Slovenia - its shaped like a chicken....

Ljubljana is the capital of and largest city in Slovenia. It is located in the heart of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. We headed through the Karawanks Tunnel, unfortunate name, crossing the Alpine Karawanks mountain range which separates Austria and Slovenia. The tunnel itself has a total length of 7,864 m, 8,019 m enclosure between the portals.

We stayed in a campsite just outside the city centre and headed in via a very handy bus that stopped just outside the campsite. The city itself seemed quite small with a great mix of contemporary and old buildings and it was spotless with no litter or graffiti.

 Every Friday there is a regional market selling produce and cooked food from all the surrounding towns and areas, the meat kebabs caught our eye, the smell was amazing. A meat skewer with a lovely mix of herbs and spices cooked over a charcoal fire and of course some local wine and beer to wash it down. The local beer is Lasko, which those film buffs amongst us will know this is the legendary crime fighting monk. I have no idea if there is an actual link but hey the beer tastes good unlike the the film which was rubbish.

The city is separated by a small river that facilitates a number of small bridges to cross from each side. Each bridge is different and each has its own name, the cobbler's bridge, the butcher's bridge and the three pronged bridge.

The butchers bridge

The cobblers bridge

Part of the old town.

Klagenfurt Austria

Klagenfurt.....why Klangenfurt.....is it something to do with Sacha Baron Cohen's camp Austrian fashionista Bruno....No. It's because the fastest Ironman course in the world is there...oh and Minimundus a very large model village and that's about it really.

Philippa was a little distressed that she didn't actually see the leaning tower of Pisa close up, but when you have Minimundus who needs the real thing........sorted.

The Ironman course starts in the lake and down the canal past the Tram bar...then heads of on a two loop course of the lake..very flat then a multi loop run up and down the canal path and through the Europark, which is a posh term for the tennis courts and Minimundus complex around the east end of the lake. The run is flatter than the surf at Bournemouth and would, in my opinion, be really boring.

 The Ironman run along the canal path.....

The lake - which was very very clear. The mayor drinks a glass of water straight from it each year to show how clean it is.

Klangenfurt centre was about 5km from the campsite along the canal path. The city centre has a nice pedestrian section with bars and cafes to sit in. On reflection it could be any town centre as all the main shopping brands have a presence, unlike France and Italy. We saw this little fountain, not too sure what the relevance is but it made us laugh.

Italy Summary

Having spent a short period of time in a small area of Italy the summary may be a bit biased  - though what we can say is the food is fabulous, meat, cheese, pasta, ice cream all exceptional. We really love that in Levanto everyone rides their bikes to the shops and the beach, 80+ Italian ladies in their heels looking amazing cycling with dogs in their front baskets - cliched but true. The tapas with your drinks another big plus. The campsites are horrendous, small, poor facilities and the most expensive we have encountered in our 4 months. The road system especially up North is shocking too, road surfaces and joins in bridge sections are particularly poor they shake your eye balls out your head. Road works on every road but with no actual work being done. As you drive you see rubber shredded from tyres on the side of the roads and cars with punctures on the hard shoulder as a result of poor surfaces. Fuel prices are ridiculously high some reaching 55% higher than France. On average we paid €1.89 a litre, 60 cents higher per litre than France and when you have an 80 litre tank to fill that's €48 more a tank. It seems that the Berlusconi era has certainly done more harm than good, as our Bologna campsite manager passionately told us, Italians are now having to pay 60% tax rate but with no physical sign of improvement. The saving grace Italy has over say Greece, is a tourist trade based around great cultural centres though these may become priced out of reach for most of us in the future. Would we return..... yes but not to camp.

Now onto Austria......................

Pisa and Bologna in one day..

Next on the NYT Itinerary were Pisa and Bologna. Since Pisa falls into the rule of somewhere we would go on holiday and the fact that the one and only campsite in Pisa had no availability it was a drive-by shooting, that is a drive-by photo shoot for us.

Well you get the idea, a tower that leans enough said......

Arriving at the Bologna campsite which was built for the Bolonga expo we were greeted by the owner, a very passionate Italian who helped with bus times and maps of the city. So we unpacked the van and headed off into Bologna. the city is about 50 miles from Florence and is famous for it's cuisine and fiery left-leaning politics, market stalls brimming with fresh produce and specialty shops selling cured meats, fresh pasta and its specialty dish Ragu - Bolognese to you and me.

Once again the NYT book of recommended sights came in most handy.
One of the striking elements to Bologna is the portici or covered terracotta archways and marble walk ways that making walking around the city cool when hot and dry when raining.

Cinque Terre - Part 2

Our second night on the campsite in Levanto was memorable as a massive electrical storm passed overhead lasting 3 hours. Now we have all seen lightning, sheet and fork but I've never witnessed a full electrical storm where there is non-stop lightning and the sky is literally lit up continuously with lightning cracking and banging and the level of water falling from the sky was immense, so much so it snapped the awning arm clean off the van. The next morning we awoke to bright sunshine and a campsite that now looked like something from a refugee camp. Tents collapsed, people sleeping in cars and the toilet block, well the less said the better.

We decided to get the train from Levanto to the last village Riomaggiore and spend a few hours in each of the five villages and then walk the coast path from Corniglia to Vernazza. The remaining paths were shut due to previous rain fall and land slides.

Riomaggiore: Small fishing village at the end of the Cinque Terre

Manarola:

  

 Corniglia: the only village on a hill top and not right on the sea.

 The walk was challenging, hot  and quite busy from Corniglia to Vernazza but the views made up for the discomfort.

 The view back to Corniglia and then Manarola

Vernazza:

The old tower of Vernazza stands on the headland.

 The done thing here is to buy your bottle of beer and sit on a bench or the beach in the sun and people watch, way cheaper than the bars.

 View back into Vernazza

 Vernazza station, all five villages are linked by a train line, more tunnel than sea views but a great way to visit all five villages in one day.

  Levanto had a few waves on the days we were there and this seemed to be the favored form of transporting your surf ski.

Cinque Terre - part 1.

Thanks to Peter and Shirley's recommendation we headed off to the Cinque Terre.

The Cinque Terre is a rugged portion of coast on the Italian Riviera. It is in the Liguria region of Italy, to the west of the city of La Spezia. "The Five Lands" is composed of five villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. The coastline, the five villages, and the surrounding hillsides are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Over the centuries, people have carefully built terraces on the rugged, steep landscape right up to the cliffs that overlook the sea. Part of it's charm is the lack of visible corporate development. Paths, trains and boats connect the villages, and cars cannot reach them from the outside. 

The Levanto campsite to the north of the Cinque Terre was a bit of an eye opener... the entrance was a tight squeeze through a narrow rock passage where we had the unfortunate luck of meeting a large caravan exiting the site so a Mexican stand off took place until one of the randomly littered cars parked by the entrance moved and allowed for a resolution. The allotted pitch was no bigger than the van's dimensions, common place in Italy, and covered by trees. The site was more bedouin village than the normal campsites we had been used to. It was also rammed with minimal sanitary facilities, oh well we would only be here for three days. 

The first day we decided to walk to Monterosso al Mare from Levanto a 16km round trip walk along cliff paths with stunning views of cliffs and sea.

 Hold that stomach in...

The view down to Monterosso al Mare, oh yes and the walk back up took 1hr.

After our first outing into the National Park we stopped off in Levanto for a quick drink as the thought of returning to the bedouhin village was best approached with a few drinks. On ordering our drinks we were presented with some fantastic tapas, all free and part of the normal accompaniments to a drink, very civilised.

2 nights in Genova part 2.

Day 2, Genova, early start so down to the ferry to travel into the marina. Today's activities again from the NYT suggests a walk around the Marina looking at Europe's largest Aquarium, not for us as it doesn't allow dogs. A look a the full size galleon created for the Roman Polanski film Pirates and then lunch in a nice restaurant. Mmmmm sounds ideal.

First up the Galleon, now I don't go much on these types of things as being from Gosport/Portsmouth/Poole I've seen a fair few attempts at pirate ships, not that I really know what one should look like, but this one was unbelievable as the detail was immense. Sadly I don't think the photos do it justice.

Lunch was at Maxela, a steakhouse that's so proud to be steak only its meat locker opens straight onto the dining room (a bit like Theo's in South Africa) and yes you can take you dog in with you. We started with the beef heifer tagliata which melted in the mouth and then both had burgers...yes burgers. This without question of a doubt was the best burger I have ever eaten, hot to the last mouthful, beautiful.

 The house special Red.....very nice

And to finish the tirimasu, rich in coffee flavor and more cream than biscuit..fab.

After lunch we walked back around the marina to some super yachts we spotted on the way in. There was one in particular that stuck out like a sore thumb. Its called Venus a striking glass and white yacht with a polished steel bow. The engineer in me could not believe that something this long and narrow with the amount of glass that ran almost the full length of the hull could stand any sort of rough seas as the bending moments would just shatter the glass. However its very striking and it belonged to the late Steve Jobs of Apple.

After all that excitement we headed back on the ferry to the van to pack it up ready for the next adventure the Cinque Terre...

2 nights in Genova part 1.

We very rarely drive somewhere that we don't have a pre-arranged booking for but we thought we would give it a go this time. We knew we wanted to spend a day in Genova as we were given a fantastic book from Gillian and Paul on city breaks compiled by the New York Times and Genova looked interesting.

We've kind of made the rule that we wouldn't visit a place that we would go on holiday to and are trying to keep to more bespoke areas of interest that you might not ever consider visiting. So Genova fell quite nicely into this category.

So I put the co-ordinates into the satnav for Genova and headed off...When we arrived at our satnav destination "the ferry port" things started to get a little stressful, large lorries and cars boarding ferries for all sorts of destinations and us clearly in the wrong place. A hasty exit was required and a multiple point turn around in the docks and back onto the autostrada. We did a quick search for campsites within a 10 mile radius and drove to a site 10km west of the city on the shore of Pegli hoping that a) We could get the van up the narrow Italian roads and b) That they had space for a 8.21m van. Thankfully both were a yes but only just for the first.

The campsite was a small municipal site in a small gorge at the head of the main park in Pegli and only a short walk to the train, bus and water connections to Genova. We headed straight to the water taxi were it cost €3 each for a 35 min ride into the central marina of Genova.

Having read our New York Times book on Genova we had carefully plotted our 2 days of sightseeing. Entering by the marina was ideal as you get the taste of the modern and old. The backstreets of Genova are a maze of tiny allies, some of which you don't want to go down as being a working port prostitution is visible. Some of the streets are so narrow you can easily touch both sides.

Our first stopping point was the Bar Berto which brews its own beer, sadly they only had the one beer on offer and that was 8.9% so I just had the one........

 Just the one....

 Bar Berto square.

Next on the hit list was the San Lorenzo Cathedral which dates back to the 9th Century. Its distinctive zebra striped facade is one of Genova's most recognized landmarks and is repeated on several modern building too. 

After a bit of culture we headed to the next recommendation from the NYT a tiny sandwhich shop Gran Ristoro that just serves filled rolls with a choice of about 200 different meats and cheeses, prosciutto, capicola, pancetta, spianata, salami, etc. Two rolls and two glasses of Chianti cost €5.

Italy National Park

On leaving France on August the 20th we headed from Embrun to Italy with our new windscreen. Yep the new screen has finally been fitted. It only took seven attempts over the last three months for them to fit the first screen that they ordered......

We decided to head to the coast  via the  ski resort of Montgenevre, one of the main routes from France to Italy. Our first stop in Italy was 60 miles North of Genova in the national park Reg. Del Beigua. The tiny roads of the national park are not that ideal for a 5.5 tonne RV, though the campsite said the roads would be quiet so not to worry...yeah right.

On entering the campsite, yes we made it, it was yet another Dutch colony with the same orange style tents we encountered in Embrun and the same style we used in the scouts some 30 years ago. The site itself was very nice with a bar, pool and restaurant and on the day we arrived it was pizza night. So when in Rome....or an Italian national park.

The next day we grabbed a map from reception for a small 12 km walk. Now I'm coming to realise that our OS maps are somewhat superior to the cartography skills of other nations and it would seem that the Italian cartographers obviously get bored with detail and randomly make things up or just guess where roads and paths intersect as our short walk turned into a 7 hr expedition and it was scorching hot too.

Most of the landscape in this area is tree covered hills with small roads leading from hamlet to hamlet and with the odd church thrown in for good measure. The area seemed very dry with the old river pond for the dog to cool off in.

 River pond cool off for the dog.

 Lunch on a hill side in the national park

 Yes we are lost and the furrowed brow shows it

we made it back