Bonjourno (Brad Pitt-Inglourious Bastards voice),

Our route over the last few days.

After a fantastic time in Austria and Europe we were off to our last European country together, Italy!

We left our host’s behind in Innsbruck and headed for what will also be the last time I cross the Alps on this trip. The road wound through various small villages for the last 30km to the Italian border.

Our Host’s

When we crossed into Italy we almost missed the border as its still very German in northern Italy, same type of feeling as in Austria. But nonetheless we were in!

Crossing the Alps again.

Bozen, Italy

We headed out and crossed the Alps heading towards Venice. The wine farms and castles were really spectacular!

Not too late in the day we reach Venice, one of our highlites when planning the trip over a year ago. Venice is what you think it is. Its awesome, pretty and very difficult to get out of it when you are in.

Grand Canal

This place makes chicks weird! Be warned… lots of these photos will be taken.

One of the many canals.

There are millions of small passages where you can walk down and explore, but try that at night if you are rushing back to catch the last train. It absolute chaos. Every little road is a dead end into a canal.

Dinner was served aswell as an extra portion of brownie points for me.

We checked out the next morning and headed for Lucca. We were meeting up with Frederico. He followed my journey up the West Coast and when we got close to Italy he invited us to his home.

But first we stopped in Florence.

So for the last few days they fed us fantastic italian dishes and some cold beer.

We chilled out for 2 days here, going to the beach and visiting Pisa.

The beach

Pisa

We decided to go to Rome via the high speed train as I didnt want to backtrack 300km to Lucca and it was the same price without the hassle of parking in a big city.

We checked into our hotel and went out to see what we could find.

This is what we found.

I tried to blend in…

Rome is fantastic if you were wondering… Its just the tourist man! There are so many, no matter where you go they are everywhere and in these highly congested area’s the prices and service go haywire. I wanted to tell them that they are doing it wrong, prices should go down and service levels up. But I might just sound crazy.

There are also no pics of the Vatican. I found it to be so boring I almost fell asleep while walking through the Sisteen Chapel. Its a money spinning machine and not the religious place it should be. They kept telling people to cover the shoulders and to keep quite inside… WTF? You can’t try to keep it holy when there is a million people in the chapel and your security guards check out your girlfriend/wife as if she is a pole dancers.

Anyways after that little outburst, back to the post.

It was also a sad day for us as Deidre went back to SA yesterday and left me in Rome to continue my journey south. It was a sad goodbye but an unforgettable 5 weeks with my new fiance.

Deidre on her way

So the journey south start tomorrow as I head towards Greece then Turkey and hopefully get the ferry to Egypt. Egypt… that’s another story. Sure you guys have news so you know whats happening there. I am not too concerned about it, it’s still relatively calm.

Never a dull moment!

See you in Greece

Cheers
Riaan
Lucca, Italy