A Military Mom's Monologue: Day 2 With Free Wine

Day 2 of our adventurous, ridiculous, insane, wonderful, beautiful and long Journey to Turkey.

Today was an amazing drive!

We woke up this morning and went downstairs for the "French buffet." Too bad a French buffet breakfast consists of croissants, pastries, and fruit. I can't stand sweet breakfasts so I stuck with a couple croissants (which were delicious!) and a banana.

After breakfast we quickly loaded up the car, paid, and got on the road by about 9 am.

A ways down the road we hit another toll and once again it wouldn't take our card. We'd tried finding an ATM on our way out of Bourge en Bresse, but had failed. We hit the call button. A French voice come through.

"Parlez-vois Anglais?"

"Non. Carte non acceptimleebe..." (Close enough right? I'm writing this on the road without the use of google!)

"Yeah, we got that. We have no cash either."

Insert some more French here that sounded like "Pull forward to the office." And the barrier in front of us went up.

We went to the information/office, Richard paid with the card inside (the card wants a signature, hence the reason it doesn't work in some automated machines!)

We decided at this point to take a small break as it's been a couple hours of driving. We let the dogs out the back, still on the lead. In the process of jumping out Nali knocked his favorite squeaky ball out of the car. It made its way to the side of the motorway. Richard ran down the hill to grab it and tossed it back to the top. Too bad we own big dogs who are very good pullers... Athena jumped for the ball, breaking her lead in the process, and had a nice galavant across the parking lot. Thank GOD it was Athena whose lead broke. Nali is a runner. Athena is a lover. We quickly grabbed hold of Athena. After examining the lead we saw that she'd pulled the metal links out. Great. Now our lead is broken. We just tied the lead to her collar, put the dogs back in the car, and got on the road again.

Richard and I aren't really fans of the French countryside. I might have said that yesterday. It is just boring and flat and boring. However. Southern France was BEAUTIFUL! We drove through the alps, which was quite easily the most amazing drive ever. We didn't even mind the traffic. It was hard to capture in picture form the amazing views, snowcapped mountains and waterfalls but I tried anyways.

Most of the drive in the mountains was on these huge bridges. Each side of the road had their own bridge. The bridges wove in and out of each other. It was beautiful. It was nerve wracking.

Ever since I was little I've had a fear of heights and bridges especially. I remember having a nightmare where our car went over the Golden Gate Bridge and landed in the waters below. Bridges make me very nervous. I took some video of our drive yesterday and you can hear me saying, "Oh my God, I'm going to be sick... Seriously... I'm freaking out right now..." I just get a huge knot in my stomach with fear on bridges like that. The pictures and videos I took just can't properly express the sheer height and beauty of driving through those mountains...

We eventually pulled up to the Monte Blanc tunnel. For 40€ we drove for 45 minutes straight through the mountain and voila! we were in Italy!

We still had about an hour of driving through beautiful mountains. There were ruins, old decrepit houses, and rows of fruit everywhere. Every house seemed to have its own mini vineyard! Oh Italy. Your AMAZING!

After an hour or so of driving through Italy we realised we knew NO Italian... I only knew thank you and hello...

Deciding to take advantage of my 25 mb of data a day through my phone I did some quick research and downloaded a travellers guide to speaking Italian podcast. We ended up not needing it too much, but it's nice to have the knowledge anyways!

The rest of our driving was fairly uneventful. All the other tolls took our credit card with no problem. No more embarrassing communications with toll staff. We ended up on a back road through Italian farm land, admiring all the beautiful old homes. We enjoyed the remaining part of our trip until we got to Rimini.

Rimini is a cute little city right on the sea. It is, however a city. The driving was crazy, even the GPS struggled! Our hotel was situated in a HUGE district of hotels along the beach. It was literally block upon block of hotels. All with one way streets! We missed the turn for the hotel the first time around, and had to drive around the block. Everyone was parked on the streets making it a bit of a tight fit for us and the Jeep. We found a spot along the street, unloaded all living beings and walked the block and a half to the hotel.

Richard walked in with the baby, and I hung outside on the porch with Nali and Athena.

The lady who was checking in turned around, her face immediately lighting up with joy at seeing Rhapsody. She started talking away in Italian to Rhapstouching her face and hands. Once again proof that my kid is awesome! The lady, whose name my husband and I unfortunately forget, came out to me and the dogs talking to Richard and Rhapsody with the loveliest accent. She asks us where our car is, and when we tell her down the street she insists that we park in the driveway by the hotel since we have the dogs and baby. Athena takes that exact moment to urinate on the front porch. Seriously. Pee. ON THE PORCH. I was so embarrassed! Then Nali decided he had to mark his territory. On the herb pots. SERIOUSLY! Just lifted his leg and sprayed. I could murder those dogs! I was tempted to just drop the leads and point to someone near by saying, "Hey! Your dogs peed everywhere. I don't want them anymore!" I think she would've known I was lying...

Since it was after 8 pm I was starving so we asked where a good restaurant or pizzeria was. She offered to order the pizza for us. I went upstairs with the monsters by use of the most rickety, tiny, scary elevator ever while Richard unloaded the car. Our hotel room was massive! And very very nice.

Richards first trip upstairs resulted in the dogs breaking for freedom while we were distracted. Nali made it down three flights of stairs before I managed to grab a hold of his hair and yank him down. Freaking dog.

After all was said and done Richard came back upstairs with complementary wine and whiskey. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE Italy. FREE wine! They were unable to order delivery so Richard went on the hunt for pizza while I turn on Italian Despicable Me.

Richard came back with a huge slice of pizza he got for free because they didn't take card. It helped that the workers were Turkish and he'd mentioned that we were moving to Adana.

Today was quite a bit less eventful than yesterday. A welcome break. Our hotel is really nice, the staff super friendly.

Tomorrow we drive 6 and a half hours to Brindisi to catch the night ferry to Greece. I look forward to driving along the coast of Italy, seeing the ocean and enjoying the view of the country I could easily live in.