Day 110: Off the camera

J has taken pity on me and pulled out some photos off the camera. These are the first installment, mostly from the first week. More soon (ish). We’ve just arrived in Croatia today and are sleeping in a car park in Poreč tonight, so I’ll keep this short.

Beautiful architecture around the tiny harbor in the old town in Desenzano del Garda, Lake Garda.

Oberalp Pass. Most of the passes have lakes like this somewhere near the top, always in improbable shades of jade or mint or sometimes icy blue. This one is the source of the Rhine.

A was determined to eat all the snow on the mountaintop and set to work methodically scooping up handfuls and crunching away.

Castles, like goats, seem to like heights. This valley had a castle or tower perched atop every craggy peak. This particular valley was an unexpected treat while hunting for a quiet spot to go to the toilet. (I don’t think we’ve seen a single public toilet here in Switzerland, Italy, Austria or Slovenia. Signs for them occasionally, but never the real thing. The difficulty this presents is easily imagined, especially when there are fountains gushing away on every second street corner. After all, what child can resist running water?)

Down an alley in Innsbruck, Austria.

In a latteria, Bormio, Italy.

Bormio by night

A variety of arches in Bormio.

I’ll try to get the next lot up soon.

Day 101: SNOW!

Up on the Stelvio Pass, above the picturesque little town of Bormio, northern Italy, before crossing into Switzerland on our way to Austria. It snowed all yesterday and the night before. 

What’s the first thing you do when you see snow for the first time?

Day 99: Zigzagging through the Alps, or The Highs and Lows of Camping.

We were all so blown away by our first drive across into the Alps that we decided to do it again, and again, and again, zigzagging our way in a very indirect way towards Croatia, slowly. So we’ve been exploring the mountains of Switzaly.

Photos, as usual, to be added later. They’ll be speccy, if they’re in focus, that is.. And if you don’t mind peering through the blurry bit from the smear of bird poo I keep meaning to clean off the windscreen.

So how is the campervan going? Everywhere!

Night 1: We we nervous and excited. Would we really fit? Would we find somewhere to camp? Would anyone get any sleep? After such an exhilarating day driving up into the Swiss Alps, did we care? The answers were Just, sort of, sort of and not as much as we expected.

After not too much trekking around we found a spot near a large dam on the way up towards Grand St Bernard’s Pass. There were raspberries and red currants, fun rocks to climb, and all the excitement of setting up, the kids hustled us all off to bed half way through dinner, and 11 hours of light-but-valid sleep ensued.

Night 2:  On the road to goodnessknowswhere, one of those tiny towns with 5 houses and a dog. This place looked like somewhere a film version of Heidi could be made. There was a tall alpine forest with mossy rocks, meadows full of long grass and buttercups, a stream just far enough away to be pleasant background noise but not an immediate temptation to a 2 year old. It was beautiful. Admittedly lots of people walked past carrying big sticks (looking for mushrooms?) but we did meet a sweet family with a little boy who hurled himself into the camper with unstoppable curiosity and went through it like a dose of salts, exploring every cupboard and niche, and making us all laugh.

The sound of cowbells rang through the night.

Night 3: Under the Grenselpass. This spot was unspeakably amazing, even having spent the day driving across the Furka Pass and Julierpass. There were scented woods, a rocky river bed for the boys. We met a lovely group of Swiss climbers who had been wild camping for 30 years and were extremely helpful.

Night 4: A field outside ? above Turino on the Swiss/Italian border with a primordial mossy forest, dripping with intermittent light rain, a storm looming, and hunting season opening in the morning, according to the guy in camo with the binoculars and the very muscular dog who came to stand nearby and peer up at the hills for 20 mins, looking for deer.

No internet except when a strong blast of wind blows the odd slow wave in, and a good chance to test how the camper goes in the rain. (The answer is ok, but definitely preferable to avoid it if we can help it.)

Night 5: After a few days, sheer desperation and a heavy rain front sent us to an official campground so we could all shower and do washing. This was an experience.

We were wedged between a group of 8 young German poker players on one side and a heavy sleeper on the other. Then there was the disco that started up nearby at 8pm, and curiously morphed into a quiz night round 10 (it was all in Italian, so who knows really) That finally wound up round 11, so the poker players turned their music up so they’d have something to talk over. On the rare moments when the card players were quiet, the bear man beside us would snore loudly. He’d thoughtfully had a good long (loud) nap that afternoon so that he could go the distance Somewhere round 4 am the Germans finally staggered off to bed, but not before waking young Asher, so by the time he was asleep again, but J and I were wide awake again. Ah well, we had 2 showers each, and the privilege of paying 12 euros for a single load of washing.

Our next purchase will be a portable solar shower.

Night 6: This involved driving around for 2 hours in the mountains above Trento, almost losing a mirror to a tight pinch between two buildings, and getting bogged in front of a castle. Eventually we found what seemed to be the perfect spot. Beautiful view, flat parking spot, sink with running water, internet, and right beside a fantastic playground to boot! We even met a lovely local who was both welcoming and helpful. It was perfect. Until we turned off the lights and were drifting off to sleep. That was when the dirt bikes arrived. And the van thumping techno and the other car with everybody’s mates in it. We’d stumbled across the local youth hangout spot. Joy.

Well, you can’t have everything, and having a playground on hand sure made set up, meals and everything else easier.

Tonight we head towards Stelvio pass because their webcam shows that it’s been snowing. A new adventure!

–

Cultural observations:

Toilets in Italy.
Uomani and Donne. Figuring that uomani sounded a little but like woman, I went for that one, and J took donne. ‘Aren’t men are called Don in Spanish? Think of Don Quixote’, I said.

Retrospectively I ought to have wondered why the seat was up. That’s what I get for trying to be clever.

–

National Standard Decoration Colours.

Just my observation here, but I’m really curious about this.
The national standard decorating colour in Switzerland is clearly red. Red window shutters and boxes of red and pink geraniums abound. Consequently they like to grow lAnn everywhere to make the red stand out.
Italy seems to be more biased towards terracotta or salmon pink with green accents.
France used shades of blue everywhere.
Wales and Belguim both like to use turquoise
The Netherlands prefers orange.

Why? How do these things come about?

–

Church towers in Switzerland are awesome. In surprising contrast to the needle sharp spires of everywhere else so far, here they go a little wild and have alost sorts of interesting shapes, often in lovely verdigris shades that contrast beautifully with the clouds and the dark brown of the rooftops.