Ponkies in Belgium

Epic road trips and the wonder of Italy....

We've been back for almost 2 weeks since our epic european road trip but with school holidays in full swing I have been exhausted having 4 small children at home all day... Must be almost time for another family holiday I think!

Here's how it all went down... It may need several posts, we may have taken several hundreds of photos in the course of 2 weeks!

Italy- aaah, just saying it brings up thoughts of fabulous food and drink, spectacular landscapes and ancient architecture, ruins and culture that us people from downunder find endlessly fascinating through the complete lack of anything that comes close to it in our new world countries of NZ and Australia. It has been a long dream of both of ours to go to Italy and what better way then to see it en famille and par voiture??! Following advice from friends and family we decided to restrict our visit to one region, stay rurally and do day trips by car to see the main attractions. There is so much to see in Italy, so many regions to choose from, but we decided on Tuscany as our first experience of Italy. And it certainly did not disappoint. Tuscany - you are a balm to the soul, the inspiration of romantics. But we found a few surprises along the way that we did not expect.

But let us start from the beginning. In order to get there in the first place, we had decided to drive. Apart from being about half the cost of flying and then hiring a 7 seater, what better way to see a variety of countries along the way? Right? Hahaha. Day one was a trip from Brussels through to Lake Como where I had booked a small B and B for the night. Google Maps (oh you rotten thing) estimated travel time to be around 9 hours. We set off at 9am well prepared with snacks and entertainment for the troops. And here is where the initial problem began. Our GPS (who we are completely indebted to as there is no way on earth we would have found any of our accommodation without it) told us our expected arrival time was going to be 8pm. Surely not??? Surely Mr Google must be waaaayyy more accurate than our GPS in estimating driving times. We continued with the assurance that our GPS was indeed mistaken and probably calculating some long convoluted route that we were not going to take.

As the hours passed, it became apparent that our arrival time was in fact getting later and later, instead of earlier. We made minimal stops, or as few as can be managed when driving such long distances with small children, but each time we stopped (usually for about 1/2 hour) that dastardly GPS added another hour to our driving time. Finally, we arrived after 14 hours in the car at almost 11pm. During this most epic of car trips, we managed to drive through 5 countries. Yep, that's right - 5! (Well, if you include Luxembourg as a country :), we went through Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Italy in one day. Surely a record of some sort with 4 kids???!)

Some brief thoughts on our journey. Driving was not difficult (says I who did not do any of the driving) but the scenery was spectacular and the roads were straight and fast. Each country was unique that you could see the difference in landscape and architecture immediately on crossing the border. Rural France is just a pleasure to behold with small hamlets popping up here and there, each with it's own ancient church and steeple. Crossing into Switzerland we drove through the Swiss alpine regions and it was like scenes from Heidi. Seriously, it was stereotyped swiss chalets perched precariously on mountainsides that made you wonder who lived in these remote places and how on earth did they get there? But after the easy pleasant autoroutes of France, Switzerland gave us traffic jams, tunnels and tunnels and tunnels (they love their tunnels) and oddly, traffic lights at the top of mountain passes that randomly turned red causing kilometres of cars to back up on the steep gradient. Switzerland was also the land of ubiquitous road works. We finally crossed into Italy, but by this stage the sun was setting and there was less to see. The road to the B and B was obscure, windy and steep. We had to put our faith in our GPS as by now it was dark and without a street map and only vague instructions in broken english, we had no other choice. Finally we arrived, up a crooked little street in the middle of an ancient village. The street address was a narrow alley which we duly attempted to turn up. Unfortunately the alley was too narrow for our car and it got stuck half way up... The owners of the B&B came running out frantically shouting in italian but it was too late. So at 11pm at night after nonstop driving for 14 hours, here we were stuck in a wee alley. My poor husband had to then attempt to back out of the alley. Despite the exhaustion, I am surprised he could still see straight, he managed to do it with minimal scrapes to the poor car. He is a superstar. If it had been me, I think I might just have camped in the alley for the night! The wonderful hosts who had stayed up so late welcomed us and soon we were all sound asleep.

Day two we were greeted by the best continental breakfast I have ever had and I regretted somewhat that we had not planned on two nights in this BandB. The owner took us on a guided tour of the local ancient tower and then it was down to the Lake for some relaxation finally. Lake Como is renowned for stunning vistas and it was certainly spectacular. The kids swam in the lake and icecreams were had by all. Then it was off for a more leisurely 5 hour trip down to Tuscany. This passed without incident with the exception of our 1 hour foray into Parma. Warning DO NOT go to Parma. We had thought we would find a pizzeria for our first italian experience, and Parma was on the way. After fruitlessly driving around this city for an hour without finding anything worth stopping at and nothing worth looking at, we moved on, surprised that a city that is named for famous produce could be so depressingly horrid. Even worse, we were then forced to stop at an autoroute pitstop to pick up some snacks for the ravenous hordes so what could have been a delightful italian food experience ended up being horrid junk from a service station.

We arrived without problems at the little Agriturismo farm that we had booked and things were looking up!

Here are a select few photos of Lake Como.... Tuscany in the next post...!