We packed up our belongings and had a quick breakfast in our room (fresh, hot baguette, fruit and brie - all bought at a fraction of the relatively reasonably priced 18 franc per person breakfast at the hotel) and hit the road in our sporty little Peugot wagon. I highly recommend starting your European city driving experience on a public holiday like Easter Sunday. The roads were dead and my confidence was soon high enough to be complaining about other drivers. Once outside of the city, on the large mountain tollways, it gets even easier, which is good as the scenery starts to make it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the road ahead.
We had seen some wonderful views of Mont Blanc from Geneva and were really looking forward to seeing it up close. When I started planning this trip I had the fanciful idea in my head that the weather would be nice and we would make a brief pit stop in Chamonix, where we could take a quick cable car ride to the summit. The sun would be shining, the sky would be blue and we could drink in the panoramic view of all the lesser snow-capped Alps. Today was a lesson in how things don't always go to plan. The weather was miserable, with the mountain peaks almost invisible under a thick bank of clouds and the rain going between a light drizzle and an outright downpour. We did make the pit stop in Chamonix, though. We thought we would park the car and try and find a chocolat chaud and some apfelstrudel, but were turned away by the rudeness of the local flora, whose tall trees on the boulevard next to the car chose the perfect moment to let loose a large, wet slushball from their branches straight on to the back of Fiona's neck. The 'splat' was audible from several paces.
So quickly back into the car and towards the Mont Blanc tunnel, which runs 11.611 km between France and Italy. Now a tunnel that high, that long and with geo-political implications will always have a long list of superlatives, but to those I definitely have to add "the most organized". They are quite fanatical about the speed you drive while in the tunnel and the distance that you maintain between yourself and the person in front of you. They have blue lights spaced out on the walls at 150m intervals so you can judge the distance. They cut into your radio with tunnel instructions at appropriate intervals. All very impressive.
We popped out on the Italian side and started the journey down the mountain and towards the Mediterranean. I was looking forward to more scenic viewpoints as we descended from the clouds but the autostrada on the Italian side seemed to be in a constant state of jumping from one tunnel to another. It was like the Italian Alps had once been a colony of mole-people.
There was the odd place where they let you come up for air and the views were impressive. Every steep craig overlooking each key valley had an old castle on it. The valley slopes were covered in (not yet active) vineyards. The toll road was a magnificent and simple piece of driving. And I was starting to catch on to the key Italian phrases Fiona was reading to me from her Kindle phrasebook (including - seriously - "am I under arrest?" and "I didn't do anything").
The Alps quickly (more quickly than I had thought) gave way to flat valleys of farmland, covered in clouds and under a light rain. In a few places, as we entered Liguria and neared Genoa, it got quite bad, which was a pity for me because as I started to have to grip the wheel tighter and tighter to avoid hydroplaning on the small lakes developing in the right hand lane, Fiona was ooh-ing and ahh-ing. The hills and what people have done with them in this part of Italy do make for stunning landscapes.
We thought it was over when we popped out the end of one more tunnel and saw Genoa's industrial port in the distance and the sun overhead. Following the twists and turns into the city I started to get a little nervous, dreaming up nightmare scenarios of having to go around a roundabout 17 times while little Fiats and people on scooters tooted their horns and yelled Italian obscenities at the ignorant tourist. I am pleased to say that the nightmare was never realized, as I only had to go around the roundabout 3 times, the car was an Opel and there were no obscenities. I was relieved to park the car at our city centre hotel, where it will stay for three nights until we shove off for Monaco.
We took a brief foray into the city, passing the impressive fountain at the Piazzo de Ferrari, which is surrounded by amazingly ornate old buildings. You can expect to see some pictures, but not today. It turns out that while we thought we had driven through the last of the rain, we had actually just driven past it, and now it had caught up and was giving us a good soaking. So back to the hotel to charge those items we couldn't charge in Switzerland, catch up on a blog post or two a have brief snack before dinner. Our room is nice, the bed is huge and comfortable and the noise is minimal. We're looking forward to a good night's sleep and a kicking off a few days of enjoying this city's historical, architectural, artistic and natural wonders.
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