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......................