On the Road Again

It's now been four days since leaving Ostuni. We've made our way north, along the east coast of Italy.

We spent the nights in Chieti and Ravenna before arriving in Milan - a city I know quite well, as Disney Italy is based here, and I've been backward and forward to the Italian office a few times in my time at Disney.

Whilst driving north, it quickly became apparent that we were heading the wrong direction. The traffic heading south was three lanes bumper to bumper and often at a standstill, the great summer exodus from northern to southern Italy was well underway. As we were travelling north, we fared quite well traffic wise - with only the odd car bothering to make the journey north alongside us.

As we approached Milan, the trip odometer rolled over 5000 miles. To put that into context, that's almost half way to NZ from the UK - had we driven in a straight line we'd probably be somewhere in China about now.

The stop in Milan was very pleasant, we took the opportunity to stray into central Milan (our hotel was in the outskirts) and catch up with some of my ex-colleagues. It was lovely to see everyone and Claire and I both enjoyed having adult conversations with people other than each other.

Milly was also in good form, and took the opportunity to perform her latest party trick - which is to force her hand as far down her throat as it will go until she wretches, whilst grinning wildly. All fun and games, except this time she pushed it a little two far and a little bit of sick came back up all over Daddy - the fashionable Milanese sat around us were less than impressed - but luckily Milly seems to have learnt her lesson and hasn't tried a repeat performance.

Having said our goodbyes in Milan, we then proceeded west towards the French Riviera.

Crossing the border from Italy to France was a bittersweet moment - in our decade in the northern hemisphere, Italy is probably the country we've visited the most and it was sad to think that it's probably some time until we'll be back - we will be back though, mark my words.

That pretty much brings you up to date with our travels, we are currently in Provence in France. A cute little home in a tiny village called Pierrefeu du Var (thanks Julie!) - deep in what appears to be Rosé country - my all time favourite summertime drink (see above for the before picture, rest assured this bottle didn't last long).

We've got a couple of days here, to give Milly (and myself) a break from the driving. Filling our days hasn't been too difficult, today we took a walk through the vast wine vineyards that surround the village - as it's summer all the vines are green and heavy with ripe grapes - Milly in particular has enjoyed counting grapes as we go along... "one grape, two grapes, three grapes" and so on, you get the picture ;-)

Tomorrow we hit the road again, Carcassonne first, than across the border to Spain and San Sebastian, Leon and then our next long term stop in Galicia - where I'm told the white wine is excellent - oh dear!

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15 5345.6

Bear Lengthy 3cm - but I think it's days are numbered