En-route to Eastern Europe

 

A two and a half hour plane journey took us from the stark, arid landscapes of Morocco to green, clean France. After a month in the  driest of countries, with dust and unwelcome smells, we just loved the green orderliness of France - patchwork fresh fields of ripe wheat, green maize, tidy, regular-shaped cities and towns where buildings and roads are well-maintained and rubbish is collected frequently. Also, the freedom of western dress and customs means we can again hold hands without feeling conspicuous!  

Car hire (lease in our case): Previous experiences with picking up a hire car is that it can be a drawn out business required sighting of many documents. Not so with our lease car, a Peugeot 308. Within just a few minutes we had the keys, Bob was in the left hand driver’s seat and we were off. Cautiously at first, but now confidently, he’s driven close to 1,000 kilometres on the ‘wrong’ side of the road and much of it going at speed on busy motorways. (Anne has driven a little on the quieter roads and is gradually getting used to it).

 

 

We had up to four full days to drive the 1,100 kilometres to Zagreb in Croatia so we had some freedom to choose routes and timing. With countries so close together we chose to go into Switzerland, across the top of Italy, through Slovenia and will arrive in Zagreb on  Sunday 6^th .

We are currently at Koper, a small seaside town in Slovenia and have been able to fit in a rest day and quickly do another blog post. The scenery through Switzerland and the Italian Alps was stunning and the main purpose of this post is to share some of the photographs.

Once in Croatia we will be hosted by a number of families, before having a week on one of the islands, so it is most likely that our next posting will be from there in the last week of July .

 



Lake Geneva

The scenery in Switzerland took our breath away, with magnificent beauty wherever we looked.

 
 





The village in the Italian Alps  (above) where we spent a night in this bed and breakfast (below)

Various views taken from the car as we drove across northern Italy

 

 

Busy roads with many, many trucks. We've become used to overtaking in the left land at 120 km/hr

 

 and tunnels


and the inevitable tolls.  However, toll roads are very good to drive on and allow you to cover long distances quickly,

 

Markets in Slovenia, with additional atmosphere created with traditional music playing. We are here at the time of the "squid" festival, so there's lots happening in the evenings also.



Old farming tools and equipment (including a wooden knapsack)