DAY 12 - Gameragno - Trento

Gameragno - Acqui Terme - Alessándria - Novara - Olleggio - Malpensa Airport - Milan - Lake Garda - Trento

Our first night in Italy was a success both in terms of meal, a good night´s sleep and drying the “river-running” clothes - tee hee, bet all the kayakers cringe. T and L packed the car and J practised her Itlalian and Spanish to pay - they all seemed to think they´d got the better deal…

Then off to Malpensa - a small airport just outside of Milan: we were not stupid enough to try and drive into Milan centre - excuse the lack of contractions and brackets but I am using a Czech keyboard and the apostrophes are not very consistant - through the various towns listed above - I was in the back either scrap booking or vegetating so sorry about the lack of descriptions.

However, we were determined to get our Italian Pizza in Italy first. And we did. And it was good. And that is all I will say - for more details, and there are a lot, you will have to wait until we get back and scan in the scrap book pages.

So Tom gets kicked out at the Airport…just kidding, it was sad to see him go but as he is now living the high life in the United Slates of Antarctica I am sure he is doing alright without L and J.

We then went…s…sh…shop….opp…ppin…ping…sorry, could not bring myself to put “we” and…the s-word in the same sentance…but it is not as bad as it sounds. Basically, when we were leaving the airport we saw signs for Decathlon which sells good outdoor gear at a reasonable price in the UK so on the continent it sells good outdoor gear at a really reasonable price. So we followed these signs - which may have been better labelled “tour of the industrial estates and warehouses of Milan” - and found it and spent…less than 20 euros between us…

Anyhoo, back to the interesting stuff. It was now fairly late in the eve and so we were driving around Lago Di Garda as evening was drawing nigh and it was very, very pretty with lots of castles and valleys and water etc. but a distinct lack of affordable campsites…

INTERESTING BIT!!!

We followed signs for one and kept following them until we were more or less driving down a footpath…we had passed another car so we knew it was possible to drive. But we soon met the owner of said car who explained that continuing was a bad idea and suggested a handy bank where Linds did another neat little bit of reversing - the helpful Italian dude was very impressed - and soon we were once again on our merry way. Though darkness was now closing in and we had failed to find a single place to stay that was in our budget - 5 star hotels were a bit out of our price range - in the whole of Lake Garda. So we kept driving and ended up in Trento, a big town at the top of the Lake. No campsites there…but there was a train station…

AND NOW…THE REALLY INTERESTING BIT!!!

So! Armed with phrase books I entered boldly into said station on a mission from Lindsey to seek new forms of information. Unfortunately, no smiling, bouncing guard brimming with helpfullness, brandishing colourful, easy-to-follow directions to a selection of cheap and cheerful campsites appeared…in the end this was actually very fortunate because I was forced to speak to a random person who happened to be one of the nicest people we´ve met all trip. Her name is Eva and I spoke to her because she was the least scary and most mum-like looking person around. Unfortunately she didn´t speak a word of English…I got the gist of her Italian but she told me that her daughter who she was waiting for spoke English and that I should wait for her. And I did. And Lindsey joined us - Linds had to do some adventerous driving to go back round the 1 way system so she could park 1st mind… - And they let us follow them out of Trento and pointed us in the direction of a campsite. But we never got to that campsite…because…

WE GOT ADOPTED BY THE LOVELY ITALIANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!