Rich and Cat's Travels: onwards to Italy from the villa

So on Saturday we had to say goodbye to Karen and David when they left at 6am for their flight back to the UK. We then had to clean the apartment, pack Pierre and get ready to leave. As Karen and David had to take the keys we had to make sure not to lock ourselves out. So once we emptied the apartment making sure we had everything we closed the front door and headed back to the van feeling pleased with ourselves that we had got it all done. We started the van and got ready to leave when Rich realised he had left the spare van keys in the apartment....... oh sh*t!

We couldn’t get hold of the owner in Scotland and no one of any use was at the club house so we tried to see if there was a way in (there wasn’t) and were stood on the side of the road to try and figure out what to do when I saw the complex manager (who was supposed to be having a day off) and made Rich chase him down to see if we could get a key. After some convincing he let us have the spare key and we managed to retrieve our keys and start the van again ready to leave. We headed to a town just next to Nice called St Laurent du Var where we spent two nights in free camper stops as we had decided not to drive to Italy until Monday as it would involve driving past Monaco during the Grand prix.

When we arrived on Saturday at the camperstop we found an English couple and we all had a chat before we headed off for a quick explore. We returned hot a sweaty a couple of hours later having found the town and train station but realising we were further than we thought from the coast. So on Sunday we decided to move camper stops and then to finally get the bikes off the van and take them for a little bike ride down to a beach the other side of Nice (13km away) so we could go and snorkel. Apart from some small wrong turns to start with we managed to find our way there okay and have a couple of snorkels. There were some fish, some rubbish, at least 2 pairs of jeans and lots of rocks. After a couple of hours and some lunch we headed back to the van for a nice cool shower and a beer.

On Monday we headed off to Italy and what a drive that was. Tomtom decided to take us a convoluted route and kept taking us down side streets and off the main roads. There were some white knuckle moments for me but we eventually arrived at our destination Diano Marina and headed to our camper stop only to find it was closed for renovation (nothing had been mentioned on the website a couple of days before). Anyway we tried the second one in the town but it was like a ghost town and no one was around. So finally we headed to the third and final one in the town and thankfully it was open and had space for us. So we parked up and decided to head straight out to the town for supplies and for the beach. After a couple of hours down in town we headed back to the van to plan for the next couple of days and write this blog with a glass of wine (left over from the villa).