Italy : 15 to 25 April 2002
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Italy : 15 to 25 April 2002 |
| Italy, at last ! |
| Italy at last,
Europe at last ! After a short night on the Italian registered "Anna
Maria Lauro", Christian woke up early to see the sun rise. Soon the
Italian coast was in sight and we reached Naples. Docking was slow,
getting through customs even slower. On the left, European passport
holders, on the right non-European. But we were in no hurry. We filmed our
driving on European soil after. Despite having made it to geographical
Europe in Istanbul this was special for both of us.
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Our first view of the busy city of Naples (left), a pilot boat guiding our ship into her berth (not a coastguard boat looking for refugees) (centre), the customs line (right)
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| We soon
discovered that Napolitan drivers deserve their wild west reputation ! Few
rules seem to be obeyed, streets are small and cars seem to come out from
every possible side street. What impressed us most was their speed ! After
more than a year in Asia where doing 120 km/h is more than nearly
everybody else, here it was the opposite ! Driving with trucks on the
narrow Italian motorway lanes meant driving fast. Driving fast meant
consuming a lot of expensive fuel ! Driving along the winding Amalfi Coast
proved difficult and rather unpleasant because of Troopie's size.
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Naples' harbour (left), stunning views along the coast of Amalfi (centre), a small shop in a village on the Amalfi Coast (right)
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| The first thing
we did when driving South to see Herculaneum and Paestum was to stop for
food ! Kathleen entered a small supermarket in Naples to buy some bread,
cheese and Italian ham. The old lady in front of her had trouble
recognising her newly acquires Euro coins and the shop looked at Kathleen
and raised his eyebrows little realising that Kathleen had NEVER used the
new money !
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The Amalfi Coast
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| Stock up, son ! |
| To stock up, that
was our reflex. Whenever we visited a supermarket during our journey,
whether "Crossroads" in India or "Migros" in Turkey,
we would buy food for a few weeks. We always had a small shopping list of
items we were looking for. In Italy this was all over. We would never
leave this world of abundance again. It was difficult to resist to all the
goodies we hadn't had in more than a year ! Ham, wine, olives..
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The kind of food we had dreamt about for months : Italian coffee, ham and brick-oven cooked pizze !
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| Caserta and the Italian tradition of silk |
| On this journey
following the silk road from Xian in China to Istanbul in Turkey, it was
only normal that we stopped in Caserta, South of Rome. This used the be a
major city producing silk in Italy. Today, only 1 or 2 factories remain.
We tried to visit one unsuccessfully. We visited the magnificent Belvedere
di San Leucio that houses old silk machines. It has its own website at http://www.belvederedisanleucio.it/ing/index.html.
The Belvedere used to be "an old baronial cottage" that was
transformed into a silk factory by King Fernandino IV. Recently it was
marvelously restored with EU money.
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We're in Italy after all (left), Troopie in front of the Belvedere (centre), a ceiling painting in the magnificently restored Belvedere (right)
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A roll of silk on an incredible 5 meter high wooden machine working only by hydraulics (centre)
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Troopie in Palestrina, just South of Rome
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After nearly 60,000 km, our road also eventually led to Rome
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| Camping in Italy |
| Yes, we did
manage to camp in Italy in all places except Rome where we were lucky to
be staying with friends ! We had managed to sleep in our car in every
single country during our journey. As before, we felt fine sleeping along
the motorway or in little frequented car parks ! The safest must have been
sleeping in front of a church. After all we had found protection from
Allah by sleeping next to a mosque in Aqaba, Jordan !
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Camping in the woods (South of Modena), along the motorway to Roma and in the corner of the coach parking in Paestum
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Camping with protection, outside Parma, Northern Italy
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| April 25th : heading North to France and Switzerland |
| After a wonderful
visit of the Alfa Romeo museum North of Milan, we headed towards Turin
with the aim of halting for the night in the Aosta valley. As we
progressed well, we quickly got excited by the idea that perhaps we could
make it to Geneva where Kathleen's parents live that same day. Incredibly
we only needed 4 hours to get to Geneva through the newly re-opened
"Tunnel du Mont Blanc".
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The Aosta Valley through Troopie's cracked windscreen (left), the two images that best symbolise our "real" return to Europe (centre and right)
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| The joy of
knowing we would surprise Kathleen's parents that night by an early
arrival together with the crossing a very symbolic tunnel in Europe made
this our real return to Europe. At last we felt some strong emotions of
being back in Europe. Pride as well of having "made it" through
China and Libya. Christian stopped Troopie for a picture outside the Mont
Blanc Tunnel which had only re-opened a week or so earlier after having
been closed for nearly 2 years. He quickly got noticed by the state of the
art camera surveillance and 2 men came running out of their office
shouting. With the state of mind we had then, we couldn't have bothered
had they put us in jail !
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This is home : Troopie at the Southern entrance of the Mont Blanc Tunnel, Italy
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| We only had one
concern with the tunnel : having to stop in the middle of it to take some
pictures of Troopie at her 5000 km interval. We were not very far at all
of reaching the 60,000 km mark in the tunnel !
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| Here are our extra pages on Italy : |
We are doing well !
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| Coming from Tunisia | Back to Trip page | Heading to Switzerland |
