Back home (and Joe’s wobbly tooth fell out)

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2088 miles, 80 ice creams, 120 swims and lots of fun later and we are home, with only one hour delay during the whole journey! Now it’s just  10 loads of washing, two runs of the dishwasher, a tent, boat, snorkelling equipment, 5 chairs, a table and a car to clean and we can relax to a roast beef dinner, Bill chocolate ice cream (make that 85 ice creams) and bottle of red (our last for a while – detox). 

Oh and did I forget to say, Joe’s wobbly tooth just fell out!!!!!!! Happy holiday memories made.

Homeward Bound

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We are on our way home, a 6.00 start, not even dawn, followed by a silent 45 mins of packing up beds and tent, removing ourselves from the comfort of our shelf and we even made the 7.05 tunnel slot.

Now the 530 miles to our overnight stop. Not a bad service station view mind you…

Souvenir city 

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Yeh its souvenir day and I really want a boyfriend sorry that was predictive text, I am only 10 so I really want a handbag. So I began the day with that thought in my head. All through the day I was looking for handbag shops but it wasn’t hard because there were lots of them,me and mummy just wanted to find the perfect one, found it…

An octopus!!!

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So in Australia it was a stringray, in America it was a bear and today, amongst the feet of swimmers it was a small octopus – I am Gerald Durrell of the Briffa’s. So on a more serious note this campsite just gets better and better. Following a lovely trip to the Cinque Terra, well two of them at least, where like cut flowers, as soon as we took our kids out of water they quickly wilted and despite the threat of imminent expiring from our lovely daughter, we were able to experience a lovely platter of local ham, cheese and beer – Bill was in heaven, we also had a lovely ice cream, yes another and a lovely swim, yes another.

Today we rented sun-loungers, the pinnacle of my holiday and spent a fun day snorkelling. Joe has perfected snorkelling without actually being in the water, due to his recent encounter with a rogue jelly fish yesterday ( he was very brave ).

Bums, willy’s and no entry signs. Florence a city of culture.

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So we are at the focus of the holiday which is Tuscany and more importantly Florence. We are staying at a campsite that I was last at about 35 years ago and I have already found that the woman at the reception probably served me ice cream back then so you can gather the place has not changed much. I would recommend the site, it’s beautiful and close enough to Florence to make a bus journey easy yet far enough out to get way from the hustle and bustle.

Florence is clearly beautiful, a city that has kept it’s identity for art and archicture. It is exceptionally romantic even when you are dragging three children, who don’t understand why there is no beach or swimming pool to go to, around with you. The cathedral still dominates the city and the terracotta roofs set the scene for the rest of the city.

It’s all as I remember it’s stunning, the food is great and it’s so hot BUT it’s busy stupidly busy. There are queues for everything which for us make it impossible to do, three kids and a two hour queue to see a naked guy from the Bible don’t make good friends so for us it’s walking around looking at buildings and eating ice cream.

Talking of David. I think the kids have been finding the nudity of the art a little disconcerting. There are quite a few statues of naked people

David’s willy is everywhere, on postcards, shorts, fridge magnets, cooking aprons, calendars, you name it. Mae’s comment on the whole thing is “Why is his hair so neat?” No comment. …… my only observation was “why has the king of the Jews not been circumcised” to which the answer was “what is circumcised? ” the following conversation can not be published but was met with disbelief, shock, incredulity and finally fits of giggles, mostly from izaak.

As well as the classical art the locals have been having fun with the street signs. We found an array of signs that had been pleasantly played with.

Paradise plage and nothing more

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4 in the moring and were are all scampering to the car. It was cold I was tired but that would stop me I was pumped and ready to go.

For two hours I tried to sleep but it failed due to joes constant blabbering about his wobbly tooth. 

I’m now going to cease my blogging about the car journey because it was so incredibly boring that I’m not going to say anymore about it.

We pulled up at the campsite ‘Paradise Plage’ near Neuchatel in Switzerland to find that part of it was under a motorway, great I’ve sat in the back of a hot car for ten hours to come to a place built under a bridge not quite what you would see on the front of a Toblerone box.

Half an hour later the tent was up and pitched as far from the motorway as we could get it. It was now the moment to see in this plage was really paradise. We went through a small forest to get to the pebbly beach. Wow to our amazement it was beautiful and clean beach with water as clean as the day and a warm Swiss afternoon sun beaming down on us. After a about an hour of sun bathing and swimming out and back to the pontoon it was about time for bed.

Camping on a shelf

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Having camped as children and then a lot as an adult I have stayed in my fair share of campsites of all shapes and sizes (some resembling shanty towns), but this one was to beat them all…

Having thrown caution to the wind by deciding not to book we headed for the Italian riveria, Diego was our last hope of an advanced booking but hell no they were full, then Pisa tower was a timed slot meaning we were on our way at 5.00 with nowhere to stay, things were not looking good, we remained calm. I then, uncharacteristically decided to brave the telephone, there was a site, that sounded a little quirky in the area we wanted to be – yes they spoke English, had a few pitches but did not book, we drove on through timed tunnels, a wrong turn and 20 minute wait later we were turning mid way through a tunnel, could this be right.

What we found was the greatest campsite, right on the shores of Moneglia with all the benefits but none of the hubbub or crowds, the only downside was the shelf, yes for a good view you have to camp on a shelf, which means carrying all our camping clobber up a steep flight of stairs, it’s a narrow shelf but it’s so beautiful it was worth every step, we are not moving for the rest of our stay.

Back to the future…

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So over thirty years ago Bill and family stayed in this campsite to visit Florence and now once again Bill and family are back (and on the day we left we learnt that the lady on reception had worked in the bar back then!). The site is gorgeous and our pitch is perfect, as a good estate agent would say, with Dourmo glimpses!! 

A few days enjoying the sites of Florence and Fiezole in blistering heat, two hour queues outside the Dourmo at 10 (and we thought we were early) were enough to put us off ( but a good excuse to come back), but we loved the Vinci museum, searching for Florence Nightingales house ( you have to love the national curriculum – all 3 were experts) and yet more ice cream.

Estuarine!

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After breaking camp and leaving the rather strange town of chambol there followed a beautiful journey along lake leman, passing by Lausanne (On my hit list to return to, looked like heaven!) And then over the Simplon pass, at this point whilst it was beautiful,  with Bill marvelling at the new cruise control I became slightly disconcerted by the accuracy of our fuel gauge as it went from 90 miles, to 20 with one short ascent, still,  I was sure there would be a petrol station in this remote alpine setting devoid of even a coffee stop. Thankfully we were soon on the descent,  “we can just coast down” I said,  “not in an automatic Bill quickly corrected me.”

Before I knew it we were off the beautiful smooth Swiss roads and onto the bumpy potholes of Italy – Bill could smell the coffee! Our campsite was another change,  did I mention that I am not good with change…. expecting a beautiful lakeside beach, I found estuarine, weeds, knee deep water and a disconcertingly muddy smell…. but as with all  new campsites within hours we love it.  There is pizza, there is ice cream  and there is the adventure awaiting us on our kayak safari.

A car day. Well we are in Italy after all.

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Today seemed to be all about cars in one way or another. We just had a simple 4 hour drive from lake Maggiore to a village on the outskirts of Florence. 

We got packed up in good time and were soon on our way. A left turn out of the campsite seemed to throw the sat nav into a complete paddy. The screen seemed to suggest that we were driving into the lake and we were instructed to turn around when possible. A strong electrical storm during the night had thrown out the compass in the car and it really did not know what to do! Not nice when you have learned to rely on these gadgets to the point that you do not have a map…

Google got us to modena, a city that is the birth place of both maserati and Ferrari, the factories are about 250 yards apart although the Ferrari work shop is now a museum, the maserati factory is still building cars.

As we were there it felt rude not to visit the museum which had an exhibition of ferraris in film. There were the usual classics, an F40, lots of gt’s a testarossa, Dino etc etc. The permanent display was all about engines. There were lots of them and it was pretty interesting.

After the museum it was time to get going again, which we did. Again apart from the car being lost, the journey was uneventful, we arrived just too late for a swim but returning to a campsite I had not been to for over 30 years brought back memories of banana rocket ice creams and sitting in the bar watching It’s a knockout……

The campsite is beautiful with terraced sites and a view of Florence that you can not beat. The only problem is that when you book the place they ask about tent size, with us they should really ask about the car, it’s a bit tight! 

So four days exploring the joys of Florence,  also known as the birth place of ice cream, I think we will enjoy it…..