Hello Everyone, thanks for the brilliant support on the blogs once again! So happy everyone is getting the most out of them and gets me excited to write a new one each week. I couldn’t believe how busy we were this week as I was writing notes! It’s been jam packed and just how I like it!
Monday we visited the beautiful city of Cannes, I only really wanted to come here because of ‘Mr Beans Holiday’ but we explored the harbour area and the main street to find it to be beautiful! The boats in the harbour were the biggest we’ve seen thus far and the average big yacht was about 90ft!We walked through the main street and went to an Irish pub recommended to Isaac by a friend, the beer was lovely and Isaac even had a Guinness! We finished up and wandered back to van back past all the boats and down the front of the harbour. The evening was a bit tough, we drove about an hour along the coast and tried to find a camp spot. Annoyingly it took 4 tries to get a spot, one closed and the other two just not right but that’s all part of this life and something we just had to work past. We finally found one, cooked dinner and got to bed.
Tuesday was an early call for me, I woke up to realise it was 7:30 and perfect time to watch sunrise! I crept out the van and sat and watched the sunrise on the beach. Sadly there was so much rubbish (mostly polystyrene) so instead of walking off I decided to walk along and pick it all up. It took about an hour and included 2 broken plastic sunbeds but after it I felt really good and it wasn’t even 9am! Perfect way to start the day! We made our way in Monaco for the day, there was even bigger boats here (hardly surprising!). We walked around for almost 4 hours and bought lunch from the Carrefour so to avoid the overpriced restaurants but had the same view as the restaurants as we just sat by the harbour. The largest boat we saw was 344ft and an absolute monster! It’s so cool being able to get so close to these humongous boats and seeing how they work and are docked which I find pretty interesting. In the evening we made our way further down the coast and into Italy, our camp spot was by the beach and we could see the damage done by the huge floods only recently in the south of France and Italy. Trees bent round bridges and huge 20/30ft logs floating around in the ocean with an unholy amount of bark and smaller twigs washing around in the water and beached up on land, it was immense. We cooked a lovely steak and chips for dinner and then went to bed.
Wednesday was a huge day of driving, we drove for about 6-6 1/2 hours in total to get to a spot near Portofino for the following day. We had a quick shower in the morning on the beach and lunch was a lovely leftover steak sandwich but other than that we were exhausted and cooked a batch of chicken drumsticks and salad for dinner.
Thursday we were on a mission to see Portofino, a small, quaint fishing village known to be one of the most beautiful villages in the world. As it was pedestrianised parking was extremely expensive (€70 a day!) so instead we decided to walk an hour down the coast. It was almost worth it just for the walk, it was so picturesque and half the time there was just stopping and taking pictures every 5 minutes! When we arrived we were met with all sorts of pastel coloured buildings. Pinks, blues, greens and oranges littered the harbour and hillsides. It was magical and I was definitely able to agree with it being one of the most beautiful villages in the world! It’s also protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site so continues to stay beautiful without huge hotels shoved on the sides of the hills ruining the look. We walked around, sat and admired the beauty of this place for a good 2 hours, we went on a little walk up to see over the other side of the peninsula which was just the endless Mediterranean sea. We made our way back to the van which didn’t take as long this time as we didn’t need to stop so many times for pictures! Back at the van we decided to head to Lake Garda (the largest lake in Italy) and, although it took a while, we got there just in time for sunset and stayed on the south end of the lake. The sunset was beautiful and we sat in a bar by the beach and watched the birds dance around in the final fading orange glow of the day. We ate at the bar and then sat and had a few beers on the beach to top off another amazing day.
Friday we made the most of the free shower by the beach even though it was freezing cold and not that much warmer outside! We drove up the coast of the lake to a small town called Lazise, I visited here last year on a two week road trip so it was interesting to come back and have a look round post-lockdown. We got a pizza overlooking the lake, our first proper Italian pizza which was delicious and the gelato afterwards was even better! We continued our drive up towards the northern end of the lake, the mountains were really big here and snow capped even though the weather at the base around the lake was beautiful and sunny, it was pretty perfect for this time of year you couldn’t ask for more! We got some free wifi from the campsite next door and chilled out for the evening.
Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day, once again the mountains were slightly snow capped but the weather was around 22°c! We had a big walk round the lake to the northern edge and had lunch overlooking the boat docks and watched all the people walked past. There were so many boats out, majority mirror dinghy's and lasers, but also loads of wind surfers flying from side to side! It was brilliant lunchtime entertainment. We walked back to the van and chilled for a bit then in the evening went and played frisbee on the beach before it got cold. We had a really tasty homemade curry for dinner washed down with a few beers for a lovely Saturday night.
Sunday was once again another wet one, we think this is the third week Sunday has been full of rain, this called for another chilled out day. We used next doors WIFI and I went for a walk about lunch time. We find it important to do things individually as well as together so we aren’t constantly together and have our own time too. When I got back we had soup for lunch under the homemade DIY awning out of the continuous rain and then headed north again this time up into the mountains! We stopped at a big shopping mall on the way and had a look round and a McDonalds, they even sold beer as a drink option! There was no hesitation to what I went for... Isaac continued the drive up into the mountains and we were greeted with heavy snow which was pretty magical! We arrived at our first spot to find another British number plate, we drove alongside them and started chatting. The snow was really heavy and setting so Me, Isaac and our new Scottish friend Will made our way back down the mountain into lighter snow and found another car park. It was at a hotel so we went in for a couple of beers and got to know our new mate, after a while of good chat and a few beers we retired to each of our vans for the evening to go to bed, it was also freezing cold (about -2°c) so we made sure to wrap up and keep it nice and warm ready to hunker down for a cold night ahead!
Thanks for reading this weeks blog! We have been super busy and the weather for us has gone from swim shorts all the way to jumpers coats and joggers! It’s great to switch it up and really test ourselves and the van in all climates! This week we kick it off in the mountains and who knows what will happen by the end of the week! Including us!
Cheers,
Kieran