Montenegro

Not particularly prompt departure from Dubrovnik, but we're not famed for our early rises. There was quite a queue at the Montenegro border crossing, probably because most people, like us, had to buy car insurance and it wasn't possible to do it before the check point. All that bought and approved (and Ben having had to use the world's worst toilet, think Trainspotting but worse - lucky he's a boy) we were on our way.

First stop, Kotor. An amazing walled town nestled into a fjord ... yes they have them in southern Europe too! The town is overlooked by some impressive walls and fortifications:


Inside the town the streets are like a labyrinth; it's lucky the place is very small so you're never lost for long. This church, from the 1200s, was in a square at a jaunty angle which maybe doesn't come across in the picture:

After getting lost and finding ourselves reasonably quickly, we got on the road to the day's final destination: Cetinje. The route we took was non-direct to say the least as it snaked up the mountain. But Ben enjoyed the hair-pin turns and it meant we were able to get some fantastic views of the fjord and Kotor:

And for those who have been wondering how the clio is getting on ... here she is in all her dirty glory!

With all the winding and twisting we managed about 40km in a couple of hours! Cetinje is the former royal capital but has seen better days. Looking for somewhere to stay was a little tricky as there didn't seem to be any hotels, hostels or information. Luckily we asked the right people for help who invited to stay with them for the princely sum of 10 Euros. Tight old Ben was very impressed. They had a lovely little granny flat and kept trying to feed and water us; Joanna left with a couple of boxes of tea because they decided she must be missing it!

Not so much to picture here, but this is the monastary which apparently is home to St John the Baptist's mumified hand and a piece of the cross:


Got a bit caught up in the town's museums because Ben was keen to practice his reading of the cyrillic alphabet - show off! The museums were fascinating, charting the history and culture of a country we didn't know much about. So we didn't end up leaving Cetinje in the morning so much as after 4pm ...

Although it doesn't look far on a map, getting to the Serbian border took quite a bit of time because of the all the narrow, windy roads carved into the steep mountain sides:

The landscapes really are amazing, with the tunnels roughly hewn into the rock, and the steep, steep, cliffs on the box-like mountains.

Got to Serbia around 6, not sure if we needed a green card. Insurance offices still seemed to be open, but after a long time recording all our details and various forms of ID, we didn't turn out to need any. We're pretty sure we didn't anyway, as they certainly didn't make us buy it...

And so we drove on into Serbia, unsure where to spend the night...

Driving Table

Well here it is, my table of our actual driving. Now it's up, I'll try to keep it updated. As it shows we're in Serbia at the moment, aiming to head to Sofia, Bulgaria tomorrow. That obviously means we're still a couple of updates behind, but we'll get to that asap.
Also updating our Flickr album, adding some photos there (including some back in Spain...). The link to our Flickr page is on the side bar. The map stuff all gets a bit hap-hazard east of Italy, so my Montenegro locations are necessarily a bit of guess-work.

Date	Trip	Country	Distance (miles)	Total Clio Trip Miles	Distance (kms)	Total Clio Trip kms	Total Clio Miles
June 11	Calais - Rambouillet	France	214	214	342	342	131258
June 12	Rambouillet - Bordeaux	France	342	556	547	890	131600
June 13	Bordeaux - San Sebastian	Spain	183	739	293	1182	131783
June 15	San Sebastian - Bilbao - Llanes	Spain	184	923	294	1477	131967
June 16	Llanes - Vila Real	Portugal	386	1309	619	2094	132353
June 17	Vila Real - Porto	Portugal	108	1417	173	2273	132461
June 19	Porto - Tavira	Portugal	372	1789	597	2870	132833
June 22	Tavira - Alcala de Guidaira	Spain	142	1931	228	3097	132975
June 23	Alcala de Guidaira - Sevilla	Spain	26	1957	42	3139	133001
June 24	Sevilla - Granada	Spain	167	2124	267	3407	133168
June 27	Granada - Valencia	Spain	363	2487	582	3989	133531
June 30	Valencia - Barcelona	Spain	237	2724	380	4369	133768
July 3	Barcelona - San Remo	Italy	515	3239	826	5195	134283
July 4	San Remo - Verona	Italy	272	3511	436	5632	134555
July 8	Verona - Postojna	Slovenia	259	3770	415	6047	134814
July 9	Postojna - Ljubljana	Slovenia	35	3805	56	6103	134849
July 11	Ljubljana - Maribor	Slovenia	136	3941	218	6321	134985
July 12	Maribor - Ely	UK	0	3941	0	6321	134985
July 17	Ely - Maribor	Slovenia	0	3941	0	6321	134985
July 18	Maribor - Plitvicke Jezera	Croatia	159	4100	255	6576	135144
July 20	Plitvicke Jezera - Trogir	Croatia	197	4297	316	6892	135341
July 22	Trogir - Split - Bosnia Border - Gradac	Croatia	139	4436	223	7115	135480
July 23	Gradac - Mostar (Bosnia) - Dubrovnik	Croatia	166	4602	266	7382	135646
July 26	Dubrovnik - Kotor - Cetinje	Montenegro	91	4693	146	7528	135747
July 27	Cetinje - Zlatibor	Serbia	177	4870	284	7811	135914
July 29	Zlatibor - Sofia	Bulgaria	280	5150	448	8261	136194
July 31	Sofia - Rila	Bulgaria	75	5225	120	8381	136269
Aug 1	Rila - Mt Olympus (Plaka)	Greece	215	5440	344	8726	136484
Aug 3	Mt Olympus - Delphi	Greece	229	5669	366	9093	136713
Aug 4	Delphi - Athens	Greece	125	5794	200	9293	136838
Aug 7	Athens - Thessaloniki	Greece	316	6110	506	9800	137154
Aug 9	Thessaloniki - Gallıpolı (Eceabat)	Turkey	343	6453	549	10349	137497
Aug 11	Biga - Edremit	Turkey	140	6593	225	10574	137637
Aug 12	Edremit - Bergama	Turkey	68	6661	109	10684	137705
Aug 14	Bergama - Cunda	Turkey	48	6709	77	10761	137753
Aug 15	Cunda - Yanova - Istanbul	Turkey	269	6978	430	11191	138022
Aug 19	Istanbul - Burgas	Bulgaria	228	7206	367	11558	138250
Aug 20	Burgas - Varna	Bulgaria	93	7299	149	11707	138343
Aug 22	Varna - Bucharest	Romania	258	7557	414	12121	138601
Aug 24	Bucharest - Sinaia - Brasov	Romania	109	7666	175	12296	138710
Aug 26	Brasov (Bran roundtrip) - Chernivtsi	Ukraine	318	7984	510	12806	139028
Aug 27	Chernivtsi - Lviv	Ukraine	193	8177	310	13116	139221
Aug 29	Lviv - Kosice	Slovakia	240	8417	385	13501	139461
Aug 30	Kosice - Levoca	Slovakia	62	8479	99	13600	139523
Sep 1	Tatras Roundtrip	Slovakia	88	8567	141	13741	139611
Sep 2	Levoca - Zakopane	Poland	65	8632	104	13845	139676
Sep 3	Zakopane - Krakow	Poland	98	8730	157	14003	139774
	Auschwitz & other day trips	Poland	150	8880	241	14244	139924
Sep 10	Krakow - Warsaw	Poland	218	9098	350	14594	140142
Sep 11	Warsaw - Olsztyn	Poland	138	9236	221	14815	140280
Sep 12	Olsztyn - Kaliningrad	Russia	156	9392	250	15065	140436
Sep 14	Kaliningrad - Siauliai	Lithuania	222	9614	356	15421	140658
Sep 15	Siauliai - Riga	Latvia	93	9707	149	15570	140751
Sep 18	Riga - Tallinn	Estonia	210	9917	337	15907	140961
Sep 21	Tallinn - Turku	Finland	115	10032	184	16091	141076
Sep 23	Turku - Helsinki (and the end of the road)	Finland	131	10163	210	16301	141207

Dubrovnik, Croatia

First day in Dubrovnik was a beach day. We were staying in Kupari 6km south which we think may have been a swanky resort in its day, but has seen much better days. The "Homeland War" obviously took its toll on the sea front hotels:


Still, it's freed up what was a private beach for the locals and us! So we had a lovely sunbathe and swim in the incredibly clear waters of the Adriatic. Dubrovnik's sea must be seen; it brings new meaning to crystal clear.

Don't think we've forgotten the drink challenge, oh no! In the old town that evening, Ben got his grubby mitts on some Pelinkovac, the official Croatian drink on the list. And bitter only goes some way to describe it!


Day 45 of our travels was spent in Dubrovnik's old town, again in quite sweltering heat. Spent a couple of hours up on the city walls learning about its history and how it too has largely had to be rebuilt after the war. UNESCO coming to the rescue with the cash and new roof tiles. The old walls were so well built, they still managed to protect the inhabitants from modern artillery.


And after being up there in the heat, it was ice cream o'clock:

As an extra note, ice cream o'clock comes from Slovenia where the natives are rarely to be seen without one. How do they stay so slim?!

We also dropped in on Europe's third oldest pharmacy. It's been in continuous operation since the 1300s, unfortunately we didn't need any drugs.

When we returned to our tent it had developed a bad case of dandruff, on later inspection this turned out to be forest fire ash. The clio was also covered, but some seriously strong breezes in the night (all of which were warm) meant everything was clean (by our standards) by the morning ready for Montenegro!

Mostar, Bosnia

As we were trying to leave our hotel in Gradac, we got waylaid by the owners for coffee and stilted chats in English. Turns out a lot of their family are living in New Zealand and have been for about 50 odd years - making wine in Auckland. Which proves Joanna's point that no matter where you go, everyone has a New Zealand connection ... well maybe not everywhere, but a lot of places!

And we were back on the open road (with mole and toad - guess which is which), retracing our steps to the Bosnia border. Much simpler process on Mondays than on Sundays and we were waived through with our new insurance papers. The main road to Mostar wasn't at all bad, despite Lonely Planet warnings.

On the way into the town we started noticing lots of buildings had signs like this:

There are still a lot of abandoned buildings that need mine clearance / demolishing so the signs of war haven't been totally eradicated yet. However, at Mostar Bridge it's all shiny, new and very touristy:

It was destroyed in November 1993 during the war and rebuilt in 2005 as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. As we learned in the museum, it was originally built by the Turks in 1566 and UNESCO got them back to rebuild it in 2003/4.

Also rebuilt was this mosque on the east side of the town - the before and after pictures were amazing:


Our route out of Bosnia was not quite as well trodden as the way in. We decided to take a back route to Dubrovnik ... which turned out to be a long way for a short cut. Ben enjoyed the windy, single track road with bonkers Bosnian drivers playing chicken coming the other way. We always lost.

On the way we saw a number of forest fires, some of which the aged fire engines were having difficulty getting to:


Our back route meant we had to disturb a lone Croatian border guard who was very disgruntled at having to leave the shade to deal with us! But we made it safely to our campsite outside Dubrovnik.

Split

We got up early and broke camp. Seriously, we were driving by about 9.15! We had plans to spend the night in Bosnia, and wanted to see Split first.
A short drive down the coast later we headed straight for Diocletian's Palace. For those without an in-depth knowledge of 3rd century history he was a Roman Emperor from the point at which they decided to have 4 emperors. He chose Split as his retirement place, and built a rather large garrisoned palace there, which has to some extent survived. He was one of the last to persecute the Christians so it is with some irony that not only are there lots of christian marks on the building blocks, but his mausoleum was turned into a cathedral in the 7th century.

We had a good wander around his basement as well:

Ben tried to make Joanna go to the Archaeological Museum, but it was shut due to being Sunday. So we just had to poke our heads through the bars.

Also shut on Sundays is Bosnia. Well, to those who need to buy special car insurance on the border. Bugger. We were trying to get to Mostar where the men of the town were doing their annual jumping off the famous bridge to impress their lady friends. Ben'll have to wait till next year. So we back tracked a few miles to a lovely seaside resort by the name of Gradac which really wasn't too much of a hardship. We thought there was going to be no room at the inn, but in the end we didn't do too badly with one of the last rooms in town:

For kiwis reading, yes, Joanna has been listening to a little too much Fred Dagg.

Next day, to Bosnia & beyond...

Trogir

From Plitvisčke we headed on down the coast, stopping for lunch in Zadar. Nice old town, and we were happy to find a park in the shade.

A bit of pizza and sweating later we swapped drivers and Ben drove almost to Split, along some amazing coastlines. Talk about scenic. Joanna didn't sleep through too much of it (and she deserves her afternoon naps). And besides, there's over 1000 islands, the odd one missed won't be noticed... Our campsite coincided with a UNESCO site just north of Split at a place called Trogir. We've since discovered virtually everything here is a UNESCO site...
We set up camp in the mad heat and went for a swim on the beach at the campsite. Lovely. Although the water had a bit much floating vegetation, and Ben had just got paranoid about sea-urchins after reading the Lonely Planet, so sandals got a bit wet.

Next day we made it into Trogir, and started investigating what made it UNESCO worthy. Except it was 40C. Seriously. We were hoping for sea breezes, but there was nothing. We have since spotted a cloud in Croatia today, but it was very small. Apparently it's over 40 days since it last rained here.
So much sweating was done, but we discovered Trogir is an island (we'd walked over the bridge and wandered about a bit before we realised), settled by the Greeks, but made famous by the Romans for its marble & marble artisans. They've kept at it, so there's great buildings from the 9th-19th centuries still in good shape.

Anyway, dead pretty, here's a couple of pics of the marble stuff:

Weightloss programme thwarted

Our confession is that we came back to the UK briefly a week or so ago (sorry for not popping in, UK people) ... and also that we've been tardy at updating the blog. It transpires that we're a little bit pregnant and if all goes well, we should have a little whipper-snapper in late January. Our trip to Cambridge was to have a scan and check all is going well. At three and a bit months, it is.

Due to this wee development, the trip schedule needs a little updating... We'll cut off south-east asia, and head out of Hong Kong in early November.

We've been back on the road since Tuesday 17th, and have largely been in Croatia (see below). We're currently in Split, which we'll write about soon, honest.

Plitvicke Lakes, Croatia

Whilst in Maribor, we caught up with Bianca & Brett, who were passing through Slovenia on a wee break. Had a huge dinner, but still couldn't find Ben the Slovenian national drink, despite it being top of the menu. Mission failed.

So we headed out of Slovenia to Croatia, our first non EU country. We're getting used to the Croatian Kuna which is taking some brain power after the simple Euro. After a short walk around Zagreb, we made for the most famous Croatian national park, Plitvicke. On the way there, we stopped so Ben could chat to a nice young lady who was minding some tanks in Karlovac. He got his fill of (recent) war history even though some of the equipment looked like it had been used in the second world war as well. We also started noticing the shrapnel damage to buildings along the road.

We arrived in Plitvicke and set up camp. Ben achieved instant success with a Croatian National Drink:


The next day we set out to explore the Jezera, as the locals call Lakes. Ben continued to enjoy his game of number plate scrabble ... and in the car park it got really interesting ... there was no Ireland, Turkey, Portugal or Russia but pretty much everything inbetween. Wow.

Joanna managed to drag Ben (while containing her own excitement) off to see the lakes - which rightly deserve their UNESCO status. Here's a few photos from around the park:


Waterfall, was, well, Big. In Croatian a waterfall is a Slap.

Unfortunately there was no swimming allowed, despite the Lakes' pleading with us to jump in. It's been quite hot in Croatia. We're yet to see a cloud or experience a day less than 35C.

Ljubljana

Slovenia's capital is a fantastic place, but not the best for pictures. There's lovely hills in the distance. The castle's quite cool (and the only real tourist attraction), but we couldn't work out a good angle on it (too many trees in the way). The best we could do was the freaky heads on a door of the cathedral:

There's a better shot on our flickr site, which you can get to from the side bar, but unfortunately I foolishly don't have that photo with me.

Beyond that there's just a good photo of Joanna looking geeky at the castle's 3D history film of the city...

Well, it made Ben laugh.

The city has a lovely cafe/bar culture, even if there's not a lot of touristy things to see. Seriously nice, relaxed place to hang out. Not much to report back.

Beyond that we moved onto Maribor (Slovenia's 2nd city), which we've just arrived back in. We have a small confession to make, but we'll give ourselves a day or 2 to work ourselves up to it...

Lord of the Rings Special

So after our exciting border crossing we journeyed through beautiful green Slovenia. We did however fail to take a picture of any of the many houses adorned amazingly in flowers. We took back roads, as suggested by the border guards, because Byways Are More Exciting Than Highways. Such a spacious country as well, the people just seemed to disappear after Italy.

And so we made it into Postojna, which we were later to realise is Slovenia's main tourist attraction. Bled is the other main place to see, but we didn't make it there. Postojna's great though. Quite quiet and sleepy, even if having a major horse festival the day we turned up. It hadn't taken us very long from Verona (despite stopping in the world's most confusing services for lunch, which took us a while to work out), so we had time to go see a local castle at Predjama.




As you can see, it's built halfway up a cliff, mostly in a massive cave. It is Helm's Deep, from Lord of the Rings' Two Towers. It is a bit confusing whether you're "inside" or "outside" at the back, as walls aren't there, where the cave will do. Quite a good fortress though. The cave goes for miles back, eventually coming out at some cherry-growing village. A famous knight from the days of yore, Erazem, held out here for "a year and a day" (sending down roast bullock and cherries to the frustrated sieging forces), until a servant was bribed to reveal his wearabouts. When Erazem went "where even the Sultan must go alone", the servant turned on a light and the catapult smashed the appropriate outhouse...

Now we said Slovenia was green, but this is possibly taking it a bit far:

This was a little Noah's Ark that we found the next day when we visited Postojna Jama (Cave).

Once in (2km train ride in from the cave entrance), we discovered another Lord Of The Rings set: The Mines of Moria. With lots of Joanna's Gimli impressions we went for a 1.5km walk, with vast caverns, and very exciting stalagtite & stalagmite formations. There were amazing curtain things, and ones that looked like spaghetti which were hollow and grew only 1mm every 80 years. There were white ones, red ones, green ones...


Also in the cave were "human fish" - pink (pigment-less) eyeless salamanders, (kind of amphibian lizard things), which spend there entire lives in the dark - hence no need for eyes. They can live 80-100 years, and only need to eat every 8 years. Freaky.

Map

It's what you've all been calling for, a picture of our route... We'll update it each time we get a chance... (click on picture to make bigger)

Venice

We kept our camping spot in Verona and took a day trip through to Venice on the train. Our slow start, plus just missing a bus and train, meant we didn't get there till 2 - but hey, there's not that much to see is there?

Our main achievement was finding the only free museum in Venice; there wasn't much to see inside but it was cool on a hot day and it had toilets! We moseyed on getting generally lost on purpose and soaking up the atmosphere. Didn't do much else, but of course hit all the famous spots and got all the appropriate tourist pics.





Ben also managed to have the local drink: Sprizz Aperol. Bitter.


Next day we headed to Slovenia, where we are now. We'll post more about that in a bit, but as a summary: it's beautiful & friendly and everyone has nice gardens. Slovenia in Bloom must be a really hard-fought competition.

Verona

So Joanna decided it was her turn to drive, at least halfway. She got the exciting tunnels and bridges over the sea, that descended into dull motorway. Ben got the exciting back-roads. As we approached Verona the storm clouds gathered, and the winds picked up. It all looked very portentous... But we drove in anyway. It's an incredibly pretty city. We did our usual thing of going straight to the tourist office to get the city map and find out where the camping is, and after quickly posting you about San Remo we headed up a small hill to the campsite. There were some young hippy type folk running the joint (we're getting very jealous about how many languages everyone else seems to speak), and they were very helpful. A very cool campsite if one ever goes to Verona. Some what higgledy-piggledy, camp spots above each other, little terraces and wondrous views over the city:

We had a quick wander down into the old city and found some good city life for our dinner.
Next day we set off to explore Verona properly. We started at the Arena - the world's third biggest and possibly best preserved Roman Amphitheatre. We bought the "Verona Card" on the way in which means cheap entry into all the main attractions - be sure to investigate this if you are taking a trip here. Stage crews were setting up for the evening's performance of Aida - so we couldn't have a good dig around ... but we felt like proper Roman's sitting on the top seats watching the world go by.



Next to Juliet's house - it was owned by the Capello family who are thought to have been Shakespeare's Capulet clan. It's well preserved but really it's mainly good for the photo opportunities ...

Also hit the medieval castle (with 14th century art museum) and the Roman theatre close to our campsite. So we made good use of the Verona Card!

Meanwhile, back at the campsite the nice hippies had secured us tickets to the evening's performance of Aida. However, they neglected to tell us to take our own refreshments for the 4 hour show or pillows to sit on ... stone can be quite tough on the posterior after a while! Anyway, the show was spectacular and well worth the €50.


Around 22 thousand people squeezed into the arena for the performance ... most of them in the cheap seats with us!

After our late night at the Opera, the next day was spent lazily by Lake Garda, sunbathing and enjoying the views ... it's a tough life.

Travel notes

Just little thoughts...

We had our first proper border check going into Slovenia. All the Italians just pretty much got waived through, but we got asked to park over there please. What?! We thought, we're EU too, why are we in trouble? We turned the car off, got out and waited for a battle ... But no, the nice man just wanted to give us some tourist maps and say hello. Slovenia's lovely.

We got through quite a bit of Slovenia without seeing a Dutch car. But we knew when we got to the campsite it'd be alright: it's not camping if there aren't Dutch people. And sure enough, the car coming out as we arrived was Netherlandish.

When on our long drives it's exciting (?) to see which cars are driving about. No eye-spy for us. So far all Ukrainians drive vans. Monaco people drive at million miles an hour, as do Andorrans. We've only just clocked up our first Estonia and Croatia. Turkey was spotted in France, along with some Arabic number plate from who-knows-where?
11/7 update: first Finland spotted - and first Californian! Now that really puts us in the shade.

Other thought: We mentioned all the road bridges in Spain, but that did us no good when we went to eat locally to the campsite in Barcelona. Only able to turn right out of the campsite wanting to go a short way left there were suddenly no cross-over bridges. Had to drive almost to Barcelona proper to turn around, and then do a couple of illegal U-turns to get back to the road we wanted... Ended up about a 20 mile trip to go a mile the other way, and a very late dinner even by Spanish standards. Can't trust any stereotypes we make.

But onto more exciting Posts: Verona about to come...

Barcelona!

Yes, we´re finally putting this post up... mind any typos, this Slovenian keyboard is crazy. About to go into some caves, but first making use of some free library internet! Yay!

Spain seems quite a while ago now. We found a nice campsite on the beach, under the airport take-off point. Didn´t disturb our sleeping or anything, but they were there all the time. The guy running the campsite loved Ben´s Magnum PI shirt (which has been used a number of times now to be recognised - nothing like a loud shirt to stand out in a crowd).
Our first day we just checked out the beach and got settled in. Second day we went into Barca on the bus, and largely just wandered along La Ramblas (main pedestrian street), checked out the statue of Chris Columbus on a very high plinth, and wandered into the cathedral. Nothing like Sevilla´s, but still pretty impressive, and with a lovely cloister. Like most cathedrals it seems it´s in the process of being fixed, which didn´t make for the best pictures. We worked out the metro system with only a little difficulty, and headed up to Park Güell, which Gaudi designed as part of a failed scheme to have a communal Park between about 30 houses.

Most didn´t sell, although Gaudi lived there the rest of the life. Dunno how much he saw of it though, as he appears to have been a bit of a workaholic. Still couldn´t finish a cathedral though...

The next day started with cutting Ben´s hair, much to the amusement of the cleaning staff, who all offered each other as Joanna´s next subject. Hair suitably shorter, we headed off on the bus again to check out more of Barcelona. A somewhat more successful day, as the previous day had been Sunday: shut day. We dodged the Casa Batlló, as the €16.50 entry for a house clashed with our tightness, but the Pedrera was much better as it included the Gaudi museum as well. Amazing buildings he designed, this Gaudi fella. And so much of it makes so much sense. He liked to use nature as a source of inspiration, so came up with curving buildings that are naturally strong and stable, and rain naturally runs off, instead of square things. And then he´d design interiors so that chairs fit bottoms, not vice versa...

He also came up with some cool architecture techniques of hanging chains, and inverting the shape. You end up with paraboloids, hyperboloids, helicoids, and lots of other great mathematically strong shapes (yes, Ben is writing this one). He put all this to best use in his masterpiece La Temple de Sagrada Familia:

Didn´t manage to finish it (or the other big church he started), and it´s half built after 125 years. Still going strong though. We went there after the Gaudi Museum and were suitably inspired. Dad: you must come and see this, it´ll greatly excite your engineering brain (And Mum will love seing the church aspect, so you´ll both be very happy :). Do go see the Gaudi Museum/Pedrera first though, to get an idea of what he was on about. We did it by accident, but it was a good idea...

Eastern Spain Smells - but not as much as San Remo!

In Spain's case it's quite literal, from Murcia up. Indeed the day we left Barcelona was the day the campsite was getting a little too fruity. And we made it to San Remo last night, over 500 miles for the wee Clio, which coped admirably. But by that point it was getting late, so we popped into San Remo just in Italy. We found the local campsite, and thought a bungalow might be convenient for a quick overnighter... €89! Okay, camping... €45! well, it's too late to find anywhere else... But then we found it was like this:

But too late to change... Admittedly the bathrooms did have gold-plated taps (well, not quite), but still, ouch.

On the plus side I got to continue the drinking challenge with limoncello in a restaurant (which served very nice pizza):

PS: Oh no ... the dreaded vest (singlet) has beeen found ;0)

In an update on the drink challenge, pastis & champagne were missed in France due to drink-driving laws, and the fact that service stations don't seem to sell them. Beer & ordinary wine, sure...
And Spain, well we've still got the Cava - it was meant to be popped with a Team NZ win in Valencia, but those dang Swiss got in the way. Sherry... well don't believe all those UK Tapas restaurants saying sherry has come back into fashion in Spain...