A Tidy Van is a Happy Van


Well we’re on our first real trip in the new van aiming to get as far south as Rome.  Navigating is not expected to be a problem because as you know “all roads lead to Rome”.   Come on, you didn’t expect good jokes did you ?
We did a mountain pass crossing into Italy which was quite gentle compared to some we’ve been over.  Wonderful views, snow at the top and surprisingly warm.  Just a shirt weather.  Well trousers of course.  Our site for the night was grassy and flowery with a view of snow-capped peaks in the near distance and we had a glass or two of bubbly in the sunshine to welcome ourselves here.   There was only one other touring van on site and we couldn’t see it from our spot.  A really good introduction to Italy.
The very nature of travelling with our own transport rather than on local public ones means that we have far less contact with the locals.  We meet far fewer people and of course they’re nearly always the source of interesting snippets.  I’m writing this bit on the Italian Riviera near Genoa which sounds classy but is a crowded campsite with lots of permanent caravans  and a bit travellers campy feel about it.  Oh, and the electricity is a meagre 3 amps which is about the same as a couple of AA batteries. 
Apart from each other the main conversation has been with our sat-nav who doesn’t always get it right and drives me mad.  We won’t use it/her without a map and compass to hand.   It is a measure of the times that the first person I can talk about is a disembodied voice from a small plastic box but there it is.  I know her instructions to us are pieced together from individual sounds and some poor woman hasn’t sat in a booth for half of eternity reading every place name on the planet, but it does lead to incomprehensible directions.  Our one speaks as if she went to the Edward Heath School of Foreign Words – and then failed for being sooo bad.  Most are impossible to get across but how about  Root dee Nappa Layon.  Yes, that’s Route de Napoleon.   I won’t even try Avenue Frederic and Irene Curie.
France looked and felt as wonderful as ever and if we didn’t have an important task near Rome to perform I would have been happy to stay there.  Diesel is definitely a lot cheaper than Italy where it’s a bit more than England and food in the Italian shops is also dearer than France.  Petrol in Italy is more expensive still at about £1.50-£1.60 a litre.  That’s about $10-$10.50 a US Gallon.
The new van is bigger than the old one and because we’re used to travelling compact style we have empty cupboards and loads of space so the Tidy Van bit is dead easy though it is an absolutely true statement about being in a van.   Without being too nerdy because it is a bit like train spotting, this type of van is a panel conversion where everything is fitted into an existing van.  Others are different and believe me you won’t want me to explain.  Anyway this type comes with either a rear lounge where the lounge is at the back.  With me so far ?  Or it can have a centre lounge.  Work it out for yourself. This van doesn’t have either.  It seems so smart it has a centre Drawing Room.

First proper day out is by bus into Genoa, supposed birthplace of Cristobal Colon or Christopher Columbus as we know him.  Many years ago we went to the monastery in southern Spain where he planned the voyage to the west.  It seems he was a bit of an enigma, no-one really knows where he came from, he was a bit of a chancer and had been turned down by the English King before Isabella and what-his-name funded his trip.  Columbus’ dad was a pawnbroker of sorts to sailors and young Cristobal allegedly had access to lots of charts which again allegedly showed land to the west.  Allegedly.  Anyway he found India as planned and who knows what happened to it after that.

The bus system here in Genoa has a buy a ticket from a tobacconist or similar and then validate it in a machine on the bus.  It’s then valid for 100 minutes.  So we did and watched the bus fill and empty several times on the hour run into Genoa.  Not one other person validated a ticket.  Ah Italy, don’t ya just love it.  Genoa itself has an extensive medieval centre of narrow lanes which are too small even for Italian drivers and are thus mostly traffic free. It being Sunday most of it was shut but it was certainly very easy to imagine it in medieval times as a bustling city and one of the major ports of the world.  Except that now it doesn’t stink.


Our only people contacts of the day were in tourist information, at a coffee shop and in a lunchtime semi-cellar restaurant in the heart of the jumble of tiny lanes.  A restaurant which bizarrely was dedicated to Frank Zappa.

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