A couple of days ago, we decided to leave Italy and head to France – the Loire Valley to be specific. I have to admit, that the more we travelled along through Italy the more it looked like Southern California – sure, not the same but very similar. Part of the ‘gap year’ was to “be somewhere else” and Italy wasn’t looking like “somewhere else” enough. While we had originally said we would get to Sicily, we bagged that with the goal of heading towards France and doing some Chateau’s we missed on our last trip, drinking some French wines and getting some cooler weather (yes, it was getting warm in southern Italy).
While not a complete speed run, we did move right along. We did, however, stop in Neive (Piedmont region) for a visit with Leslie Alexandria.
She, and her husband Robert, was our guides for an introduction into Piedmont wines a few years ago and stopping by to say hello just seemed like the right thing to do. I was sorry, after visiting for such a brief time, we didn’t arrange to stay a day or two as it really is a lovely little part of the world – oh well, next time.
After Neive we spent the night in Genoa – on the coast of Italy – and had a lovely lunch in a spot off the beaten track – nice seafood and pasta, lovely people and beautiful beach (although rocks, not sand) out the window.
Early today (Thursday) we headed out and drove straight through the Rhone Alps to the Loire Valley – something like 600 Km and about 6 hours but we made it to a nice VRBO apartment (more on that later).
One of the things I kept commenting on with Janeen was the frequency and number of auto tunnels we went through. All over Italy they seem to be present on the roadways. Some as short as 150 meters others quite long, like in excess of 12,000 meters (at the entrance of EVERY tunnel they list the length of the darn things). I checked the Web and there are over 90 tunnels that are over 3000 meters long! That is over 1.8 mile long for all of you in the non-metric part of the world. I was seriously amazed. The final tunnel out of Italy and into France was called the
Traforo Del Frejus and it was 12,868 Km long or about 7.9 MILES.
Truly amazing tunnel. About half way through the darn thing we crossed “the border from Italy to France – a marker was posted on the wall to let you know. The toll for just this tunnel was 44.20 EUROs or about $54 US. This was just one of the tunnels – we must have spent a couple hundred EUROS on tolls driving through Italy
Once through the tunnel, the views on the other side weren’t anything to complain about.
Very majestic looking mountains. It looks like you two are bundling up. Is it cooling in France?
Yes, mid 50s and rainy.