thewills'wanderings

We left Chamonix and headed for Annecy another beautiful French town on the edge of Lake Annecy. The lake was clear, clear blue and pretty chilly, especially after months of swimming in tropical water. Actually I didn’t swim, putting my feet in was enough and watching how the girls jumped in and then gasped for air and swam back to shore as quickly as possible was enough to convince me that it was cold. We had a really relaxing few days here, and here we managed to get our computer to a usable state. We lost most of the data on it but managed to save the photos, which is great. The major hassle is that it came back with everything in French, so it’s very annoying. Apparently, there is nowhere in France we can get the English software. We can cope with it for now but will sort it out as soon as we can, probably in the States.

We left Annecy, heading south for the coast. We arrived near Marseille and found a campsite in a car park right on the top of a cliff that had the most spectacular view across the Meditaranean Sea. We wondered why we had it all to ourselves. In the morning we were woken by people closing the road so they could test a car. They told us we weren’t supposed to camp there anyway. They were very cruisy about it and just asked us to move around the corner which is where we had breakfast perched high on a cliff. Awesome!

We then decided to follow the coast all the way to Monaco and then in to Italy. Quite naively, we imagined stopping where we liked and swimming all along the coast, but this is not NZ or Australia! We did do lots of swimming but there were also lots of stressful moments of trying to find a park for the campervan, a particularly bad moment was driving down a one way narrow road and finding a low bridge that we couldn’t get under.Tim then had to reverse out all the way while I stood in the middle of the road warning traffic coming behind us. This was in Cannes, which is full of rich and famous, glamorous people. I didn’t feel very glamorous at that moment. Luckily we have German number plates, so the Germans get the blame for all our bad driving!!Well, we did have. We’ve been getting tired of being mistaken for Germans. French campervanners aren’t friendly to us because they think we’re German, and Germans don’t seem to be very well liked. The Germans come over to us, speak German and then can’t understand why we’re not German. So the other night the girls made an NZ out of black electrical tape and also a kiwi shape and we are now happy. The only problem is that now NZ gets the blame for our driving!

We had another fantasic campspot the other night. We were a bit stressed about finding somewhere free or cheap for the night and had resigned ourselves to having to stay in an expensive campground when Michaella yelled out, ‘Over there! There’s lots of camper-vans! ‘ We decided to investigate and yes there were lots of campervans right on the waterfront in a marina carpark behind a gate. We thought it must be private but drove up to investigate and we were so suprised when the man at the gate opened it and said that we could camp there for 8 Euro. We hd toilets, power and wifi, right on the edge of the clear blue sea! It would have been perfect if Charlotte hadn’t woken us in the night with serious vomitting and diarohea. She’s now ok and back to her cheeky self.

We almost stayed at this spot for another night but decided to move on as we have such limited time. We drove along the coast swimming when we could and taking in the sights. We drove through Nice and on to Monaco. The scenery was spectaclar. I think the best way to see this coast would definitely be from one of the many superyachts we saw!Driving in a campervan is a bit stressful along such a densely populated coast. We breathed a sigh of relief when we reached Sospel, a beautiful town close to the Italian border and found a quiet camp spot. The town was probably our favourite so far. You could hear a mix of Italian and French spoken and had amazing little cobblestoned streets, a huge cathedral and rugged mountains all around. We stayed here 2 nights before we crossed the border through yet another amazing tunnel into Italy.

Well, I have a new woman in my life. She has a sexy English voice, never talks back, doesn’t argue, goes whereever she is told and best of all I can turn her off when I’ve had enough.

Kim has now been relegated to only doing cooking, cleaning and dishes(and a few other things as well). Jane now sits proudly in the front seat and has prevented many marital disputes. I recommend any man who has been frustrated with directions given by non-spacially minded navigationally challenged wives, to always invest in a Jane.

In case you haven’t figured it out, Jane is our tom-tom GPS which we hired with our campervan. All you do is type in your desired destination on the touch screen and up comes your position on the map and a computer generated voice tells you exactly what turn offs to take, times, distances and all sorts of other interesting points of interests along your route.

Kim says……….I’m typing this for Tim as we drive(I don’t know why when he talks such rubbish).All I can say is I’m SO glad we have Jane. Now, I can just sit back and enjoy the ride without getting abused for not giving instructions soon enough, for not understanding foreign language road signs etc etc….
Jane does have a few limitations though, she lost the plot when we went high in the French Alps on windy roads and then we had to rely on the old-fashioned method. Of course, it took Tim a while to actually admit that Jane had failed him. It was quite devastating for him.

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