Morzine is a great little place >all the locals waiting eagerly for the ski season to start indec. We stayed in a b&b run by daughter and mother and out for dinner that night talked to waitress and noticed she spoke a little differently from others .Turned out that she was Irish from Dublin and worked there through the ski season and stayed on for summer. She gave us lots of tips of what to do. Next morning did a loop that went right up to 3000 meters and found that they have cows and goats right up around the small villages all the way up .There were beautiful cow hides for sale in one village and also sheep which were the produce of NZ. There were a veritable cats cradle of ski lifts going to several different slopes .You can see why it is a mecca for ski bunnies. I was intrigued how they milked these cows up the mountain ,.The answer was not long coming ,they take the shed to them .It looked about 10 bales that folded flattish and were towed to the cows. The cows all have bells on them to help find them and the beautiful sound fills up the valley,that could be quite useful for the naughty ones at home. We got out and talked to herd of goats and offered them some stale bread we had in the car of course the billy came over and when we got back in the car all you could smell was billy goat .Then we saw the farmer with a large stainless steel orb shaped tank on Suzuki jeep and we thought we will follow him. Easier said than done ,what ensued was a breakneck chase down the mountain with C out the window with the camera and sheer drop below .Sort of James Bond with a jeep and a 308 Pueguot .
So we bid a to farewell to France drove through the Mount Blanc tunnel about 10-15mins then in Italy.
Noticed 2 things immediately .Firstly a boy flagging people down for road works ,when he saw C out the window with the camera ,with a flourish he spread his arms out and gave a big cheesy grin .The French are quite serious until you engage them. Second the driving .The speed signs are a piece of fiction for them and even when the sign says 50 and I am doing 70 and tom tom is screaming at me to slow down there will be someone either flying past or playing elephants with my bumper ..Northern Italy quite industrial and the country side pretty hard looking, to this end we set sale for Nieve that I had booked the night before.. C was getting quite anxious as you who know her( I didn't come to Italy in drive on the f...n motorway) ,but there was only one to get where we going and at the end of 2 round abouts we were back on roads that 2 bikes could hardly pass.
Any way back in good books the hotel in Nieve came up trumps but tom tom did send us up wrong way 2 one way streets causing much head shaking by locals in cafe. Nieve is a beautiful little Italian village on top of hill
27th Headed for Verona .The advise from the dear little man in hotel (who was in love with C after he gave her the phone to interpret an Aussie couple who were coming in late gave us glass of wine each) was don't get off the motor way there is nothing to see .OK so I was quite enjoying my self bowling along at 140 but c face like thunder . Any way go to Verona to find taken over with whole lot of Scot gits ,some festival .This threw tomtom into spin as roads were closed and the options she took us down looked like some ones very small closed garage wrong some times. Our number plate is red as against every one else's being white in front and yellow at back and every one looks at it knowing that its some foreign fool. The town was fool so as punishment we thought tom tom could choose .But she had the last laugh .Well we ended up 40 mins out of Verona in a medium sized hotel where were the only guests and the host spoke no inglsis and looked like he did funerals as well .Norman Bates was mentioned . We survived the night
28th Went back to Verona . I fancied my chances at getting a park despite some despairing sighs from the passenger. Happily I was right and having driven abit the day before I felt knew where I was. Some quick looks at phrase book to confirm that there was not a penalty of death for our chosen park we set forth . The only thing I knew about Verona was that Will Shakespeare had written a little play set in it . It is a beautiful city and we went to its Arena some what diminished in ambiance when they were setting up for a Italian rock concert. We met a lovely Aussie couple who showed us the way to Juliet's balcony .
After tom tom s debacle the night before we had booked a b&b in Asolo quite near Venice and we arrived about 5 .Again not a scrap of inglisi and our Italian pretty dodgy so much gesturing and can you believe une per petite Francaise we manged. I am drooling over both the beautiful cars and bikes and C is probably drooling over glass and masks and clothes and anything shiny . Valentino Rossi won the motoGP today and every boy on a scooter thinks he is him
29th Had a great night discovering Asolo a very old hilltop town with of course castle at the top .We parked the car and C said she wanted to go down to see where the people were going to .I wanted to go up ,so it didn't take long for me to discover that where C went to was another car park but we found each other up the top and peace was restored.