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France to Austria

March 21, 2002

Dear Friends and Families,

Now we had to get serious again about making tracks. Early in the morning, we left the Carcassone castle behind us. Well, "early" is about 9:00 since we must first have a pleasant breakfast of good French rolls and cafe au lait. I can remember when "early" on a road trip meant 6 or 7 am, but I think I prefer our new style.

Back on the toll road, we joined the light traffic heading east. Shortly, we were back at the Mediterranean and we turned north on the same road that we'd used heading south to Spain a couple of months before. We correctly navigated past the intersections to Marseilles and Toulon, preferring to drive through Provence between Aix and Nice. All of this was an easy drive on a sunny and warm day (26C/78F). The French toll roads are expensive, but they are comfortable. Even the rest areas offer restaurants with good food, an obvious French priority.

After Provence, we were back near the coast and Marianne wanted to get down to the water, so we turned off into Cannes. It's not summer nor film festival time, but still the drive through town was slow. Cannes is filled with hotels, apartments, and vacation condominiums. I can not imagine driving here in the busier times.

When we finally reached the beach, we were treated to a show of wind-surfers and hang-glider surfers. The later bunch used their parasails to zoom along the water and then fly into airborne routines of twists and flips. We watched the surfers display against the background of the French Riviera until we forced ourselves back on the road. We could have lounged much longer.

No sooner were we heading east than we saw the exit for the principality of Monaco and we absolutely had to at least drive through. For those who have never been there, Monaco is a very small piece of geography. Every piece of land is built up. In the recent decades, the government even placed the train tracks into tunnels to create building sites. The streets are narrow and full of cars.

But, driving through wasn't too difficult, at least at first, because distances were small. We wound past luxurious apartments and office buildings. There is no comparison of crowded Cannes with Monaco. Monaco drips with wealth. The cars are Mercedes, big BMWs, Ferraris and even some Porsches. We definitely were no longer driving the nicest car in town.

We decided we'd seen enough and headed toward Geneva. This proved easier said than done. I lost my way heading back up the hill and found myself on a side street just going deeper into a maze. That was the bad part. The good part was that we were stuck just in front of the Hotel Diana, a "vintage" two-star hotel. We figured we could change plans, so Marianne went in to evaluate the hotel. She can back announcing that it met our budget requirements, but it definitely was not up to Parador luxury. But it was 4:30 and shabby chic in Monaco probably beats luxury in most places. We stayed.

After settling in, we headed downhill to the center of attraction, the Monte Carlo Casino. Along the way we confirmed that this is the wealthiest place we'd ever seen. We looked at placards in real estate offices and noticed that most places were six figures but 900,000 euros could buy a centrally located, two-room, 550 square feet (55 sq-m) flat. Even San Francisco can't compete with that.

At the Casino, we ran into tourists doing the same thing we were doing, taking pictures. I'm sure we were still hours early for the casino "rush hour", but it was easy to imagine the formally-clad swells arriving in gleaming limos to drop a few euros, pounds or dollars.

From behind the casino, we were treated to a spectacular view of the harbor. We hung around for almost an hour watching the changing reds of sunset and trying to imagine life in a multi-million dollar Monte Carlo flat with an equally pricey yacht tied up in this harbor. This is truly a magical place.

The next morning we were again on the road. Our first event was a police stop by Monaco's finest. Marianne had barely left the parking lot when a handsome, white-gloved policeman waved us over. In flawless English, he asked for her driver's license and the car papers. We had practiced this routine just a day or two before, so we smoothly repeated the unpacking needed to find all the proper papers. After a few minutes of polite questioning, we were wished a good journey and sent on our way. It all just seemed so civilized, although I'm sure we are now logged into the police records of Monaco as people with a questionable story.

When our day's drive started in earnest, we found ourselves back on toll roads, first French and then Italian. The highways were more tunnel and bridge than plain roadway. Later in our trip we would take to counting tunnels, but for this day I'd only guess that we passed through four dozen or so tunnels and over an equal number of ravine bridges. As we left almost each tunnel, we were greeted with another spectacular view of the countryside.

Eventually we left the mountainous border region behind and drove across the flat plains south of Milan. Now the driving features were construction zones, large trucks, and speedy Italian drivers. We were passing through the industrial heartland of northern Italy and that industry puts lots of traffic on the toll road we were sharing. As for the "speedy drivers" part, it seemed like Italian drivers combined the German penchant for fast driving with the French casual interpretation of lane markers. This, combined with the trucks, made it important to pay attention.

For our evening stop, we decided to go off the toll roads into the town of Bassano del Grappa. Any place named after fortified wine (grappa) couldn't be too bad. Besides, our guidebook assured us it was a picturesque-walled-city and, even if this would be our umpteenth picturesque-walled-city, it sounded like a good overnight stop and it was only 16 kilometers (10 miles) off the main highway.

After an hour fighting our worst truck traffic of the day, we made it inside the city walls. Our luck held as we got the last room at the inn. It was a quaint third floor walk-up room but the location couldn't be beat. We deposited our bags and went for a quick self-guided tour.

We started at one of Bassano's two main squares, where we sampled local grappa. We limited ourselves to a single glass of the potent drink because we wanted to be able to walk the narrow, twisty streets. We planned for our walking to be limited mostly to finding a place for a wonderful Italian dinner. However, we got distracted by a fragrant cheese store and opted for crackers and a chunk of aged Asiago for an hors d'oeuvre course that filled us up. Any real dinner after that would have been complete gluttony.

Early the next morning, I went out to take a few pictures and saw that Bassano really is a picturesque-walled-city. The local river is lined with colorful houses and crossed by a famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. Overall, the castle walls gave the place a charming backdrop. All in all, a good stop.

Back in the car, we headed toward Austria. It was sunny and warm enough to drive with the top down. The country road still had more truck traffic than would be ideal, but passing by grand villas, weaving through villages, and generally enjoying sights could not have been better. When we hit the A23 toll road heading north into more mountains, we had to close the top for the last time on our Roadtrip.

The first of the mountains were a spectacular white. This time it wasn't snow but the white rock of the Dolomite Mountains. Behind these were more white peaks, the snow-capped Alps. We passed through a series of 35 tunnels and over a comparable number of bridges before we stopped for the day in Graz, Austria's second largest city. This proved to be a wonderful last drive for us. Our car would stay in Graz. But that's another story.

Take care and look for some mountains to drive through.

John and Marianne

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Produced April 7, 2002

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