omens were good ... for once!
Then we hit the Italian motorway and a hundred kilometre traffic jam of German holiday-makers. Yaaaaay... the seven hours driving slowly turned into eight, then nine, then ten, then, by the time we finally made it to Turin in Western Italy, we were almost at eleven hours... maybe the good omen thing was a bit premature. At least we made it in one piece.
Our on-the-go (lets-not-camp-because-this-drive-is-taking-so-long) choice of hotel ended up being slightly... interesting. Matt reckons it was a 'love hotel': the outside was all pink neon signs, and the inside, well, you can see for yourself below! Still, it was late, and even if the bed was better suited to someone of spherical shape (wtf!), we were tired, and so this was it for today.
We were also damn hungry and, although the neighbourhood looked somewhat lacklustre as we drove in, we had noticed a couple of little local corner restaurants. So off we fußbänged (mispronounced/New Zealand-glished German) with fingers crossed and hope in our hearts, one of these would be a little gem. Please. One of them was buzzing with locals, so this looked like us - a tiny place specialising in pizza, mussels and gnocchi (don't know the name, but it was just here). Absolutely no tourists around, and whoooo-boy, had we hit Italian gold... mmmmmm mmm mmmmm. Matt was in pizza heaven. So good, and so cheap.
Matt even snuck back with an extra pizza for a midnight snack in our room... mmmmm... real Italian pizza... mmmmmmmmmm.
Now to just get from southern Austria to southern France - 1,400km. First day: Southern Austria to Turin in Western Italy - 700km, and supposedly a nice easy 7 1/2 hour drive. Second day: Turin to Carcassonne in southern France - again, around 700km, and about 7 hour's driving. Easy peasy, aye.
Haha, nah, just jokes - of course nothing went quite as planned. It is us after all.
Leaving behind Austria's Hohe Tauern national park, our favourite camping spot and the superbly relaxed Virgental valley, we tootled into the Defereggen valley, then headed up and over the Austrian / Italian border pass on the crazily-winding Defereggentalstraße. The road is so narrow and sinuous that traffic is single file only, with each direction timed by traffic lights on each half hour. We made it past the green light at the top of the pass with only about two minutes to spare. Today's driving omens were good ... for once!
Then we hit the Italian motorway and a hundred kilometre traffic jam of German holiday-makers. Yaaaaay... the seven hours driving slowly turned into eight, then nine, then ten, then, by the time we finally made it to Turin in Western Italy, we were almost at eleven hours... maybe the good omen thing was a bit premature. At least we made it in one piece.
Our on-the-go (lets-not-camp-because-this-drive-is-taking-so-long) choice of hotel ended up being slightly... interesting. Matt reckons it was a 'love hotel': the outside was all pink neon signs, and the inside, well, you can see for yourself below! Still, it was late, and even if the bed was better suited to someone of spherical shape (wtf!), we were tired, and so this was it for today.
We were also damn hungry and, although the neighbourhood looked somewhat lacklustre as we drove in, we had noticed a couple of little local corner restaurants. So off we fußbänged (mispronounced/New Zealand-glished German) with fingers crossed and hope in our hearts, one of these would be a little gem. Please. One of them was buzzing with locals, so this looked like us - a tiny place specialising in pizza, mussels and gnocchi (don't know the name, but it was just here). Absolutely no tourists around, and whoooo-boy, had we hit Italian gold... mmmmmm mmm mmmmm. Matt was in pizza heaven. So good, and so cheap.
Matt even snuck back with an extra pizza for a midnight snack in our room... mmmmm... real Italian pizza... mmmmmmmmmm.
("nom nom reeeaaal piiiizzaaaaa nom nom nom piiiizzzaaaaaa nom nom", goes the Matt)
In the end we made it to the wedding location - Château La Villatade, close to Carcassonne in the south of France... but it was cold! Sort of. Actually, not really, but we weren't used to this 18c-ish temperature... singlets changed to t-shirts, shorts to trousers and Matt even put a jersey on... now... time to meet all of Tamlyn & Sami's rellies, help put this wedding together, and of course, Matt needed to get back to writing that best man speech (how come it wasn't writing itself??).
No comments:
Post a Comment