Sailing into the night

Phil and I are just settling down in the Club Lounge ready for a smooth crossing to Dover on the Pride of Kent. Yet again the Priorité tickets were worth there weight in gold as we barely stopped from the border control to being on board at the front of the ship.

We also managed to catch the earlier ferry making the final leg a little bit easier. In the end it was a 14.5 hour drive from Florence to Calais.

An extra turn of speed through Belgium (the best way to head South from Calais I think) meant that our 20 litres of fuel added with 509km to go was only just enough to reach the port. For the last 30km I had to drop the speed to save fuel. We now have about 3 miles of petrol left to make it to a filling station in Dover.

You'll be glad to know Phil's got his car booked in for Friday morning to get the aircon sorted. In the end it wasn't too much of a problem for us, the windows still worked after all.

We'll now switch back to BST, mph and the right side of the road. We're not expecting any problems for the last leg of our journey, again, all fingers crossed.

Beating North through France

I have just vacated the driver's seat after driving the last 400+ km, leaving Dicky to drive the final leg of our continental relay into Calais.

Just as we thought we had escaped the lunatic Italian drivers another one appears to scare the pants off every road user in the vicinity.

We have also come to the conclusion that the French traffic police are easily confused, as we went through a laser speed trap (just like the one in Austria (spit)) slightly exceeding the speed limit, but fortunately the 8 police men waiting at the péage toll pulled the driver of a black BMW. As you can guess we didn't hang around just in case they discovered their mistake.

Dicky has also been very popular with open air photo booths that the French have in the middle of their motorways. He has also managed to get the satnav to take us though Luxembourg, making it 10 countries in 6 days!

Flying again

Defeated by technology again. Tried to no avail to get a Wifi connection in the Lufthansa lounge, but the T-Mobile system isn't accepting Credit Cards today! Painful. Gave up on the Internet, and had a Champagne lunch instead :-)

It's lucky my Nokia E61 works so well, otherwise i'd have died from 'net withdrawls on this trip!

The transfer went very well though, even though I've passed through something like 5 security checkpoints. Frankfurt is a huge airport, and it seems like 80% of the planes are Lufthansa.

It's good to see that Russ finally got an entry on the blog. Sounds like he had a fine old time in Bologna ;-) Should have flown from Florence! Then you'd have had company.

So I'm off now to flight no.2 for today. Tail number:D-ABTK, 747-400. Wish me luck that I don't perish mid-air from Deep Vein Thrombosis! :-D My seat doesn't even recline, and I'm parked next to two LA Nanas! Gotta love last class. Auf Wiedersein!

Nous sommes en France

We've just crossed the border into France at Basel. Now to Strasbourg, Reims and the eventually Calais.

Our prayers for better driving standards we're answered in Switzerland. It was a good job as our route took us through the 17km Gotthard tunnel, not a good place to chance having an accident. Quite an amazing construction with mad temperatures - 15C at the entrance, 35.5C at about 7km in and 9.5C when we saw daylight again.

Then we stopped about one hour ago in deepest, darkest Switzerland at the services at Rothenburg. With sandwiches, chocolate, Red Bull(!), water and fuel we both felt much better. Phil resumed as pilot and I had a snooze.

While I was sleeping the car's SatNav tricked Phil into coming off the motorway for a "shortcut". This combined with having to wait 30 minutes before entering one of the Swiss tunnels has seen our Calais ETA move out to 19:35. We're trying to fix that right now.

Bologna, Italian for boredom?

I see that everyone else is making progress North across Europe, it's comforting! Meanwhile, I am soaking up the atmosphere of Bologna airport and to be honest - I fully expect everyone reading this to indulge in my excitement. If you only visit one place in Italy this year, make sure it's here!

Anyhow, all good things must come to and end and after just 3.5 short hours here I am over half way though my visit. In just 2 hours I expect to be on my way, I will make sure to send my regards to Austria for you Phil!

Ciao Firenze!

Slightly delayed, but ready to head for Frankfurt on D-AVRI a little Avro RJ85. It's only a nice short flight, so I might be able to have a little nap on the way (didn't get back to sleep after the guys left @5:30). Got the Airport photos for Dicky so wil try to post them later (Update:Posted!).

But for now it's time to say 'Ciao' to Italy, and I'm homeward bound. See you again soon.

And then there were two

Got on the road for 05:45 and danced with death on the A1 up to Bologna to drop off Russell at 06:40 (for his 12:30 flight!). It took 50 minutes to get round Milano but progress has been good from there.

We've just stopped inside Switerland near Como. And I'm now the proud owner of a €30 permit that lets me use the Swiss motorways for the rest of the year.

Phil's getting some more tablets to try to shake his head and neck ache and perhaps make my driving a little more bearable. Tomtom is guessing at a 18:40 arrival in Calais - I admire its optmism.

And so the journey home begins

I'm sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting for the bus to Florence Airport. I can't say I'm looking forward to around 26hours of economy class flights home, but there can't be any regrets, as we've had a great weekend.

The boys got away slightly late this morning, and it was really sad to say yet another goodbye. But hopefully it won't be too long before we meet up again. I'm sure they're making rapid progress North right at this moment.

Dicky has put in an order for Airport photos and three tail numbers, so I'll do my best to send those through before each flight. So now it's on to the bus...let the travelling begin!