Firenze 2006-2007

Road Trip!

This weekend started at about noon on Thursday when we picked up our Silver Fiat Punto from Europecar here in Florence. I was really beginning to miss driving, and when we decided to go to Switzerland and discovered that all the trains were full, we looked at other options and decided on the car.
Driving in Europe is definitely different than driving in the states. You pretty much have to be aggressive and trust the other drivers a bit more than in the states. There is not as much order but everything is more fluid. I loved it! It pretty much catered to how I like to drive. The kind of driving that makes my mom say “babe that’s too fast.”
We made it back to the villa without any trouble at all, and arrived at lunch time. When Brenden and I walked in the door with our car keys, it was like being the first kids in high school to get a car. Brenden and I took Natalie and Casi out for a quick drive around Florence as they were the ones who were going to be with us this weekend. After that, we just had to survive our Humanities test and big brother- big sister with the Italian kids. The test was fine, I did it without any trouble. After that it was the afternoon and then big brother- big sister with a bunch of Italian kids, so we spent a few hours teaching them line dances and other games while practicing Italian with them and them practicing English with us. After that, it was time to go.
(Me, Natalie, Casi, and Brenden infront of our Silver Fiat Punto)
We left the villa at about 9:45pm and headed North on the Autostrade in the direction of Milan. We passed through Bologna and the rest of Emeglia Romangna and reached Milan at about midnight. After a quick stop there we passed through the rest of Lombardia up to the Swiss border. From the border, we continued North to Interlaken. After that, it was a short drive on a very windy lakeside drive to Grindlewald. We got there at about 4am and slept for about 4 hours in the car in the parking lot in front of the train station before getting up in search of breakfast. We ate and then went to the train station, intending to take a ride up to the top of Jungfariot to see the amazing view from the top of a 4000+ meter mountain and look at the ice caves up there, but the tickets were like 100euro so we passed and took a scenic route back to Interlaken, looked around there, and then consulted the map, planning the most scenic route possible to Lausanne.
(Jungfariot from Grindelwald)
We stopped in Spiez, Thun, Montreux, and Vevey before reaching Lausanne. At most of those places, we stopped to enjoy the views of mountains, lakes and scenery in general. In Thun, we ate lunch on the side of a mountain. Our lunch was bread, cheese, meat and chocolate, and Dr. Pepper! I found it in Switzerland and stocked up as it is still not possible to find in Italy. After lunch, we continued on our way to Lausanne, getting there in the late afternoon. We looked for the Hotel Rex, which is where the Pepperdine program will be this Spring, but couldn’t find it. So we booked a place to stay just on the other side of the French border and headed there after dinner. We drove through Geneva, seeing the UN building and other places and went to the hotel. We went to bed early and slept kinda late before getting up for a French Crepe breakfast.
(Brenden, Casi, and me somewhere in Switzerland, I forget exactly where.)
We then headed back into Geneva, stopping to walk around the city center and lake front neighborhoods before heading back into France and touring the South East portion of the country. We stopped in Annecy and walked around the lake there and drove around the city center, wanting to walk around it but not being about to find a place to park, so we headed to Chambery where we had another lunch of cheese, bread, meat and Dr. Pepper.
(Me doing a Harry Potter pic on the Griffin in Geneva with Natalie and Casi in the foreground.)
(Me, Casi, Brenden, and Natalie in Geneva.)
We toured that small town and then headed on some amazingly fun roads through the mountains in the direction of Mt. Blanc. We found a canyon that was closed, but we got onto it anyway and drove for a bit. As there was no one on the road, I got to have some fun driving and slide around a few turns and then do a 180 slide in the car on a nice wide open space. It was pretty cool because it was the first time I’ve actually been able to try some things driving that I’ve always wanted to do. And, for all of y’all who just said that was reckless, well, yes it may have been a bit, but it was a straight road for about 200m, closed and 4 lanes, so safe enough to try some stuff out, and ask anyone, I’m a safe driver and a good one who just likes to have a bit of fun.
(Casi and Natalie giving me a dirty look after my driving performance through the canyon.)
After that we headed up the mountain on the open roads and went to Mt. Blanc, and the longest tunnel ever there that leads into Italy. It took us a good 25 minutes to get through it, and on the other side we were in Italy. We ate dinner at an amazing trattoria in Aosta called Sale Pepe. We ate a full Italian meal and then headed to Genova and onto Portofino to our apartment that we would be staying at. We were really late getting into Portofino, and it took a little time to find our hotel, and once we did, things didn’t look good. We had to wake the woman up who owned the place, and she said that our room had been taken as she thought we wouldn’t show. But, she did have an apartment for us, so we followed her for bout 5 miles in our car and she showed us to a small house in a vineyard that we ended up having all to ourselves for the night. I wish we could have been there longer and taken advantage of the kitchen and all the other fun stuff around there, like the patio and bikes there, but as we got in at about 2am and wanted to be out by 10ish, we decided to sleep.
(Mt. Blanc from Chamonix, I think...)
We had to find our way back to the main hotel on Sunday morning which was no easy task. Sure, the area around Portofino isn’t all that big or heavily populated, but it’s still tough to find your way to an unknown destination anywhere in Italy. After a half-hour five mile drive with no traffic, we were at the hotel, got breakfast made for us by Anna, the owner who grew her own herbs that she used in the scrambled eggs she made for us, and made her own jelly, which we each got a bottle of before leaving. We left the hotel and headed to the beach where Brenden and I swam for a bit before driving into the main part of Portofino as we hadn’t seen it properly yet. We drove around and took some pictures before heading back in the general direction of Florence, through Cinque Terre, Viareggio, and then finally Lucca before coming back into the city.
(Me, Anna, Casi, Brenden, and Natalie in Anna's kitchen after breakfast.)

We got back to Florence at about 5pm, ate dinner shortly thereafter, and instead of doing the large amounts of homework that had been completely neglected over the weekend, Brenden, Natalie, Liz, and I decided to go to Fiesole while we still had full use of the car. Casi decided to stay behind and not neglect that homework. We drove up there, looked around and saw the views before heading back down to Florence in search of a gas station open at 9pm on a Sunday night. We finally found one near the Campo di Marte, so we filled up. After that, Natalie and Liz wanted to try driving a stick, so we went to the big parking lots at the Campo di Marte, and I taught Natalie how to drive a manual and let Liz, who already knew the basics practice a bit. Dad, I have to say that I am a much better teacher when it comes to driving stick than you were in that parking lot in Waco. Natalie got the car going the first time after my explanation and coaching. We then drove back and started the homework before going to bed and getting up early this morning for Italian.
So, basically here’s a recap of the trip in slightly statistical form. 4 of us went to 3 different countries. We saw the tallest mountain in Europe, Mt. Blanc (4808m), went through the longest tunnel in the world (11.6km), and reached a top speed of 165km/hr in our Fiat Punto. We ate pastries in Switzerland one morning, Crepes in France the next, and had scrambled eggs in Italy the next. In short, each night we spent in a different country. We drove places no other Pepperdine students have every been (anyone every heard of ...). We spent many hours in the car asking all kinds of questions, we spent 30 frantic minutes in Lausanne one evening looking for a place to stay. I drove 1873 kilometers, which is 1162 miles. We saw the Swiss, French, and Italian Alps, Swiss and French lakes, and Italian beaches. We went from an elevation of about 3000m to touching the bottom of the ocean 50 meters off the coast, so about -15feet. 4 of us had an amazing weekend, and did all this in just 66 hours. Basta cosi!

posted by Daniel Williams @ 05:08