“Chocolate and Cheese”

Feeling stretched with our budget we decided to stay for just two nights in Venice, so we had to make the most of our one full day in the “City of Water” We found a great little apartment in the old Jewish Quarter which was centrally located, quiet and very atmospheric.

On the way from the flat to our local coffee shop

Blessed with low-season tourist levels and gorgeous weather, we spent the day walking the city and getting slightly lost as usual. We managed to hit some of the big tourist spots like the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco (decidedly low on the pigeon front) but the lack of tourists meant that we were able to walk right into St. Mark’s. We marveled at the millions of Byzantine mosaics that adorned the Basilica as well as the horde of oriental objects that were bought to Venice after the conquest of Constantinople.

A Venitian gondola - look closely and you'll see that we are not on it

Our budget limited us to avoiding certain indulgences, so instead of a traditional gondola ride we opted for a vaporetto trip down the Grand Canal at sunset. Although the vaporetto was crowded, it was as beautiful and romantic (well, almost) as any gondola!

Sunset over Venice with hints of Istanbul thrown in for effect

November is the beginning of Venice’s “high water” time, and on the morning that we left town, the water was splashing over the sides of the canal onto the sidewalks. Everywhere we walked we saw the raised walkways ready to be called into action at the first sniff of a flood. We loved our brief moment in Venice and would definitely return one day – the architecture, the water, the decay – stunning in all its faded glory.

As we were on our way back to England there was really no way to avoid mountains, unless we followed the coast back through the South of France again. We figured that if we were going to risk life and limb by driving the camper over the Alps we might as well stay for a while!

So it was up and over the Grand St. Bernard Pass to spent five glorious days in Leysin, Switzerland. Leysin is a small village situated at 1,200 meters with fields and misty mountain views in all directions; we visited in the low season but in the winter the village comes alive with skiers.

Leysin - It's prettier than Hackensack. Some seriously beautiful sights served up on a daily basis.

The views from our chalet alone were just incredible, and it was so quiet that the only noise the locals complain about is the sound of the cow bells! The snows had not yet arrived so one day we hiked down a very steep and treacherous valley path to the medieval town of Aigle, stopping for a delicious picnic lunch in one of the pastures on the way. Our knees thanked us when we took the cog railway all the way back up to Leysin and thanks to Swiss efficiency the train arrived and departed bang on time.

The cog railway back home - thank you Switzerland for not making us walk back up the valley

The next day we decided to get a pre-season feel for winter sports by taking a family curling lesson at the local ice rink. At the start of the lesson we were warned in French that “Curling may not look like a dangerous sport but it is….you can easily slip on the ice and hurt yourselves really badly”. We only had one fall and a few minor bruises here and there but it was so much fun, and much harder than it looks (just staying upright on the ice was a major challenge in itself – click below to see how it should be done).

To celebrate our new found sporting talent, the curling lesson was followed by another local tradition…..our first delicious fondue at La Fromagerie.

This is Leysins’ local cheese making restaurant and as we didn’t really know how much to order and how the whole fondue thing worked it was a bit nerve racking to start with. However, once we were full of bread and melted cheese we all decided afterwards that it was just another reason to totally fall in love with Switzerland

Fondue at La Fromagerie - whoever drops the bread in the cheese pays the bill

 

“Carry On Wayward Son”

We set the sextant, aligned the charts and set off on a north westerly bearing for the long drive home across Europe to England, with the plan to sell Ollie Bernard Vladimir McTavish Ludwig Camper Van Bake Oven on arrival.

Before we left the area we stopped in to visit Kate Cartwight, an old friend from Claygate and Esher College days, who now lives in the town of Meldola with her two boys Luis and Thom. We stayed close by in the beautiful town of Bertinoro at a warm and cozy agrotourismo owned by Kate’s friend Betta. http://www.lacanadolce.com/chisiamo.htm

Bettas farm - a lovely place to stay unless you have a campervan

Although Betta was away in Peru we were treated like family by her lovely parents, and we got some quality animal time with Mingo the dog and Pilou & Deena the cats. Betta’s mum Lorena offered us a crate of fresh persimmons from her orchard in exchange for adopting Jule….(it was tempting but after careful negotiation in broken Italian we were able to leave with a camper full of fruit AND both children)

Mingo - destroyer of footballs

We had a great time with Kate and the boys, proper cups of tea, giggles and chats were thoroughly enjoyed. We got to meet and dine with her British friends Thad and Chris (hope the tooth replacement went smoothly Thad), and we went to the cinema to see Tintin in Italian complete with a whispered running synopsis of the story by Kate.

Kate, Thad and Chris (top) Luis and Thom (bottom)

It has been a while since we reported on the thrilling misadventures of our camper van. He has been behaving well mechanically (touch wood) but the road to Betta’s farm was long and steep, and proved to be too much for an underpowered, overweight, rear wheel driven van . To cut a long story short we managed to get down the hill with no problem but we couldn’t get back up the hill without smoke and spinning tires, so the next day Bettas’ dad kindly called his neighbor with a tractor to help get us out.

Once the tow out started it was a slow but otherwise effortless extraction and we were amazed at how incredibly powerful a tractor can be. The best thing about it was that the tractor was made by Lamborgini AND driven by a bloke who looked like he should have been one of the Rolling Stones.

Towed out by Charle Watts in his Lamborghini

 

“Move Any Mountain”

Our next stop was to spend a few days in Sulmona, a small town in the Abruzzi region just a couple hours east of Rome. This was a place that my dad and I visited about ten years ago and one that has special significance to our family, as it is the home of Campo 78 Prigioneri di Guerra.

Sulmona - the steps and the aquaduct that ran through our appartment

After he was captured by the Italians in 1941 near Benghazi, my dad was held in Campo 78 for twenty-seven months as a prisoner of war. On Sept 8th,1943, three thousand P.O.W’s escaped from the unguarded camp when news spread that the Germans and Allies were advancing into Italy.  Many of the escapees were eventually recaptured by the Germans, but my dad was able to hide for eight months in the Apennine mountains before he was rescued and returned home to England.

Campo PG 78  is now completely locked up and covered in “Military Property- Keep out signs” so although it’s not possible to get inside we were able to walk around outside, take photos and look through gaps in the wall.

The view into Campo 78

We really loved Sulmona, this felt to us like REAL Italy. It is an ancient town, famed as the birthplace of Ovid and also as the production center of Italian Bomboniere (those colorful sugar covered Jordan almonds they have at weddings). Lela was thrilled, as she has a soft spot for shiny silver sugared almonds ever since she went to Nik and Trems wedding in Cyprus.

We found a great place to stay (www.seistelle.com ) and as we were overlooking the main square we could watch the hustle and bustle of town life from our window.  A minutes walk from our apartment took us to a coffee shop (1 euro for a cappuccino) a wine merchants (2.50 euros for a bottle of local red) and a guy roasting fresh chestnuts under our balcony (2 euros for ten) Lela and Jule even had bedrooms with an ancient Roman viaduct running right through the walls!

This wouldn’t be a Jacobs blog posting without the mention of a good meal, and we had one of the best yet at La Cantina Di Biffi,  http://www.cantinadibiffi.it  As our visit hit the “low season” we had the restaurant all to ourselves, and our host bought us never ending samples of the menu highlights, complete with a dazzling array of local aperitifs, wine and Italian Brandy. The whole place was family run and the restaurants “open plan” design meant that as we enjoyed our meal we could watch the owners mum cooking up a storm in the back. All the food was amazing but her wild boar goulash was a hands down favorite.

Such a GREAT meal (Lulu looking a bit "sleepy" after sampling the drinks menu)

Saturday morning and we could not ignore the local market, mainly due to the bangs and crashes of stall holders setting up outside out window around 6 am. We got plenty of goodies but the highlight had to be an amazing 3 euro lemon yellow jacket for Jule

The coolest jacket in Italy (watch the next update for Lelas cool jacket)

 

“When In Rome”

Rome was one of the places that was on Jules “bucket list”, and as we had made it this far into Italy it felt criminal not to go and experience all the history and magic of this city.

Parking and affordable accommodation inside Rome are an issue, however, so we decided to stay at a wonderful, bed bug free agriturismo farm in Monterotondo, which was about thirty minutes by train outside of Rome http://www.fontedipapa.com/agriturismo-roma-farm-stay.asp?l=eng. It was only a four day stay but due to Ollie’s size (and one small but VERY annoying bridge), it took us about four days to finally figure out the best route from the train station to the farm.  Travelers tip -Italian drivers on their way to work tend to get very upset when you cause a long line of traffic by trying to pull off a four point turn in a camper van on a tiny rural lane.

Tenuta Agricola - Agriturismo Fonte di Papa. Horses and builders (boo!) but no bed bugs (yay!)

Bridge problems aside, we all rather fell in love with Rome. The people were great, the winter chestnuts were roasting, and at night the streets were a buzz with action including little kids all dressed up for Halloween and tourists throwing coins into the Trevi Fountain.

Tourists throwing money into the Trevi Fountain

Due to the size of the city and the amount of places we planned to see, we decided to bite the bullet and arrange three days (yes THREE days) of guided tours. We hit all the major hotspots including Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Trevi Fountain, the Four Rivers Fountain, and the Spanish Steps…Lela even got to bless her “Jesus Rock” from Skye in St. Peter’s Basilica. We saw too many wonders to report here in detail so you’ll all just have to come and sit through the slide show when we get back.

The Basilica of St. Peter and the Swiss Guards -don't mess with the Swiss Guards (they have pointy sticks and stripey bloomers)

Had it not been for Inger and Marle our Amazonian tour guides, we would have missed out on many “thrilling” historical dates and “gripping” city stats as well as the hidden parts of Rome which included some superb local family restaurants.  Our only advice is “if you are going to do a seven hour sightseeing stint, wear comfortable shoes, take plenty of candy for moral support and give yourself at least two days to recover”.

 

“Every picture tells a story”

We wanted to try something a little different for this post and after being inspired by fellow Italy bloggers “our traveling without moving”  this post is a photo only extravaganza.(Check their blog out at http://ourtravelingwithoutmoving.wordpress.com/author/ourtravelingwithoutmoving/ )

 Please be patient as the pictures might take a little longer than usual to load and display

 

“quando… quando… quando?”

After a week of fending off wasps and rats while camping in an otherwise beautiful pitch overlooking the sea in San Remo we decided to take a break and move into a hotel for a week while we did our italian language course. One week is obviously too short a time to learn a language but that was all that our budget and little brains could manage. Thanks to the help of our patient teacher, Danni, as well as numerous espresso drinks, we can now pick our way through the basics when listening or reading Italian.

Danni, our long suffering teacher. "Gruppo uno? Gruppo Due? Maschile? Femminile?"

The excitement of driving Ollie from the campsite to a parking spot in town (a whopping 3 km’s in distance) was obviously too much for our poor delicate camper van to take, causing Ollie to promptly vomit up liters of green radiator fluid on the road. That was some time ago and even Uncle Hugh’s emergency duct tape couldn’t fix the problem. Some of you have kindly suggested that we keep a spares kit on board; sadly even the most basic parts for this camper seem scarce. For example, Marco the local mechanic said, “There is only ONE radiator hose of this type left in ALL of Italy and it will take six days to get to San Remo”.

As we were were beached once again, we decided to use this “downtime” to decamp to a wonderful apartment in the tiny Cinque Terre coastal town of Manorola. It was a whole day of train travel from San Remo via Genova but we arrived safe and sound and it was most definitely worth it.

Manarola...the locals didn't seem to have overdeveloped calves from walking up those hills everyday.

The Cinque Terre National Park consists of five beautiful coastal villages with tiny pastel colored houses clinging to the rock faces of a steep and dramatic coast. All cars have been banned from the villages, so the only way to travel between the towns is on foot, by train or by boat (if the seas aren’t too stormy).

Sailing into Porto Venere to stock up on Gelato

During our stay we took a long boat ride from Monterosso to Porto Venere which gave us the chance to view all the villages from the sea. The girls also took part in a cooking course involving a guided shop for ingredients in the local market of La Spezia, followed by preparation of a four course meal in the kitchen of a local restaurant.

Enjoying the results of a one day Italian cookery course

We were sad to leave Cinque Terre and our mood wasn’t helped by a train strike at the station in Genova, which added many hours and a crowded bus journey to the trip home. The good news was that we returned to our last night in San Remo and a repaired Ollie thanks to Marco and Antonella.

Marco and Antionella - thanks for helping us escape from San Remo

 

“Que sera, sera”

Early morning and we are sitting by the sea, sipping a coffee and watching the sunrise over the headland with the glittering morning lights of San Remo in the distance.   A few days earlier we made a mad dash over the border from France and even though we are  just a few kilometers over the Italian border, this country already has a sunnier, funkier and more relaxed feel. The small Italian villages cling precariously to stunning mountains, the sea is bluer and suicidal Vespa drivers are everywhere.

Not a Vespa at all but this Moto Guzzi was SO cool! (We thought of you Capt. Phil)

Italy has the added plus point of being able to provide our first fresh pasta in what seems like months. Every time we would go to a restaurant in Spain or France and were tempted to order pasta, we would come to our senses with the reminder that we would be sick of pasta once we hit Italy. So it was a sad goodbye to strange cheeses, french patisseries and good bread and a big happy hello to pasta, great coffee, chocolate and gelato.

Lela Mae looking slightly alarmed by her Gelato

On arrival, the realization struck home that we can’t actually speak a word of Italian, (except for what we have learned while ordering in Starbucks) so we have decided to pick up some basics by booking into a Italian language course for a week long intensive. The package comes with one week’s local rental apartment which will be bliss! Believe me, it has been only been three months in Ollie (with a couple of breaks here and there) but you do start to miss a living in a real house after a while.

It has been great having our camper van Ollie aka “Bernard Vladimir Mc Tavish the Third” as he has allowed us to have an extended stay in Europe minus the cost of expensive accommodation.  Having said that, last night over a plate of pesto and a bottle of Asti Spumante, we came to the dread realization that we are not really “camper van people” and that it is time to put Ollie up for sale on eBay and for us to move on.

Just think folks, this COULD be you. Watch eBay for more details

This decision was made after we had an emotionally exhausting drive from Aix-en-Provence to Italy.  Our GPS took us up onto a tiny winding mountain road and we were reminded, once again that we were driving a beast. We tried to stop for groceries at the Carrefour in Nice but Ollie was too large to park anywhere, and we didn’t even attempt to stop in Monaco for lunch as the thought of navigating the roads was too much.

The beautiful village of Badaluco...up a tiny winding road

What this adds up to is the fact that we now feel that we are tied down to exploring non mountainous locations and staying in campsites that support motorhomes. This in turn means that we are always surrounded by elderly retired Germans, Dutch, and French campers. They are very friendly and helpful but it’s not really our scene to be honest.

So we rented a little Fiat Punto for a few days which allowed us to go exploring the area unhindered by road width, height restrictions and altitude. This included an amazing evening visit to Monaco, where we walked around the principality, had dinner on the beach and soaked up the yachts, Ferraris and the amazingly clean and beautifully manicured streets and landscaping. Lela has voted Monaco her “number one place to live….evahh!”

The opera house in Monaco. Lela Mae's chosen summer residence

Yesterday we drove our Punto 3000 feet up into the mountains to commune with the mountain goats and meet with the weird “local witch lady” who poured home made violet coloured Grappa down our throats to steady our nerves for the drive home.

Armed with our soon to be gained mastery of the language Italy beckons us onwards.