THE ROAD TRIP (Part 1)

5 countries in 10 days: the adventures of 3 teenagers driving through foreign countries in an 88’ BMW with a broken speedometer, rev counter, gas and temp gauges, and left blinker, but a working GPS. (A retrospective; we all survived, and more importantly had a great time)

Note: names of towns/cities visited are in bold.

It started on another annoyingly early morning at the train station. We actually bought a decent train ticket this time, so it was more direct. We sat on the train with a random American backpacker who was good company. Arriving in Basel was pretty cool – the town sits on the border between France, Switzerland, and Germany, so you can switch countries pretty quickly. After meeting up with Blaise (who now has really blonde hair) we popped to France for lunch just for novelty’s sake and then headed south into Switzerland.

Arriving in Zurich was hard work. Easily the most difficult city to navigate that we encountered by car. It has enough one way streets to get you to the opposite side of the city before you can turn the way you want to. But aside from our navigational difficulties, the city was beautiful with lots of old buildings alongside the water. We spent a while trying to find a hostel (many were booked out or too expensive) but we found a sufficient one with a view of the river out the window. (Ended up being a good move – it had a REALLY nice hot high-pressure shower). We had a decent wander of the city checking out the shops, stopping for an awesome chocolate milk in a proper Swiss chocolate store, and a few drinks at (pathetic, I know) the English 'Oliver Twist' pub.

We set off (reasonably) early in the morning and drove through some really pretty farmland to Lucerne, where we stopped for lunch and checked out the really old nice covered bridge. Dealing with Swiss German was pretty funny – Tom could barely understand a word which left me completely in the dark. Then we set off to Lugano via a truly stunning drive in the rain with cliffs and waterfalls on either side of the road as well as a trip through the Gotthard tunnel which used to be (and is now 3^rd) longest road tunnel in the world. (It was freaking long…just kept going…and going…) In Lugano we met up with Suzanna, Blaise’s cousin, who is impressively quintilingual (is that a word?) She was very nice, showed us around and offered us a bed for the night.

It was really cool and bizarre to see Italian everywhere, on ads and buses and signs (since Lugano is in Italian Switzerland) and it made me realise how much German I do know…compared to Italian that is. Lugano also had a cool river with fast flowing water which ducks were surfing.

In the morning we headed south to Italy, where we were stopped at a border for the very first time! We were questioned by Italians with pretty amusing English who thought we were trying to smuggle drugs into the country. They believed us and decided against dog-searching the car.

Freeway signs in Italy...HUH? It looks important...

We stopped on the side of the freeway for yummy sandwiches and coffee and then took a gorgeous drive through vineyards to Verona, where sadly the boys had no patience for my search for Juliet’s balcony. It was a nice town though, with ancient walls and cute little shops.

Our next stop was Padova, where we got really, really lost trying to find a tourist info place to direct us to a campsite. Tom and Blaise spent ages on street corners arguing over the GPS (which we discovered is completely useless as soon as you step out of the car) and every shop we found was shut before we got there. So we drove towards Venice where we found a decent campsite juuuust on the mainland, in a town called Mestre. We had dinner at the only nearby restaurant registered by the GPS, which was an annoyingly expensive seafood place with a cool cheerful multilingual waiter. That night it poured with rain and we had a miserable cold night in the tent.

To be continued... (and more photos to be posted in the photo albums - these are just a taste!)