Week 5 – Wednesday July 28 – Ferry to Rome / Ciao

Today is Thursday, I'm sitting in a square in Frascati, which is an ancient town on a hill to the South West of Rome – just outside the Rome ring road. This is my last blog entry because we're now in wind down mode and having a relaxing day wandering round Frascati, looking in motor bike shops and preparing to pack our stuff for the long flight home. We drop the car at the Peugeot barn in the middle of gravel pit near to Rome's Fumicino airport eraly in the morning to leave for Singapore at Midday. We have a day in Singapore at the Transit Hotel, before flying home to New Zealand, where we expect to be home by mid-afternoon on Sunday, having cleared out tent through customs and negotiated the different luggage limits between internation and national air travel. We are OK internationally, not so good nationally so let's see how that goes after 36 hours of travel.

Yesterday we took the ferry from Olbia to Civitavecchia. Strangely enough, despite all the ferry routes that Moby runs to all the different locations at all the different times, the boat the we ended up on for travelling from Olbia to Civitavecchia is the same boat that we took from Genova to Bastia about 3 weeks ago. As per the last trip, the sailing was dead flat, with absolutely no wind. Even the seat we got was the same seat that we had last time, OK, it was 10 feet away, but that was by choice. The ferry left 10 minutes early, sailed on a sea that was like a mirror and docked 45 minutes late – how does that work? Maybe it was the tides – I don't know.

Getting on the ferry at the ground floor, and having parked two levels higher on the previous trip, I mistakenly believed that I was as low as I could go, until the man directing traffic told me to drive down the ramp. I'm not sure how far below the water line we were parked, but it was a long, hot, claustaphobia inducing climb up the stairs to our seats on the 8^th floor.

The drive from Civitavecchia to the hotel was about 100ks and getting back into mainland traffic on a busy arterial road and ring road, was a bit of an eye opener after weeks of cruising round on the slow roads of Corsica and Sardinia. We stopped off 5ks short of the hotel at our favourite shop in Europe – Decathlon to stock up on some sports tops, then headed round to our hotel in Frascati. Frascati is another of these cobble-stoned towns, but the roads are less even, narrower and steeper than just about anywhere else we've driven and the convoluted nature of the town threw the GPS into a bit of a tail spin, but we negotiated our way around that. Having just described how tricky the roads are, a Ferarri 308GTS has just cruised by on them, so they can't be too bad. I guess it's what you're used to.

So that's it. We've had a great time. We're looking forward to getting back home, cheap and cheerful aisan meals on Sunday nights and having a big juicy steak.,

See you all soon.

Ciao.

Week 5 – Tuesday July 27 – Olbia

As I write this, I'm sitting on the ferry going from Olbia to Civitavecchia, the port to the west of Rome. We spent Tuesday in Olbia, which was a town that appears to only be alive when the sun goes down, or when the boat comes in – and when the boats come in, they come in massive bursts. Arriving at the port to catch our ferry, there were already four boats in port and while we were waiting to board, another 4 large ferries arrived. It's great watching the marshalls directing all the cars that are coming and going. If you're not quick enough, you get a blast.

We checked out of the Hotel Monti Di Mola in Porto Cervo late in the morning and drove the short distance to Olbia to stay the night at the imaginatively named “Hotel For You”, which is right in the centre of Olbia and only a minute from the Ferry Terminal. We went for a walk around the centre of Olbia in the early afternoon, and while it appeared nice enough, there was virtually nobody around, it was the same at 6pm when we went out for a snack and even at 8:30 when we went out for dinner, it was still very quiet.

We did manage to find a very nice restaurant at the side of a square and had a really nice meal. They did have an interesting surpise to add interest to the evening. When we were seated the waitress came out with two small plates, each with a little pill on it that looked like a big asprin with the restaurants initials on it, which she offered firstly to Anne. “What is it?”. The waitress poured water on in it and the large pill expanded to about twice its width and four times its height to reveal that it was infact a face towell. OK, so the result isn't that that interesting, but the way that it was presented was.

After dinner, we sat in the square listening to a guitar duo playing some Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd songs. The guitar work was really good, even if the singing wasn't quite so good. Walking back to the hotel via the same quiet streets we'd walked along to get to the restaurant, we were amazed at the transformation. All the cobbled streets had been closed off and a large night market had started up, about 20 restaurants had stretched out into the mall area and there were people everywhere – it was great and we wandered around amongst the throng for about an hour before retiring to the hotel to prepare our stuff for an early departure in the morning.

Week 5 – Monday July 26 – Porto Cervo

Today is a day by the pool, but that doesn't mean I have nothing to tell you about. This hotel is really lovely – tiny at only 21 rooms and all built around a swimming pool. The room is a good size, airconditioned, with french doors opening out to the pool area and a good decent sized bathroom. So why the world's smallest shower? It looks like a sci-fi work of art, a semi-circular shape, with two doors in the middle that open regally to let you enter and exit, all manner or shelves to put things on, even a seat, but it barely manages to make it into the third dimension, so once you've slid the two doors apart, entered, and closed them, there is barely enough room to turn around, let alone get your hands above your head to wash your hair. If you are the sort of person that likes to shave your legs, the only way you can do this is to turn around to face the wall, lift your foot, place it on the seat, then reach behind you, fling the doors open, then stick your bum out the door as you bend over to carry out your business. Flinging the door open was discovered as Anne's second attempt as the first attempt resulted in a perfect pressed ham against the shower doors, which was immediately followed by a bump as she hit her head against the wall. This morning, when I finished my shower, I flung the doors open and announced “Thanks for beaming me up, Scotty. Not only have I arrived, but I have been delivered clean”.

This afternoon, having spent considerable time lying by the pool, reading and swimming, I retired to our room to lie down in the cool of the room and read my book. Anne was sitting outside the open French doors and there was no one else around, so we had the place to ourselves. An hour later, still lying on the bed reading, I had my own “Man from the other end of the shower block” moment, when Anne came in and kicked me and said....... “Do you mind, there's about 20 people sitting out here”. Goodness, I thought as I emerged from the room to find that indeed the popluation levels had increased considerably and they were all sitting there reading, minding their own business – it was like the place was a library, but for the odd interuption.

End of Week 4 – Sunday July 25 – Porto Cervo

Sadly / happily, camping is over for this holiday. Sadly, because we've really enjoyed the camping and it's made the times that we've stayed in hotels seem really special. Happily because our last 5 days of the holiday will be in hotels in Sardinia and just out of Rome.

We've been sweeping the outside of the tent everyday for the last few days to get all the bugs, pine needles and dust of it, so that it's very clean when we bring it back into New Zealand. This morning we were up at 7am to do our final washing for the holiday, before packing up the tent for the final time. We did the best job yet and it's all very neatly folded away and we're very expert at it now, so if customs want to see it when we come back, we can errect it and dismantle it very quickly. We threw away the ground sheet and the airbed and gave our table and two chairs to the family beside us, who didn't have any and they seemed very appreciative for the extra equipment.

There were naturally enough a few formalities to complete before we were allowed to leave the campground, but once they were done, we were on the road to Porto Cervo and two days in a 21 room hotel. I've put some photos of it up, and it really is lovely. We are on the ground floor, with direct access to the pool, which we are spending quite a lot of time beside.

We had lunch at the Porto Cervo Marina, which was totally dead. This is where all the rich and famous hang out (Paris was night clubbing here last week) and what shops there are are very upmarket, but what is rich one year, is not so much another year, and this is obviously one of those not-so-rich years. After 4 weeks of pasta, pizza and seafood, the offer of club sandwich and cheese burger and chips from the Lord Nelson Pub was to good to turn down. There were some big boats in the marina, but the one that caught my eye was the Rigid Hull Inflatable with 3 x 350 HP outboards on the back of it. That's over 1,000HP – quick, you bet!

For dinner we walked to Trattoria Caprese and had a stunning meal with a whole fresh fish to accompany my spagghetti, tomatoes, parsley, garlic etc. etc. It was quite an expensive option (but I didn't figure that till it arrived), but the staff obviously appreciated it because they gave us a bottle of Limoncello and Meloncello each to finish the meal and ourselves off.

Week 4 – Saturday July 24 – Tempio Pausania

This morning, the pigeons have been silenced, the weather's turned, the wind has come up over night and the temperature has plumetted to 26 degrees. Down at the beach nobody is going near the beach as it has turned into a vicious dumping surf that rolls big waves up to about 8 feet that only break when they hit the shore – bone breaking stuff. A few people who know what they're doing are out windsurfing and kitesurfing and look like they're having an absolute blast.

Anne and I headed inland today to the small town of Tempio Pausania. We had great fun when we arrived there, as we followed the signed to the Centro, expecting to find a car park somewhere along the way, but instead in one turn we went from a normal two lane asphalted road to a narrow, winding, cobble-stoned pedestrian infested maze that we had to negotiate our way through. Some of the turns were so tight, that I had to take a couple of bites at it to get the car round. The fact that the inside corner had very menacing looking iron protectors put on them, so that the cars wouldn't damage the stone work made the task all the more hair raising. The total journey would probably only have been half a kilometre, but with a turn every 50 metres and pedestrians everywhere (the concept of a footpath hadn't been invented when this town was built) it was quite a nerve racking experience. The one thing we didn't come across was anywhere to park, so we had to head to the outskirts of town to find somewhere to park and then write down where we were incase we got lost in the maze that is Tempio Pausania.

We went for a walk around the town and stopped at the Tourist Information Centre, to understand where we'd parked the car. There was an english woman in the queue and she was wanting to know where the shops were. The man behind the counter was explaining this to her (Tempio is a small town remember), when she said “and are these large shops”.....”mmmm, not so big” was his reply. Ah, it's a historic town, with a big church and lots of interesting streets and piazzas and other things to look out for – shops – go to Rome.

We've come across a trend in Sardinia – interesting little towns, with no where to eat. After yesterday's less than brilliant lunch we were in no mood to chance it, but Tempio had absolutely nothing that even tempted us, which was a shame as it really is a lovely little town.

We are checking out of the campground tomorrow morning, which meant that we had to pay up this afternoon. The campground appears to have had it's processes designed by the accounting department of the local university, because although they are effective in delivering some form of control, they get a big fat zero for their customer friendliness. When you order a coffee, rather than the person on the till writing your order on a post-it note and sticking it on the coffee machine for the Barista to make, here you are handed a ticker tape of your order which you have to give to the Barista. One morning Anne was the only person there and the cash register driver and the Barista were standing talking to each other while Anne was giving her order and paying for it. When she had finished she went and sat down. “Scoozi, Signora.... where is your ticket”. “What, you were standing there when I ordered – it's two capaccino's, how hard can it be to just make the coffee” is what we thought..... “oooh, sorry, here it is” is what we said of course – too polite some times.

Anyway, I digress.... Checking out.... At 4pm, the day before we checked out, we had to pay up. Now when you check in they always take your passport as a guarantee. When I paid the bill, I of course wanted the passport back, but no, I had to collect that the next morning. Wrong – you have my money, I want my passport. After the third repetition of my side of the argument she relented and gave me the passport back. I figured out the next morning why she wanted to keep it, but basically it is just poor process to make up for inadequate processes elsewhere.

Saw a funny thing in the camp supermarket this afternoon. It's quite a large supermarket for a campground and sells everything – food, water, softdrinks wine, beer, toilettries, camping, beach, and sporting equipment. It's all very well laid out, so that all the toiletries are together, all the drinks together etc. The checkouts show the same lack of customer focus as the rest of the campground and European supermarkets in general, so it always takes a while to get through the queues, and “express lanes” - forget it. Anyway, Anne and I were there with our usual daily – 1 cold beer, 1 cold sparkling mineral water, 1 packet of crisps order waiting patiently in the queue. The couple in front of us were getting their goods scanned, when the husband headed off into the sporting goods section and comes back 30 seconds later and thumps a box down on the counter. With nothing else to do, Anne and I both looked at what the late breaking item of sporting equipment was that had to be purchased....... a 6 pack of condoms. Really, sporting goods.... OK. Anne and I did our best not to look at each other because another immature bout of the giggles felt remarkably imminent. I was tempted to say “we're open until 7:30 if you'll be needing anything else, but kept my comments to myself. As for the size of the box, well, you'd have to be hung like a garden hose to need a box that big for 6 condoms.

I mentioned yesterday that we'd seen the big vats of wine in the little dairy in Maddalena. We saw one of our neighbours in the campground taking a big flask of wine and filtering it into individual bottles. I would have loved to see what the bottles were, because they were all identically labelled and from the looks of the label, it looked quite nice. His secret is safe with us.

Week 4 – Friday July 23 – Maddalena

In our posh campsite, there are a number of camping companies as well as the freedom campers like us, who bring all our own gear. With the camping companies, you just rock up and the tent is all set up and fully kitted out with everything you need for a luxury camping holiday, except your clothes. You can either rent a tent or a small bungalow. We've just been checking out prices and it's not cheap. Eurocamping charge 200 Euros per night for a 2 room bungalow, although with the current economic climate you can get about 400 Euros off per week if you book at the last minute – 1,400 down to 1,000 Euros for a weeks camping. The tent option is currently about 550, down from 800, so still quite pricey, although we'd pay over 300 Euros for our site for a week.

Today we went to Maddalena via ferry from Palua. Getting onto the ferry was a bit of a mission. Firstly, the ticket office closed just as we got to the front of the queue (of 2 people) because the girl was having a smoking break. Getting the hump with her, we went to another ferry operator whose ferry was just about to leave and tried to buy tickets as we got on the boat, but the guy selling the tickets was also directing the cars, so he wanted us to leave our passports with him until he could sell us the tickets. You guessed it, we weren't giving him our passports, so we got the hump with him, so we went back to smoking girl, who by now had had her smoke and was back into customer service mode.

When we got onto the ferry, we tried to climb the stairs to get to the top deck but there was a rope across the stairs, so we went to the other end of the boat and climbed the other set of stairs and then walked round the boat to sit on the seats that were on the top of the stairs with the rope over them. We then spent the next 15 minutes watching everybody climb up the stairs and over the rope to get to the area when we were sitting. When absolutely everybody who could be inconvenienced had either climbed over the rope, or gone to the other end of the boat to climb the other stairs, a member of the crew came along, untied the rope and then took it away...... WTF?

Maddalena is a beautiful town (quite a big town actually), with lots of shops and quaint little streets and piazzas. What it does lack however is a decent restaurant, as Anne and I can now confirm that we have eaten Italy's worst pizza for lunch, but that's OK, you've got to have one dud in 5 weeks of holiday.

Prior to lunch, we walked all around the town and the port area. Finding a small shop, we went in a bought a 1.5litre bottle of Fanta. While we were getting it from the fridge (now that is luxury) we noticed the big vats of wine at the back of the shop, which people obviously come in and fill their flagons with. As we drink pitcher's of wine in the restaurants most of the time, we are well used to seeing them being filled from big dispensers in the restaurants, but this was the first time we'd seen them available to the general public.

The campground has a vast array of restaurants, self-service food areas, bars etc, but they can be a bit Hi-de-hi-ish, so fortunately there is some good pizza restaurants just along the beach from the campground, so we go there each night and have a meal and then there is usually a singer, so we listened to a woman on the terrace overlooking the sea, while people danced and sat around talking, before sauntering off home about midnight for a good night's sleep before the pigeons no doubt get back onto their koo-ing again in the morning.

Week 4 – Thursday July 22 – Palau / San Pantaleo / Porto Cervo

Nobody give me a gun. I am so over these koo-ing bloody pigeons. It doesn't matter where you are in a hotel or a campground, there is always one around doing their incessant koo-ing. I was trying to sleep this morning as the daylight started to drift across the campground and all I could hear was a throng of pigeons koo-ing all around the campground. It didn't help that I got in my head, during my half slumber, that they were all repeating the same thing over and over again – some a bit louder, some abit faster, but always the same thing...... ma balls hurt....., ma balls hurt, they all koo-ed from all corners of the campground, then one would get agitated and start Koo-ing faster..... ma balls hurt, my balls hurt..... then one right above the tent in full volume..... MA BALLS HURT, MA BALLS HURT.... oh well, with all this racket going on, I might as well get up.

I have mentioned my “help me sparky” moment with the pigeons to Anne, and she can confirm that yes inddeed, that does sound like what they are saying. She has also thanked me for introducing her to this information, because now rather than just hearing an annoying bird koo-ing, she can hear something quite different – and offputting. Oh well, you try your hardest.

One thing that I forgot to mention yesterday was that for an extra 11 Euros per night, it is possible to get “private” facilities. A small lockable cubicle that has the full range of amenities – toilet, bidet, hand basin and shower. As the facilities we have are already TOTR, we saved the 11 Euros for other things, although Anne does look longingly at them each time we walk past and comment on how other people have been lucky enough to rent them. Actually, this campground is by far the most expensive one we've stayed in working out at around 50 Euros per night in a classy campground. Sardinia is very expensive even by European standards, so we were expecting to pay more, but this place really is something else. When you arrive, they give you a big brochure all about their campground and the other campgrounds in their group, then they drive you round on golf carts to show you sites that might be “suitable”. Everywhere else we've been shoved a photo copied map into your hand and tells you to “come back with the site number when you've chosen the site you want”. The reception staff like their rules however and it does feel a bit like the army when you arrive, but once you're free of the reception staff, it is a very lovely campground and we do have staff around every day to rake up any pine needles that might have had the audacity to fall from the trees.

Today we visited three places – Palau, San Pantaleo and Porto Cervo. Palau is a small town on the coast that is the leaving point for all the boats that do the island trips around the North Eastern corner of Sardinia. The boat trips leave at 10:30 in the morning, are back at around 6pm and take you to a number of islands where they drop you off for a couple of hours swimming at each place. Having determined that this was the full extent of the entertainment offered by all the boats running the route, we decided we didn't need to do it. For what seems like a fairly sparsely inhabited island, there seems to be an extortionate number of boat services available. 20 minutes ferry sailing from Palau is an island with a largish town in it called Maddalena. There are 3 large car ferry companies servicing this very short route, with 4 – 5 boats that each go a dozen times each way per day (including all through the night on the hour). Between Maddalena and Palua, it feels like the Wellington to Eastbourne ferry, but with bigger boats more often – goodness knows what they are all doing.

After Palau, we visited San Pantaleo, a small historic inland town, that was having a market day when we arrived. It is set below some very dramatic rocky mountains and is a very picturesque setting with all the market umbrellas and the rocky mountains high above them. We stopped for lunch in San Pantaleo, before continuing on to Porto Cervo, which is on the east coast of the island. This is the Port on the Costa Smeralda where all the rich and famous come for their holidays (and where Paris Hilton went nightclubbing with Flavio Briatore about a week ago – sounds like a grandfather and daughter evening).

Week 4 – Wednesday July 21 – Sardinia

The ferry ride to Sardinia takes 50 minutes and the views as you leave Bonifacio are stunning. Firstly, there is the dramatic cliff sided harbour entrance, then the township at top the cliffs, with some pretty amazing steps down to the rocks below and finally the white cliffs stretching off into the distance.

Boat people are fatidious about cleanliness and maintenance. We first noticed this in Saint-Florent, when every boat that arrived was washed and wiped down by the crew as soon as it arrived. I remember seeing a documentary on the Royal Yacht Britania and they made a big thing about how much work went into keeping everything clean and polished and thinking “what a fagg”, but it appears that sort of treatment is standard for all these boats and not even just the really big boats. We saw one husband and wife tie up their “little” boat (probably half a million worth) and the setting about in their speedos and bikini and spend the next hour washing it down. Now what is really, really surprising is that the ferries are at it as well. Both the Genova – Bastia and now the Bonifacio to Santa Teresa ferry got washed down while they were in port and both of them, despite appearing to be freshly painted, were getting a new coat of paint applied to some part of them.

We are now in the campground in Sardinia for our last 4 days of camping and boy have we hit the big stakes and we are now officially “Glamping”. Each excessively large toilet cubicle has a toilet, bidet and handbasin, while each exceptionally large shower cubicle also has a hand basin as well. There is not a drop of paint in any of the ablutions blocks because they are all tiled from floor to ceiling and also on the floor. There is no dust in the campground from when people drive past because paving stones don't allow dust to be created. The paving stones extend outside the campground and onto the “boardwalk” along the top of the beach. There is also a large market, a restaurant, a bar and a galiteria on site. There are also a whole range of existing facilities, so you can just rock up and stay in a chalet, a caravan or a fully fitted out tent. These are the companies like Eurocamping that provide these facilities., so it can be a bit Hi-di-hi-ish in the evenings, but after two evenings we've found that is pretty easy to avoid.

The beach itself is beautiful. You walk 5 paces into the water, which is tepid bath water warm and a beautiful turquoise blue and you are in over your head. We have an appointment there everyday at about 5pm to cool off drom a days site-seeing / relaxing or whatever it is we've been doing.

The campground is in Baia Vignole and there is a small village just along from the campground that has a couple of restautants. We went to one of these restaurants tonight for dinner, which was very nice.

Week 4 – Tuesday July 20 – Bonifacio

Things are slowing down a wee bit at this stage, which is nice – it's supposed to be a holiday and we've seen heaps, so we're having longer lunches and dinners, watching Le Tour from our hotel room, not doing too much driving, doing more swimming etc. We're fairly well adapted to the heat at this stage and although it's mid 30's everyday at the moment, the sun doesn't burn to anything like the extent it does in New Zealand, so 4 weeks in and my arms which haven't really seen any sun tan lotion are nicely browned and my face which sees sun tan lotion daily is also tanned. In the interests of health of the general population, everything else stays covered up most of the time, so it's all still white.

I'm not sure what's happening to me, but after years of ridiculing them (and I can hear my sister starting to laugh now), I am starting to see a pair of Crocs in my future. Is that how you spell them – Crocks..... Crox.... who knows, but you know what I mean... those dreadful gumboots, cum sandals that come in all sorts of garish colours (plus black fortunately) that people seem to swear by. After 4 weeks in a campground, where my rubber jandals have always been too tight between by big and second toe, and my posh Merrel leather slip ons gave me a rash on both big toes after a morning of intense walking round Porto Vecchio, I might just have to succumb to buying a pair of Crocs for camping at Christmas.

After two days in Porto Vecchio, we now have a night in a hotel in Bonifacio, from where we catch the ferry to Sardinia tomorrow. We checked into our hotel at lunch time and fortunately the room was available. This one is much bigger than the previous two nights and is a five story building, with the ground floor on the marina and the top floor on the road to the town, so reception and the carpark is on the top floor.

Prior to lunch we went for a walk up to the top of the cliffs to get a view back over Bonifacio's uptown (Haute Ville). It's yet another steep climb, which had the archilles screaming by the time we got to the top. Once you're there though, you can walk along the top of the white cliffs and get magnificent views of the cliffs, the sea, the Haute Ville and the superyachts sailing in the sea below.

Lunch was again down at one of the Marina side restaurants. I amused myself for half an hour observing the expressions on pieces faces as they trod on a small deposit made by a small dog outside the neighbouring restaurant.

We watched the Tour de France for a couple of hours in the afternoon, before pre-dinner drinks and drinks down on the marina. Walking to the restaurant I noticed that there were two Euro coins on the ground outside a couple of the restaurants, which I'd never seen before. Remembering the previous restaurant's antics, I walked on without bending down. Outside the next restaurant, we observed a woman bending down to pick up something on the ground, then stand up and walk, looking back to see the waiting staff laughing at her. Sure enough, as we walked past, there was a 2 Euro coin stuck to the concrete.

Week 4 – Monday July 19 – Porto Vecchio

OK, so this hotel is small. It reminds me of the Who's Line Is It Anyway skit, where one person had to be standing, one sitting and one lying down. If we're both awake, then only one person can be standing in the bedroom. I realised this today, as I bounded across the bed, as it was the only way I was going to get to the other side of the hotel room. Never mind, it has a bed you don't have to get on your knees to get onto, our own private shower and airconditioning, so who's complaining.

The morning started with a very lengthy walk down to the main part of town, followed by a longer walk to the port accompanied by a large bottle of water. Lucky we had that because the weather was yet again sweltering. Porto Vecchio has yet another fine harbour, full of very expensive boats but this time, there was no good restaurants near the port, as they are all up in the town at the top of a very steep hill with all the expensive shops. Shame that, because we were now at the bottom of the hill in the heat of the day and the road up the hill offered virtually no shade. Never mind, it was only about a 1 kilometre walk, about half of which was up a very steep hill. Lots of cars passed us as we made our slow progress up the hill, but fortunately when we got to the town wall all the cars were stuck in a traffic jam through the one way streets of the town, so we passed them all back again. We did a walk around the town before settling on lunch in one of the terraced restaurants at the top of the cliff that looks out over the boat harbour.

The heat of the afternoon was spent in the luxury of our airconditioned hotel room watching a stage of the Tour de France, before venturing out later in the evening for dinner.

End of Week 3 – Sunday July 18 – Bonifacio / Porto Vecchio

After one nights camping we were back into a hotel – this time in Porto Vecchio. We packed up the tent properly this time, although it did take us a couple of goes to get it into it's bag – maybe we're getting to pedantic now. The neighbours in the campground were impressed and gave us a big clap when we'd finished. We headed into Porto Vecchio for our two days in a hotel, but the traffic was absolute chaos and we couldn't check into the hotel until 2pm, so went to Bonifacio for lunch.

Walking along the Marina, a rather portly chef with a scruffy apron outside a small restaurant smiled at us and said “French?, English?”, we said English, so he explained his menu of the day to us and pointed to his only diners as they were having the two choices available. We decided after a short further walk that between the chef and his food that what he had to offer looked pretty good, so we went back to enjoy his lunch. Well what a treat. Apart from the food, which was superb and all home made and fresh, it was a real show. He now had 4 paying customers, so business was slow. After cooking our lunch, he was out with a baguette to entertain some childen by throwing it to the fish. After boring of that we headed back into the kitchen..... 2 minutes later he was back with a fishing rod. One of the waiter's walked past shaking his head.... “he's never fished before” This immediately became obvious, but it kept him and the kids amused for 15 minutes. At which point, the fishing line somehow turned into a birds nest, so he was back out with a big kitchen knife to deal to it. The bird's nest was handed to one waiter, while another waiter who could see the eyes on the fishing rod was employed rethreading the fishing rod. Next thing the waiter with the bird's nest had untangled it and attached it to a 5 Euro note which he had placed on the walkway to catch out anyone who bent down to try and pick it up. The restaurant must do these sort of antics regularly because all the waiters at the other restaurants were watching the 5 Euro note to see who bent down to pick it up.

It really was very entertaining and kept everyone very amused for half an hour. The chef then came over to talk to us and once he knew we were kiwis had lots of rugby stories – he had lunch with Berbizier yesterday, had met Phil Kingsley-Jones, Serge Blanco had dined at this restaurant and he obviously enjoyed his rugby because he gave me a much more indepth analysis of the French team than I ever could of the All Blacks.

We checked into our hotel in Porto Vecchio and caught up with the latest stage of Le Tour before heading out in the evening for dinner in Porto Vecchio. Walking round the town, we were amazed at the shops. Unlike Bonifacio, these weren't for us. We saw some very nice Stella McCartney shoes that had been discounted from 750 Euros to 475 – Bargain. The restaurants were also a cut above, with some very exclusive dining to be had. Anne and I found a nice little pizzeria and had a really nice meal.

Week 3 – Saturday July 17 – Bonifacio

We had planned to spend one more day in Sagone, but we'd done everything we wanted to do, so we decided to pack up and head to Bonifacio because all the photos we've seen of it look amazing. Again we were up early and packed the campsite in very short time, but by our now quite exacting standards the job done on the tent was a bit below par, but it passed muster, as we were back in a tent again tonight. By this stage of the holidays, we are going to be about 50/50 between hotels and campgrounds, so we are looking forward to 2 or maybe 3 days in hotels before our final 4 days camping in Sardinia.

We pushed on early back past Ajaccio and on through a number of small towns before finally running out of steam and stopping at the picturesque town of Sartene for breakfast at about 11am. Sartene is set high in the mountains and to get up to the town we had to climb some very steep steps before arriving in yet another cobble-stoned ancient village square. Arriving back at the car an hour and a half later, the car indicated 45 degrees, which wasn't a true reading of the outside temperature, but a good indication of how hot it was inside the car. Fortunately we'd put towels over the dash, the steering wheel and the gear stick, so I was able to drive the car without getting blistered hands, but it still took about twenty minutes for the airconditioning to cool down the dash.

Our campground book warned us that tonights camp was down a narrow bumpy road, but after 2 ks of a tarsealed 4 wheeled drive track, I said to Anne, “I saw a 3 star campground 15ks back towards Bonifacio, so let's head there. To cut a long story short, campground self assessments are not an exercise in reality, so having rejected that one, we headed to another recommended campground further away from Bonifacio than the first two that we had rejected. The day was fast heading for toys out of the cot time, but fortunately when we got to the 3^rd campground, it was brilliant so we chose a spot under a tree for one night and then headed into Bonifacio for lunch and some historic town site-seeing.

Wow, Bonifacio – what a find. A brilliant little town, much bigger than the others we've encountered in in Corsica and sort of a cross between Montipulciano and Dubrovnic. Montipulciano for the energy sapping hills you have to climb to get up to it and Dubrovnic for the walled city with lots of little streets and quiet piazzas. Bonifacio is a town built in two parts – the lower part, by the port with the usual wide range of boats, yachts and superyachts – and of course heaps of restaurants all around the marina..

There were two particularly large superyachts – Xanadu and Lady Sheridan. Xanadu left port late in the afternoon and then the following day, Anne read in the Daily Mail (that paragon of intellectual virtue) that Paris Hilton has flown into Figari Airport (which is just out of Bonifacio), got on a boat and headed to Sardinia, which is 25 miles away, so we suspect she might have been on Xanadu. I googled Xanadu superyacht (about 200 ft) and it is available for charter for between $Euro240,000 and $325,000 per week although in these troubled times, I suspect you could probably get it for $Euro200,000. You can rent boats around here on a daily rate – rigid inflatatbles from between 3,000 and 10,000 Euros per week. The big speed boats go for about 2000 Euros a day and burn 120 litres of fuel an hour – a beach towel, volley ball and a parir of swimming shoes will provide the same fun at a fraction of the cost.

Then there is the upper town, which after a long walk in very hot temperatures, which nearly spelt the end of us, is the really charming part of town. Narrow streets, tall buildings, little piazzas, shops with stuff we could buy (I'll come back to that when we get to Porto Vecchio – eh, Stella) and absolutely amazing view. The upper town is built at the top of white chalk cliffs which provides amazing views of the port and Marina and the white cliffs running down the coast towards Porto Vecchio.

We had Dinner in Bonifacio at a very nice restaurant that we've eaten at twice now. Each time we get given a nice table then get upgraded to a better one because a large “influential” group comes along that needs our wee table to make a table big enough for all of them, so we get upgraded to a marina side table. After dinner we drove the 30ks back to campground and headed to the bar to use their wifi, because I'd been off the air since Ajaccio. It all went very well until it hit 11pm, when they turned all the lights out and told us we were welcome to sit there for as long as we liked as long as we didn't make any noise.

Week 3 – Friday July 16 – Cargheze, Piana and Porto

Got up and got going early today because it really gets hot around midday, so we like to have done all our walking by about 1pm so we can spend a couple of hours out of the sun over lunch. Today we are going to Porto, which is about 45ks north of Sagone. Heading around the coast, we got to the small town of Cargheze, where we stopped for breakfast. Getting through town was a bit of a mission in this narrow single street town. The Corsicans were doing their best to disrupt the traffic by continuing their habit of parking anywhere that suits them, even if it brings a whole towns commerce to a halt while they are doing whatever it was they stopped to do.

We parked the car in a carpark just on the outskirts of town and then walked the 100 metres back to the centre of town to take up a spot in a cafe at the towns only intersection to observe the traffic chaos that was being created in this two horse town. I didn't envy the truck driver who had to negotiate his way through town, but he did very well. The whole event took on a slightly United Nations atmosphere as the Swiss arrived to provide their own version of self interest and to show that there was more to them than cuckoo clocks and chocolate. After several minutes of horns tooting and vigorous gesturing, the Swiss delegation was duly despatched and we were left with just the normal traffic chaos to amuse ourselves with. The Petit Dejeune for $E5.50 was perfection – coffe au lait, croisant, bread roll and an orange juice.

Moving on from Cargheze, our next stop was Piana, the next small town along the coast. This was a wonderful little town with a couple of little piazzas with restaurants all around them and a stunning view of the sea and coast below. It was only midday by the time we'd walked all around Piana, so too early for lunch, so we pushed on to Porto.

2ks out of Piana, we came across the Calanche de Piana – 1000ft sheer red jagged pipe organ rock cliffs that go from the sky to the sea. The road round and through them is very narrow – ostensibly 1 lane, with passing bays periodically, but the views are very dramatic with the vivid blue skies and the red rocks and then the winding road running through it all.

Porto was a disappointment, infact Porto was a turn around point to go back through the Calanches, which were totally free of traffic on the return journey despite being traffic jam central on the way through. Piana had looked like a great place for lunch and indeed it was as we found a very nice little restaurant on one of the Piazzas, the highlight being the Ile Flotante for desert.

Weary of grey underpants man, we avoided the pool today and on the return trip from Piana, stopped at a tiny beach, uninhabited by European standards (only about 30 people). Given the 35 degree temperatures, the swim in the sea was just heaven – at no stage was it cold, but it was just cool enough to be completely refreshing.

Dinner at night, was a repeat of the previous night outside the tent. The frogs were silent as we ate, but the wildlife was still keeping us entertained as a bee started hassling us. Anne taking on her roles as Doctor Doolittle, pulled off a small piece of Jambon and placed it on the far end of the table, then tapped her finger on the table beside it until the bee got the message that his food was over there and he wasn't to disturb us while we ate ours. For the next two hours, the bee kept itself occupied cutting off small bee-sized portions and flying off with them back to its hive, which we were to discover the following morning.

Before we finished dinner, a grey cat and her four kittens came past our campsite, so they were treated to the remainder of the Jambon before they headed off on a night of frog catching no doubt, as the frogs were once again croaking and once again would croak all the way till morning.

Week 3 – Thursday July 15 – Sagone

Ajaccio's claim to fame is as the birthplace of Napoleon. He was born on the 15th of August 1759. Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents on noble Italian ancestry and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. Bonaparte rose to prominence under the First French Republic and led successful campaigns against the various European Coalitions that were fighting against France. In 1799, he staged a Coup and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him Emperor. In the first decade of the nineteenth centure, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts - the Napoleonic Wars - involving every major European power. After a series of victories, France secured a dominant position in continental Europe, and Napoleon maintained the French sphere on influence through the formation of extensive alliances and the appointment of friends and family members to rule other European countries as French client states.

The French invasion of Russia in 1812 marked a turning point in Napoleon's fortunes. His army was badly defeated in the campaign and never fully recovered. In 1813, another coalition countries who had tired of having their noses bloodied by this power hungry little Frenchman, defeated his forces at Leipzip; the following year the Coalition invaded France, forced Napoleon to abdicate and exiled him to the island of Elba. Less than a year later, he escaped Elba and returned to power, but was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon spent the last 6 years of his life in confinement by the British on the island of Saint Helena. An autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer, though scientists have since conjectured he was poisoned with arsenic.

Today was just a short drive to Sagone about 40ks north of Ajaccio for a couple of nights camping to use as a base to do some site-seeing around the coast. This campground is very big, with a restaurant and swimming pool and we have a great shaded site at the back of the campground. The campground like all of them comes recommended by a book that we have and at first appearances, it seems quirk free – toilets with seats and paper, shower cubicles with all the right space and cubicle layout, showers separated from toilets, a fully functioning laundromat with a washer and dryer – could it be perfection. Then it happened........ Hi day Hi, Cammm Pears..... ok, it wasn't that bad, but it did have a sing-a-long by the pool from 8:30pm (which we were fortunately mostly out of earshot of), the running bus at 8:30 and aqua jogging at 9:30.

Anyway, we set up our camp without drama then headed into Sagone for lunch. Despite being the high season, Sagone was largely empty and each of the four restaurants on the beach only had one couple in each and none of the beach attractions – jetskis, hobbie cats etc – were doing any business. We've felt all the way around that the place was quiet, but we are now into the high season and it was a shock to see how quiet things were.

Returning to the campground in the heat of the afternoon, we headed for the pool. We must have raised the average age of the pool dwellers by 10 years with our arrival and were probably the oldest people there. That is when we saw the worst site we have seen from a cyclist ever. We had seen these two guys arrive on their tandem bike towing their little trailer, but in non matching outfits. Fortunately, they were doing the right things on their bikes and wearing black cycling shorts, but luggage constraints had obviously precluded them from being able to fit swimming togs in, so instead they had resorted to wearing their underpants, their grey underpants, their grey see-through when wet underpants. And when I say see-through, do I mean see-through. I'm surprised they weren't arrested.

Anyway, having got through that shock, we had a very informal meal by our tent of provisions we had bought from the supermarket next door. As the sun set, the frogs started croaking, and croak they did until the sun came up the next morning. It's actually quite a mesmerising sound if there's an army of them, which there was, so the didn't effect our sleep as much as the sleep aoepnea patient in the tent in the next pitch.

Week 3 – Wedneday July 14 – Ajaccio

No sweat, no stress, no fuss – the tent was packed in about 5 minutes this morning – got it sussed. Today is Bastille Day in France, the second year in a row we have been here for France's most important holiday – my words and I've got no internet connection, so I can't verify what I've said is true.

Today we drove down to Ajaccio, where we're staying a night in the hotel. Like most drives in Corsica it's not too long or too fast. Back over our favourite Col de Lavezzo, through Corte and then over the Col de Vizzavona, which was spectacular. Up at over 1150 metres with huge mountains towering over us and a narrow windy road, with steep inclines and declines. Saw a number of cyclists, which made me think “mad buggers”, but good on them for doing it. We saw the downside of cycling tonight (15^th July), but I'll come to that later.

A bit of a quiet day today, as we're in a hotel tonight and the Tour De France is on TV, so we kicked back and relaxed for the afternoon at the hotel and watched the 10 stage of the tour, that finished in Gap.

In the evening, we walked the 45 minutes into Ajaccio Centre along the waterfront, but it wasn't the nice Frank Kitts type waterfront and in several places we had to head overland to find the “track” that would take us into the centre of town. Not knowing Ajaccio and what it was like after dark, I was slightly concerned that by the time we returned home in the dark, that this part of the port could turn into an unlit dinjy crime zome. Not to worry though, we walked home in Milan at 1am in the morning, so this couldn't be too bad. I also decided that the cars parked around where we were walking we of such a quality that it seemed like a pretty reasonable area.

We finished dinner at about 10:30 and were starting our walk back, just as the sky came alive to the sight and sounds of the Bastille Day fireworks display over the harbour. Where do people go to watch a harbour fireworks display – the waters edge of course. Our route home had been transformed into party central (without the need to knock down any sheds) and our entire walk home we were doing our best to weave our way through the throngs of people of all ages who had congregated all along the harbourwalk to view the display. Phew, not such a bad part of town after all – we seemed to have dodged a bullet with that one.

Week 3 – Tuesday July 13 – Calvi

After yesterday's big drive round the Cape, we're on a much shorter excursion today to the coastal town of Calvi about an hour and a half drive to the South West. The first part of the journey is once again over the delightful Col de Lavezzo, with it's lovely winding road. Apart from a few very small towns, the only town of note on the journey was Ile Rousse, which isn't actually an island but more just a traffic jam. True to their “in a hurry” nature, we did observe several of the locals ducking in and out of service stations to move themselves 3 cars ahead in the traffic. It was nice starting the day with the roof down, but as we got caught in the traffic jam in Ile Rousse, the temperature was hitting 37 degrees, so it was time to put the roof up for the day.

Part of the reason that this part of Corsica is so busy in summer is that there are ferries to both Ile Rousse and Calvi from France and they are all big boats. In fact for such a small island, Corsica has a remarkable 7 ferry ports. This explains why the population of Corsica goes up 6 times over the summer months and true locals are very hard to find.

Arriving in Calvi in the late morning, we went for a walk around the town and up to the castle on the hill overlooking the city. It is a beautiful setting overlooking the harbour, with restaurants dotted all around the port.

One facit we have noticed of the sea faring set is their love of white attire. Just about every clothes shop we've seen on the West Coast of Corsica has been almost exclusively full of white cloting. I guess it puts them a cut-above because white would be totally impractical for camping or even staying in hotels because almost anywhere you go on land you get dusty.

We had lunch in a beautiful harbourside restaurant and then retired to a small bar to watch an hour of the Tour De France. This had the added bonus of allowing the queues of cars from the recently arrived ferry to disperse, so we could make our return home. Passing through Ile Rousse, we were pleased to be only minorly delayed and then had an awesome uninterrupted 25k run over the Col De Lavezzo. It really is an awesome road, and would be great on a motorbike. Because there was no other traffic, it was a great opportunity to push the car along abit, but not too much mind, because unlike James Bond's Martini, Anne prefers to be stirred (by the beauty of the scenery) and not shaken (by the rapidity of the driving).

Swim in the evening, followed by dinner by the tent of Prosciutto, cheese, bread and a bottle of rose, then a pizza at the campground restaurant and an icecream. When we arrived at the Restaurant, the waiter said something to us in French, which we didn't understand, but everybody else was laughing. Then he explained that he'd said “I take it you are here for the Tennis”, which was directly taking the piss out of our best attempts at French. Anne has been doing very well with her French, but a lot of it is contextual, so when you're in a restaurant, they're obviously going to ask you if you want a table and then what you would like to eat. When some wag says “I take it you're hear for the tennis”, we're totally lost. I got him back later when he came to collect our plates at the end of the evening, by telling him the meal wasn't up to scratch with a very straight face. It was lame, but it was the best I could do with my almost non-existent French. The waiter and the other staff did atleast appreciate my efforts to get back at him.

All most as non-existent as my french is my knowledge of the stars, but Anne has just advised that she's seen the Southern Cross, so I'd better check it out. I'm doubtful we can see it this far North, but stranger things have happened. OK, I've had two glasses of very cheap wine tonight, but there is no way that the Southern Cross is up there. I'm quite good at looking out the bedroom window in Wellington in the middle of the night and spotting it in the Southern sky and there's no way it's come up here on holiday with us.

Week 3 – Monday July 12 – Cap Corse

It's Tuesday morning and i'm enjoying a coffee and pain au raisin. All around me people are packing up their tent sites. I have just had the pleasure of watching a first timer try and get her Quechua 1 person self erecting tent folded up and back into its bag. I am pleased to report that it took 3 atempts, support from 1 experienced neighbour and even reference to the instructions before it was all put away.

Another neighbour is sweating packing us his tent, so it's good to see that I'm not the only one that finds this stuff hot work – I guess he's an IT professional as well. :-(

I will come back to you later in the day with more tent erecting exploits of some of our neighbours from last night, but in the meantime, I have a coffee to drink, a pain au raisin to eat and a small town down the coast called Calvi to drive to.

Right, here's what you need to know about Corsica. It's a small island off the coast of Italy, which you can get around in a relatively short period of time, although the windy roads keep speeds down to about 50-70kph. It's French, but that's because they bought it from the Genoese in 1769. Its history is one of constant occupation – everybody's been through here – but the Genoese and French are the most recent two. Between the Genoese (1347-1729) and French (1769-now) , there was a period of 26 years for a War of Independence, followed by 14 years of actual independence. The independence movement was led by Pasquale Paoli and there are references to him everywhere, particularly in Corte, where he established a government and a university. As I mentioned in my blog yesterday there is still a movement calling for Corsican independence, but the general population are keen for some form of limited (rather than full) autonomy. The French Government are also keen to look at ways of giving Corsica some autonomy, while keep ing them as a region of France. Corsicans have a concept of vendetta (which they try and exercise daily on the roads), based on killing anyone who wronged the family honour. It is estimated that in the 30 years from 1683 and 1715 that 30,000 out of the total 120,000 corsicans were killed by vendetta. Corsica is famous for being the birthplace of Napoleon, its cheese, tourism and wild boar. Christopher Columbus is also rumoured to have been born here, but he's rumoured to have been born most places round here – most likely Genoa according to the internet experts I've read..

Today's excursion was a trip around Cap Corse, or the Cape of Corsica. If you think of Corsica as your clenched fist, and were then to extend your middle finger vertically upwards, you would be making a rude gesture in the direction of Italy. The extended middle finger would be Cap Corse.

I'm sure the Corsicans are largely happy with this state of affairs, but would probably like to rotate their island periodically to make a similar rude gesture towards France. We had been advised to drive the route in a clockwise direction, so that you are then on the inside all the way round and aren't looking out over the vertical drop offs. This would be excellent advice but for two things. 1.) The parking areas are always on the wrong side of the road to the way you are driving, so to stop and take a photo you need to veer over to the wrong side of the road in order to get to the parking area. As most of the parking areas are in the middle of blind corners, this tended to negate the advantage somewhat. 2.) It presumes that you want to drive all the way around. Having driven the whole Cap Corse in a day, I would recommend anybody else drive up the west side of the Cap to Port Centuri, have lunch, the turn round and drive back in the direction you've come. We went right around and the East side of the island Cap was much less interesting had much faster and straighter roads and the towns were bigger, more commercial and less interesting that the ones on the way up and the views were much less dramatic, while the drivers were much more erratic.

We got on the road early to avoid the traffic, but we probably needn't have bothered because I don't think there was much traffic on the road. We stopped at various points along the way to take photos and walk around some little towns. It took us the best part of 3 hours to get to the top of the Cape, where we stopped in a little town called Morsiglia for a coffee at a little little cafe and were served by the lovely and charming Mimi. Shortly on from Morsiglia, is the port at the top of the cape called Port Centuri, where we stopped and went for a walk around the village. It really is a beautiful setting with lots of fishing boats, nets, restaurants and shops. It's obviously a favourite for the luxury yachts as well, as there were several in the harbour or moored nearby. The day was once again very hot, so we grabbed our swimming gear and went for a swim at the nearby rocky beach, which was a wonderfully refreshing way to prepare for lunch. The water was luke warm, which was just perfect.

After drying off we headed for a nearby shady restaurant for a couple of seafood salads overlooking the small port. Leaving Centuri, the road immediately turned particularly rough as there was 25ks of road works, with very little actual action being done on them. It was very frustrating as the cars coming towards us were all over the road. Sadly beyond that, as I've mentioned before the road got quite boring and the scenery could never match that of the west coast of the Cape.

After a refreshing swim at the campground swimming pool, we hit the camp shop for our knocked up meal for the evening of Prosciutto, Parma Ham, Cheese, Bread and a bottle of Rose.

Some of the tents in the campground are monsters and it's interesting watching people erecting and packing them up. It is a real procedure compared to our 5 minute job and we're very pleased that we bought the one we did because our original plan was to buy something much more elaborate. We've seen quite a few of them in various campgrounds and they really are a mission to erect. For one, they don't have a ground sheet, so are much more free form that our one. We did watch one family spend over two hours erecting theirs the other night, so all in all I think we've done well with our 'tamed python in a bag'

End of Week 2 – Sunday July 11 – Bastia

Ahhhhh...... a sleep in. Gosh we're sleeping well on this holiday. The tent with its four mesh windows – 1 per each side on the top, is beautifully cool, so we're sleeping really well despite the heat during the day. We're going to Bastia today, which is just back over the hill, so we have had a nice slow start to the day. Included in that slow start is our specially ordered pain au raisin and pain au chocolate, and today for the very first time all holiday – a take-away coffee. It might not sound like much, but it is actually really nice just to sit outside your tent nibbling on your pain au raisin and sipping on your wee coffee, with it's milk on the side in a little plastic cup – very relaxing.

The road to Bastia reminds me a lot of the Rimutakas, but with better views. When you get to the top it is possible to stand on the lookout and look one way down to the ferry terminal and harbour in Bastia and the other way down to the bay that Saint-Florent sits in. We stopped a couple of times on the way up, as there are some pretty little villages and the views back over Saint-Florent are pretty spectacular. As we approached Bastia, the road condition worsened and for one of the islands bigger towns, it's exit points are pretty shambolic. We were pleased to find an underground car park today because it keeps the car cool and means that I don't have to carry my camera and PC gear all day. Yesterday in Corte we had to park the car in the sun all day and by the time we returned, I had to spend 20 minutes changing gear with a heavy cloth because the metal gear knob was absolutely boiling.

Bastia was hot, hot, hot and there was very little respite from the sun. We did a walk abound the port and the old town, which were very beautiful. As luck would have it, it was market day today, so we had a wander round there before finding a bar at the side of the square to have an Orangina and mineral water – hitting the hard stuff, eh?

We found a very nice restaurant down in the harbour area, that had got serious about the heat wave and installed humidifiers to keep their patrons cool. Having learnt from yesterday's experience, we made sure about what we were getting for lunch and had a seafood and chicken salad, which was really nice.

The day closed with a swim in the pool back at the campground, followed by the washing which I've already mentioned and finally dinner in a Saint-Florent restaurant watching the world cup final, which I was pleased that Spain won, even though I didn't find the game particularly enjoyable to watch – nothing like the German game.

The car is going perfectly except for one minor flaw. When it arrived from the factory, there was obviously something stuck to the back windscreen which the people who prep'd it for us ripped off. What they didn't do it remove the tape that had held whatever it was to the windscreen and we didn't notice that the tape was still there. Now, the only reason I am telling you this, is that the tape on the windscreen is in exactly the position where the back windscreen folds into the boot and sits on a rubber plug, so that no met objects can damage it. So the other day when we put the roof down, everything was fine. When we put the roof up, everything was fine, except that the tape had stuck to the rubber plug and as the roof came up it ripped the plug right out. Rather that have the plug stick to the window, it then fell off somewhere down the road, so now we don't have the rubber plug protecting the windscreen, all we have is bare exposed metal – the exact thing the plug was supposed to be protecting against. My solution to this, which is working very well, is to place a well folded sock over the meta piece, so that the windscreen can't hit it. Anne is now in the practice of removing the sock from the back windscreen whenever the roof goes up, at which point, I put it back over the exposed metal ready for the next cycle. As long as we continue this for the rest of the holiday we should not have problems.

Week 2 – Saturday July 10 – Corte

Why, as I struggle for inspiration to say something amusing, entertaining or educational, am I looking at the ablutions block for my inspiration. I think I can blame Corsican drivers for my mental block – it must be places starting with C that produce the worst drivers – Croatia a few years ago was appalling and now Corsica has proven equally adept at showing little or no concern for the well being and long term health of their fellow human being.

Corsica is a small mountainous island and most of the roads are narrow and windy – an average of 50kph is not to bad in these parts. Why is it then that the locals seem in such a hurry. In an hour a half of driving this afternoon, I twice had to pull off the road to get out of the way of drivers coming at me on the wrong side of the road. When I can see round corners ahead of me, I am always on the lookout for cars coming into a corner two a breast. When I can't see round corners, I creep into the corners at the slowest speed possible just on the off chance that some clown is passing on a blind corner. This place turns defensive driving into Drive to Survive.

Today's excursion is to drive to Corte, a small town set high in the mountains of central Corsica. The road to Corte start off beautifully winding up through the moutains to Col de Lavezzo at 421m, which looks out over the hilly and barren Desert Des Agriates. Looking back as we leave Saint Florent, we got beautiful views back over the town and the port. We had headed for the hills to try and escape the heat wave, but were out of luck as the temperature soured into the mid 30's by midday. We passed a number of cyclists on the climb and I was quite envious as it would be a beautiful ride as it's a nice and gradual incline and would be a fantastic ride back to Saint-Florent.

After descending from the Col de Lavezzo, the road widened and straitened and the trip to Corte was very straight forward and my faith in Corsican drivers was largely restored. In truth, over a number of driving days, all the problems occur around Bastia, so there must be some serious vendettas playing out in that small city – they probably take a dislike to our car with our French number plates.

Corte was a beautiful little town, set high in the moutains. Despite the heat, there are mountains that tower over Corte that still have patches of snow on their peaks. Being in the mountains site-seeing in a town means you're walking up and down lots of steep hills, so by the time we got to lunch, we were both saturated in sweat and taking a real beating from the sun.

One of the most notable things in Corte was that all the road signs are in both French and Corsican – well they were in both French and Corsican, until a local dissident came along and blacked out all the French words. You can see it on the photos, but now that we've picked up on it, it occurs all over the top part of the island that we've visited so far.

We made a bit of a mistake at lunch by ordering the “suggestion of the day”. The chef must be a real wag, because his suggestion was spaghetti and beef casserole – why have something light on a day when the mercury is well into the 30s.

The return trip was uneventful, apart from one view point we stopped at. A couple went past on a motorbike and the woman on the back wearing hipsters and a tight fitting top, which had ridden up, had a very red sunburnt bum. I laughed out loud when I saw it, because it was so red. No doubt she'll cotton onto it tonight, when she has a rather uncomfortable night's sleep.

Our routine at the end of each day is to head to the campground swimming pool, which is a wonderfully relaxing way to end a busy day's site-seeing. It cools you right down, soothes your aching feet, relaxes all the muscles in your body and the shower that precedes it washes a days sweat and grime off.

Week 2 – Friday July 9 – Genoa to Corsica

Bon Soir, Mes Amis. I am writing this from the square in Saint Florent, Corsica. It is 6pm on washing night, so Anne and I have just loaded our washing into the washing machine in the laundromat over the road and have now settled in to the bar to have a pre-dinner drink while waiting fo the wash part of the laundry process to complete. The local men are playing Boule / Petanque in the square. They seem to be taking it far to seriously for a game played on even ground, by men of inconsistent ability. If Boule were a measure of the national Psyche, I'd say the men of Corsica are more uptight, more agressive and lived life at a faster pace than their Provencal / Dourdogne counterparts – the driving on the island would dray the same conclusion. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Friday morning and we checked out of the hotel and made our way the 800m to the ferry terminal. Ferries the world over are the same – an inexplainable system of people giving you tickets, sticking things on your car or dash only for the next person in the chain to remove the sticker or retrieve the ticket. The day was yet again perfect and we were pleased to be parked in the shade as we waited for half an hour before we were boarded. Sitting in the car park, there seemed so many cars, caravans, campers and motorbikes that we were sure Corsica would overflow when we arrived. Had some local try to spam me - “park over here, sir”.... “now, can I have a Euro for telling you where to park and for the useless lighter I've just given you”. “Sorry, Chief, but I would have figured it out for myself”.

Once we were on board, we realised how big the ferry is that we were sailing on. There were whole lounges that were empty. We got a seat up at the front of the boat. The lounge we were in was 3 staggered stoies high, that could all look out the massive sloping 3 storied window. The ferry left 6 minutes early and for the next 4 and ¾ hours we sailed on the calmest seas I have ever seen. For most of the time, there was just a haze on the horizon as far as the eye could see, but at about 12:15 Corsica came into view on our starboard side. For the next hour and a half, we cruised down the coast of Cap Corse, until the town of Bastia and its harbour came into view.

Once we had docked, the easy part was over. Now we had to get off the boat, get through what passes for customs, clear the port area and make out way over the hill from Bastia to Saint Florent, via a 536m pass, while at all times making sure we didn't have a crash with the crazy locals.

Washing's done – onto the drying. Our car was in garage 5, which wasn't called until half an hour AFTER the ferry had docked. That completed, we were off the ferry is quick smart time, only to be stopped at the end of the ramp by the French customs official in his dicky little hat. No problems there, just hand over the passports and car ownership papers. Another half hour and we were almost of out the port area...... sigh. The road over to Saint Florent – all 26ks of it, was twisty, bumpier and narrower than the top of the Rimutakas on the Wellington side. Despite being at the back of a queue of 10 cars, I was passed by 3 cars on the way down to Saint Florent on stretches of road, which were not really long enough to pass. In addition to that, we had a kid in a small car and one on a scooter drifting alarmingly onto our side of the road on our way up the hill. We were glad to get to the campground.

The campground is fantastic with huge trees over the entire site, so it's beautifully shady and very cool. There is a heat wave in Europe and each day is around 34 degrees, so shade and cool is very good. It's quirks are – no man seat.... no woman seat.... NO SEAT. The good news is that it's either a toilet without a seat, or a Turkish toilet – that's a squatty, or hole in the ground to you. Because it's so shaded, there's no grass, so it's a bit dusty. Our 10m power cable is not long enough to get to the tent, so it goes as far as it can and then lies on the ground. Positives are really friendly people, yet again, free internet – my internet stick is for Italy and we're now in France, a really awesome swimming pool, pastries and coffees at the campground in the mornings, a good onsite restaurant and a shop that sells chilled wine – white and Rose, but no chilled red.

The campground is outside of Saint Florent, so once we'd pitched the tent, we headed into town for a look around. Saint Florent is a very small town of about 1500 people (about the size of Wanaka), but for some reason, there is a huge marina that goes on for miles and must house a couple of thousand boats. It's all a bit untidy, and they're mostly just family runabouts, but it does also get visits from some pretty amazing mega yachts. After a bit of a walk around, Anne and I decided it was time for a drink, so we found a little bar in the shade on the harbour's edge. It was nice because it was away from all the superyachts and affored us nice views of the town and the harbour.

And then they started arriving – one by one, superyacht after superyacht was backed in against the wharf right outside our nice little bar. They started at about 60 feet and went all the way to 100 feet. By the time they were all in, there wasn't a single berth available and there also wasn't any views other than of some very big boats. The first one to arrive had only mum, dad and two kids on board, but after that, as the boats go bigger, more and more crew were on the boats. A crew of four might no sound a lot, but when all it is, is your family pleasure craft, it's a bit of an added overhead. Anyway, after the extroverted display of opulence, Anne and I headed back to the campground for Pizza and Vin de Maison for dinner – very nice.

Week 2 – Thursday July 8 – Genoa

I am writing this from the forward lounge on the Moby Ferry Freedom, which is powering us on our way to Bastia in Corsica. Since being told to put the handbrake on in the car, I have n't seen a solitary crew member, so I can only assume that there is someone on the bridge and that we're not running on autopilot, but that might be a wrong assumption. The ferry we are on is massive, our car is on the 3rd car deck – it will take over 700 cars apparently and there are 3 floors of cabins. Being 9am in the morning, we have not taken a cabin, but are sitting in the self-service restaurant, staring out over the bow of the boat, watching the sea and hoping to see Corsica appear in about 4 hours time.

Yesterday we spent walking around Genoa, which is a city with a “certain” charm, although it could also be described as dirty, crowded and run down. It was reminiscent of the historic quarter of Lisbon. The historic centre is a maze of tall buildings with narrow walkways between them. A wide street is about 15 feet wide, a narrow one is only about 4 feet wide. It's very easy to get lost in the maze of buildings, but even if you do, you're never very far from where you want to be. Anne and I went for a walk in the eveing and ended up getting lost until we found a street map, that showed us where we were. We appeared to be miles from the hotel as we were about 8 blocks from the hotel. In reality, we were no more than about 300 metres away, which indicates how small the blocks are. Despite the heat, it was very cool within the old quarter and we spent the morning wandering rounds the streets and piazzas.

We did a walk to the ferry terminal to make a change to our ticket and walked back along the harbour side. Beside the historic port was a group of Africans selling goods laid out on blankets – the usual stuff they sell just about every where – sunglasses and handbags were the main two items on sale. As we walked past them, they all, to a man, grabbed the 4 corners of their blankets, lifted their entire store and ran off into the car park. Looking off into the distance, we could see a Polizei car making its way slowly along the pedestrian mall on the wharf. As the police car disappeared off the wharf, the stalls were re-established and within 5 minutes, business was back to normal. 10 minutes later, the police car did another circuit and the whole thing was repeated. There was another couple of guys wandering round talking to tourists, so we watched them for a while, but couldn't figure out what they were doing. Charlie Chapman was also there as a human statue, so all in all it was an interesting place to sit and watch people for 15 minutes.

We returned to the same restaurant we had dined in the previous night, because the food was go good – one of the highlights of Genoa. What a difference a day makes – the previous day, the restaurateur had been the master of his domain, bossing the waitress around, watching the football on TV and polishing off a bottle of wine over the course of the evening. Tonight the waitress was different and boy did she run the show. Working on the premise that age-wise, there is probably little to distinguish a daughter from a second wife, it took us a while to work out what the relationship was here, but eventually settled on a stroppy daughter. The food was lovely again and it was good being able to enjoy the atmosphere without a football match going on in the background.

Week 2 – Wednesday July 7 – Genoa

LUXURY – After 8 days of camping, we now have two days in a hotel in Genoa. We head for Corsica on Friday morning, so we had already booked one night in the hotel, but we decided that two nights would be a nice treat after 8 days in a tent.

Before we got to the hotel, of course there was the small matter of packing up the tent. First things first, however and the first thing was a cappuccino and a chocolate mousse filled croisant. Next was the car, which after 4 days of living under a tree was filthy – covered in tree gum and leaves, so it was in dire need of a good wash. Unlike some people we know, we don't travel with a full car cleaning kit, but we do have our all in one – shampoo, conditioner, dishwashing and car wash liquid courtesy of a previous hotel. As a result of exceptional team work, we now have a very clean car – me on washing, anne controlling the hose, and then drying the car down once it was clean, so it didn't end up all streaky as you would expect from a shampoo, conditioner, dishwashing and car wash liquid.

After that, the inevitable could be delayed no longer. This time, we have documentary evidence of our efforts and we only had to pack it twice. The photos are of the first attempt and you'll notice in the photo before it goes into the bag that the tent all folded up isn't exactly a circle, and it was at that point that we had to go back and start again. The solution, was to give it a woman's touch and if Anne started off folding the top over the bottom, that left me to do the brute bits of folding the two sides over the middle. Once we'd done that it's just a matter of getting its strap on and getting it into the bag so before it springs itself open again. I think next time we'll be perfect. I can confirm that by the time the job was finished, I was dripping with sweat. Anyway it only took 17 minutes from start to finish to pack it twice and have it ready to go in the car.

We were sorry to be leaving the campground because the staff were so friendly, but Corsica beckons. The drive to Genoa was easy, the drive into Genoa, not so much. With the GPS, it's easy because it keeps recalculating your route to your destination if you make a wrong turn. Genoa is a maze of tiny streets and one way systems, so after 10 minutes of getting confused as to what we were supposed to be doing, we ditched the car in an underground carpark on the port and headed off on foot to find the hotel. Without a map, we did have our old faithful “Jane” GPS, but her battery was nearly flat and she indicated 2ks to the hotel – on foot. Fortunately, Anne was paying attention and noticed that infact the street we wanted to get to was right over the road from where we were standing. I'm not sure what Jane's issue was, but I think she might have had an issue with how to get across a 6 lane road, so she took us on the car route instead. The simple answer was use the pedestrian crossing, so 100 metres later and we were in the hotel.

After 8 days of camping, we are enjoying 2 days of airconditioning, a full compliment of plugs and toilet paper and renewed supplies of our all in one – shampoo, conditioner, dishwashing and car wash cleaner. Anne has just informed me that it now also works as a clothes cleaner for some emergency cleaning last night, so when we refer to it from here forward, it will now be the All in One - shampoo, conditioner, dishwashing, clothes washing and car wash cleaner.

Being in the hotel, we are taking advantage of the TV and are watching a couple of stages of the Tour De France, which is a nice break during the afternoon.

Had dinner in a fantastic little restaurant just over the cobbled stoned car-free street from the hotel last night. We asked the Concierge and he recommended it. Anne had anchovies in a lemon sauce followed by spaghetti with seafood and I had spaghetti al Pomodoro followed by sea bass, which we shared. The restaurant had a TV in the back of it, which was completely out of place for the ambience of the place, but it was good to be able to watch Spain playing Germany over dinner. The owner turned it on just after we sat down and poured himself a glass of wine so the tone of evening was set.

The house wine was 10 Euros per bottle and he chose what wine you got based on what you ordered, which was something different and the wine was really nice. We had finished our bottle of wine before the football had finished, so I asked him for a half bottle, which I'd seen him give to other tables in a small caraf. By that stage, he was much more interested in the football, so he put the bottle of wine on the table and said “have what you want – if you drink half, you pay half – if you drink it all, you pay for it all” Fair enough – guess what, we ended up paying for the whole bottle.

We are of course being entertained here by the new star of the football world cup – Paul the Octopus and are awaiting with trepidation his next prediction, now that he has branched out to predicting the result of the final. My pick before the tournament started was Spain, so I'm hopeful they will do the business on Sunday. Anne had picked France – enough said!

Week 2 – Tuesday July 6 – Lavento

Today is our last day in Levanto and we're spending it around the town. Today is washing day and this campground doesn't have a drier, so all our clothes are hung on an impromptu clothes line around the tent.

We went for a long walk to the top of the town, past the historic city walls up to the start of the walk to the Cinque Terre. The views back over Levanto were beautiful, but the heat was stiflingly hot. We passed some people comping off the Cinque Terre walkway and they were all soaking with sweat.

One of the things that we've really noticed in the last few days is the buildings in Lavento and Portofino. In centuries past, building were built with beautifully ornate stone work, however these days, that is too expensive, so instead they now paint the buildings to look like they have ornate stone work. It's a real work of art, and similar to what used to be on the side of Il Casino, but now complete buildings have been given the painting facelift.

Dinner tonight was at a focacceria – a Genoa specialty, which gives focaccia bread the pizza treatment. Focacceria's are more informal that pizzeria's in that the focaccia is already prepared and you just ask for pieces of it, so they might have 10 different flavous aviable and you select the ones you want and they slice you off a bit, serve it to you and you take it back to your table yourself.

Some of the campervans in the campground have scooters on the back of them, but one couple have gone a step further and bought a motorbike trailer which they have bought their BMW tourer on. They use it as their day transport – one day they'd been to the beach, so they came back in swimming togs and jandals, and the passenger had a beach mat over her lap. The next day they came back in tramping boots, with walking sticks replacing the beach mat.

Tomorrow morning is tent collapsing day, so I'll put up some photos of how that happens and give an update on whether we are improving on packing it up.

Week 2 – Monday July 5 – Portofino

Everybody cycles round here – from the very young to the very old. Last night, as we were leaving the campground for dinner, we were walking up the hill on the exit driveway, and down the hill came the lady who runs the camp on her bike and then just behind her was the grandmother, the non-English speaking grandmother also on her bike and hurtling down the hill to catch-up, waving frantically at us, with a big grin on her face, calling “Ciao, Ciao” - it gave us a real laugh. Coming back from dinner, we were passed by a dutch couple on bikes at the bottom of the small hill that leads into the campground – Dutch.... hill, I thought, let's see how this combination goes. About 20metres into the 50m hill, the woman started giggling and then got off, while her husband struggled up to the top of the hill.

If they're not cycing, they're on a scooter, which are the coolest transport on the planet, or hooning round in their wee cars – the original Fiat 500's seem to be everywhere here. The other really cool thing we see all the time around here are the Piaggio Ape 50 – the tiny three wheeled truck scooters. They're a little truck, that is obviously based on a 50cc scooter – inside they have just one seat in the centre and have a scooters handlebars to steer with. On the outside they have a little cab surrounding the driver and a tray for the weeds, tools etc. The great thing about them is that they are really tiny and it looks funny seeing fully grown men hooning round town in these little vehicles. I've put a photo of one up on the site, for you to look at. There is a range of them, with the Ape50 being the smallest, then is the ApeTM, with a proper steering wheel and finally, and my favourite, the ApePorka with 4 wheels and two seats inside the cab – you've made it when you get one of them.

Yesterday was a very upmarket day as we headed in the opposite direction to the Cinque Terre, to the seaside resort of Portofino. Portofino is tiny and very expensive, so we decided it would be easier to take the train to Santa Margarita and then a bus to Portofino. There is only one train, so we arrived at the train station just before 10:00 for a 10:23 train, only to find there was a 30 metre queue with all the people wanting tickets to the Cinque Terre. There was a guy at the front of the queue, with a Europe on a Shoestring Travel Guide, who was obviously doing a complex transaction to somewhere else in Italy or Europe, and as there was only one window open, everybody else had to wait. Fortunately, I spotted a ticket machine, so headed to that to try my luck. Unfortunately, the first question – “Select your language?” hadn't been installed on this machine, so I had to fluff my way through it, which was no real problem until I stuck my credit card in so far that I couldn't get it out and the machine then seemed to freeze. That got my blood pressure up until it spat it back out, without giving me any tickets. Reverting to old fashioned cash for our two tickets, I was surprised to receive three tickets, but not the 7 Euros change I was expecting. Fortunately, the man behind me was able to tell me that the machine was out of cash (obviously not the 20 Euros I'd just put in it) and I had to take the third ticket to a counter to get cash from them.

The train ride to Santa Margarita took about 45 minutes, after which we had to catch a bus out to Portofino, which is in a small harbour at the end of a peninsular. It's one of those delightful European roads, that is wide enough for a bus, and sometimes a car as long as they pass in the right place. The bus had to toot at every corner to make sure nobody was coming round the other way. The 5km trip took 25 minutes.

Portofino is a beautiful little town, set in a tiny Harbour - about the size of the lagoon outside the star boating club. While the harbour might be tiny, the price tag on the yachts in the harbour certainly isn't. The most impressive was the Lady Anne, which as 225 feet and with decks on 3 levels is absolutely huge. Being such a tiny harbour, everything is very close, so we got some beautiful photos of the harbour, the boats and the surrounding buildings and houses.
Lunch in Portfino was in one of the harbour side sea food restaurants – We shared a fish dish with an olive and caper sauce and Spaghetti with Pesto Genovese – which is normal pesto, but they invented it. It was a delicious lunch in a very beautiful setting. Dinner was again in our little Taverna, cos why break a 3 day habit.

End of Week 1 – Cinque Terre – Sunday July 4

Today got off to a fairly inauspicious start at 6:30am. I was in the shower and the shower cubicles in this campground are just a big cubicle, which means that although there are plenty of hooks to hang your things on, there is no dry area that stays dry for you to step onto to get dressed when you've finished your shower. Now this mightn't sound a problem, but when you're a person with my level of flexibility, it does pose some logistical problems. Anyway, this morning I had dried myself except for my feet and was performing the delicate task of getting my wet feet into and through my dry underpants, without the result of ending up with both wet feet and wet underpants.

To perform this task involves balancing on one foot (here's where I start getting into difficulty) on a slippery tiled floor, while stretching the opposing leg of ones boxers in order to create a hole large enough to insert ones wet foot without at any time touching the dry underpants. I was right in the middle of performing this delicate task, which for me is the equivalent of key hole surgery, when from the far end of the men's came the sound of the most enormous fart, followed by complete and total silence. I am ashamed to say that this perfectly normal human function caused my to get the giggles. I'm not sure if in all human history, holding your breath has ever succeeded as a cure for the giggles, but it was the only option I had, which only served to make matters worse, because as soon as I ran out of breath, I had to breath, which then caused me to laugh uncontrollably. This breath holding, laughing uncontrollably continued for the 2-3 minutes it took me to get myself dressed, collect up all my stuff and get out of the bathroom.

Things didn't improve much when I got outside, because by the time I got back to the tent, I was still unable to speak, so Anne was looking at me saying “are you ok?, are you crying?, are you laughing?” at which all I could do was make hand signals to indicate that I was ok, but had for some unknown reason, completely lost the plot.

Things improved significantly after that, because at this campground you can order croisants and pastries the day before, which are delivered at 7:30 in the morning. They are completely civilised and will even do a cappucino first thing in the morning. Anne and I had ordered a chocolate croisant each and to our delight found that they were filled with a chocolate moose mixture, which made for a wonderfully delicious start to the day.

Today we are off to the Cinque Terre, the 5 fishing villages on the Italian Riviera that are built on cliffs. This is one of Italy's famous tourist attractions, but one that we haven't managed to get to on previous visits. Levanto is at one end of the Cinque Terre and there is a train that links all 5 villages. There are cliff side tracks which let you walk between all 5 villages and it is possible to do the whole thing in a day. The Cinque Terre has now been designated a national park, so the train ticket that we bought was actually a day pass to the national park which lets us walk on any of the tracks and have an all day pass for the train. Because it's 30 degrees everyday at the moment and because some of the cliff side trails are very narrow, have horrendous drop-offs and I'm a big chicken when it comes to hights, we decided to only walk between a couple of the villages and catch the train the rest.

We caught the train to Riomaggiore, which is at the far (southern most) end of the Cinque Terre. Riomaggiore is aparently the least pretty of the 5 towns, but we found it quite pretty with an attractive little harbour. The walk from Riomaggiore to Manarola is along the Via Dell-Amore – The Path of Love. The path is completely flat, paved all the way and has good hand rails, so even the vertical drop-offs aren't too daunting. It is called the Path of Love because of the spectacular views and somebody sometime ago put a padlock on one of the wire fences to signify the love that he felt for his partner, so now everybody is doing it. We didn't know about it, so we didn't do it, and even if we had known about it, I have better uses for a good padlock – bah humbug.
Manarola was a very pretty little town, with a main street that led down the narrow gully to the boat harbour. The street was only a couple of hundred metres long, with lots of restaurants and coffee shops lining either side and there were even some wooden fishing boats on the street from when the town made it's living from fishing rather than tourists. I don't know if the boats move from their positions very much these days, but it did give the town more of an air of authenticity.

The next walk was more challenging from Manarola to Corniglia. The first bit was particularly spectacular as it initially gave awesome views back towards Manarola and then skirted round sheer cliff faces. The walk took about an hour and was finished with a climb of 382 steps to the town of Corniglia which unlike the other Cinque Terre towns is on the top of a cliff, rather than being at sea level. At the bottom of the 382 steps was the train station, so after our visit to Corniglia, we had to descend the 382 steps to catch the train to Vernazza, where we were going to have lunch. We had a very pleasant lunch in the square, which is right on the wharf, sharing a seafood salad and a seafood pasta.

By the time lunch was over (about 3pm ish), the temperature was well into the 30's, the sun was sufficiently high that there was no protection on the tracks and as I mentioned, they only got steeper, narrower and scarier from then on, so we caught the train back to Levanto to retire to the campground to relax before heading out to dinner at the same little taverna we'd been to the night before.

Day 7 – Drive to Levanto – Saturday July 3

Today was drive day, but first there was the small task of deconstructing the tent. The first bit was easy – zip up all the windows and doors and undo all the ropes – no problem there. Next step, looking from the front of the tent go to the back right corner and remove it's tent peg. Now push that corner all the way over to the front left corner. This leaves the tent like an open book, with two of the self erecting hoops on each side of the book. Now remove the pegs on the two corners that are the open ends of the book, and simply close the book. You now have all four hoops aligned and your tent is now lying on the ground looking like a big egg.

Now comes the hard part – fold it all up so that it will fit back into the bag it originally came in. You will note at this stage, the instructions have not been referred to – this is not an accidental omission – at this stage, the instructions hadn't been referred to.

First try – grab it an twist the whole thing into a figure 8 and then bend the 8's over on themselves – no problem there – now where's the bag? How come the bag looks so much smaller than the mess I have in my hands. OK, now we've got the bag, which have the instructions, on fabric, sewn into the tent bag, so you can't lose them and you've always got them with the tent – I think a woman designed this tent.

OK, I'll save you some time – the next bit took about half an hour and was combination of interpreting the diagrams (their diagrams – no words, which is probably a good thing given that we bought the tent in Italy), frustration and summoning up the courage to really do what the instructions tell you to do, because you cant believe it won't break the tent...... an alternative way of saying that last bit is frustration, Frustration, FRUSTRATION, until you finally do what you think they want you to do and you don't bloody care if it breaks the tent cos you're sick of it and the smart arsed cow that designed it...... and voila.... the tent folds up nice and small and you've got a nice little bundle that fits neatly into the tent bag.... I'll take photos next time so I have a.) a record for others to see; and b.) a record for me to remember how to do it next time or next year.

Anyway, all that was done before we had a shower, which was a good thing, because even if I know what I'm doing, compacting the tent down to 3 overlapping circles is always going to be a good battle.

Having achieved the impossible and after a cup of coffee and brioche at what has become our local favourite for the last 4 days, we hit the road for Levanto on the Italian Riviera. For those of you that don't know (and I've only just found out) the Italian Riviera goes Ventimiglia (on the French border) to La Spezia (which is close to Pisa). The trip was supposed to take just under 3 hours, but ended up taking 3 ¾ because of the queues around Genoa of all the people heading in the direction of France. It was a pay road all the way, but fortunately one where you only had one toll booth (the 1 hour drive from Milan to Feriolo had 3 toll booths – each demanding under 2 Euros) and cost 19 Euros 70 for the privilege.

We stopped for diesel at a services and there was this mint condition Fiat 500, which looked awesome. There must have been a convention on somewhere because when we got stuck in the traffic there were 4 of these tiny wee cars all traveling together. You forget how tiny these wee cars are, much smaller than the modern version and a couple of them had a big guy in each of them, which made for a funny site.

The other thing we watched while we were crawling through the traffic was heaps of motor bikes and scooters filtering their way through the lines of cars. I was amazed at what the Italian motor cyclists were wearing – jandals, shorts, no gloves. Of all the motor cyclists and scooterists that went past us, and there were a lot, I only saw a couple that had any sort of protective clothing on. While I'm prepared to ride my scooter round wellington like that, on the basis that I'm a cyclist and coming off a scooter I'm likely to be going no faster than if I'm on a bike, and also I can ride to the conditions of what I'm wearing and go a bit slower or take slower routes when I'm not all dressed up, I would be prepared to accept the consequences of a “shit-happens” moment when traveling at motorway speeds (even at our paltry 100ks and not the 130-150 that we travel at over here) – but that's me and each to their own and the roads are better and the drivers safer and more considerate than drivers in New Zealand.

Our arrival at the next campground in Levanto was reminiscent of a family reunion and I'll be very happy if I ever get to another campground (or anything for that matter) where the people are so bubbly and happy to see you. The first young woman spoke perfect English and was all set to show us round the campground so we could chose a site, but she was told that she had to take her lunch break, so the family grand mother was sent to take us round the camp ground. No gran doesn't speak a word of English, but she was equally as excited to be showing us around and gabbled on in Italian, which Anne and I didn't understand a word of, but we could get the jist of what she was saying, and eventually we chose a site. It's a site generally reserved for camper-vans and caravans, but we lied about how big our tent was because the small tents are on terraces away from their cars. Gran was very excited for us and over the next few days we saw her most days as she made our coffee in the morning – with a big grin!

Each campground has it's own little quirks – in Lake Maggiore it was the BYO toilet paper and plugs for the sink. In this one it is what I have taken to referring to as “The Man Seat”. Now I know that woman complain about us men leaving the toilet seat up, but in this campground the seat automatically puts itself into the up position as soon as you get off it. Now I thought this little treat was reserved for the Men's toilets, but upon telling Anne, her wry smile told me that, no, the woman's toilets were also blessed with this feature. If something seems to good to be true, it probably is and I decided this was definitely true of “The Man Seat” as my Boys were given an abrupt hurry smack by a rapidly rising toilet sear as I stood up this morning.

Actually, I imagine those seats have caught a few unsuspecting punters out – put the seat down, turn around to prepare yourself and then disappear into a cavernous porcelain bowl as the seat has magically risen in the interim. Sorry, but that just really makes me laugh.

Had a great meal last night in a little Taverna in the township, which is about a kilometre from the campground. Very basic – they did pizza and desserts. There was a sign on the door saying there was no pasta, no Primi or Secondo Piatti, so don't bother asking, but again it's family run and the whole family is there running the business and the waitresses sister even bought the waitresses children in for a bout an hour to talk to everybody in the restaurant. While there was some tourists like us, the majority of the people were locals who obviously eat there on a regular basis.