Greece/Italy

Into Greece without a hitch, but decided to by pass Thessaloniki and continue (over 900kms) onto Igoumenitsa where we were to catch the Ferry to Ancona, Italy.  A very long, wet drive and we didn’t arrive until after 8pm. Found a nice Hotel and a lovely bottle of red wine…Igoumenitsa is a typical coastal/port town. Very quaint and we were able, for the first time ,to have a little stroll around the village, grab a yummy gyro and have several cups of deliscious coffee!.

Caught the ferry later that night and was delighted with the huge boat, its wonderful food and the rather nice cabins (better than some Hotels we’d had). A 15 hour trip of which I think Craig and I slept 10 of them!

Arrived in fabulous Italy to drizzle and car congestion- but it still didn’t dampen our spirits as we were soooo pleased to be here and we both have this enormous soft spot for everything Italian. Again we made the decision not to follow the route of the other cars and to just head north on the autostrade, which is basically flat the whole way. There were several of us and we ended up staying in a lovely little village called Reggio (near Parma) where we walked the streets to the Piazza and had a wonderful italian dinner and more red wine!

We drove from Reggio to the France town of Aix les Bain, through the Monte Blanc tunnel. Amazing alpine scenery, following the valley before disappearing into the hillside to pop out in France. The tunnels and over bridges are an amazing engineering feat!

The car seems to be running on 5 cylinders – but it is still running and as long as we are gentle with her, we are hoping that she will see us over the finish line in two days time. My clothes are very scungy and I think I diserve a little retail therapy when I hit Paris!