Sunday – 5 May to Thursday, 9 May 2019
I know, I know, it’s been a while since I last blogged and a lot has happened since then, but a man’s been busy and all (read lazy). So, this post serves as a quick catchup as to where we have been since we visited Sicily in July last year (last post) and also covers our latest road trip from France to Greece where we now find ourselves. Posts colouring the time in between will follow in due course, be sure to check them out when they become available, we had seen some wonderful places, had great experiences and met some amazing people along that way.

So, we left Sicily at the beginning of August last year and took a ferry, with car in tow, or rather on deck, from Palermo to Naples on our way to the Tuscany region, and more specifically Capolona, 80km south-east of Florence. We experienced extreme heat here during the month of August which kept us indoors until mid afternoon when it was just bearable outside. This suited us rather well as it was the time of year for evening food festivals in Italy; we attended a number of those and met some wonderful people, more about that in a future post.

It was time to head back to France in order to sort out our residency. We initially arrived in France mid-March 2017 on the strength of a long-term visa – valid for one-year – but once you renew that you receive a physical residence card. This we applied for in February 2018 but the prefecture had been shtum in this regard, it was time to follow up as the extension we received was due to expire on 10 September. We need not have worried though, the cards were ready for pickup in April already, we must have missed their SMS notification.

Now back in Brittany we stayed in a house in a little hamlet called Keprigent not far from Guingamp during the month of September. We loved the peace and quiet there. This is one of the joys of having a car, one does not have to stay in a town or city centre.

The first half of October we went on “holiday” with Philippe and Lucie and spent a wonderful time in Barcelona. Winter was fast heading our way and we decided to stay in Brittany to assess whether we could indeed handle the cold and rain for an extended period of time.






We found a house-sitting assignment in Mohon in rural Brittany where we decided to hibernate for four months. The house we looked after belongs to a British couple who was traveling around Australia at the time.

We were scheduled to leave Mohon by mid February only but due to unforeseen circumstances and a very interesting story we left early January, but more about this in a future post!

We opted to remain in Brittany during January, this time on the Pink Granite Coast at Perros-Guirec, a lovely seaside town. It was once again time to apply for the renewal of our residency which we intended to do in January but due to the changes in procedure at the prefecture we were only able to apply for the extension on 1 March 2019. This meant that our intended trip to Portugal – and the sun – during February and March had to be put on hold.

Be as it may, winter in Brittany this year was unseasonably warm, balmy wintry days with a few sunny days even going up to around 20°C. We were not complaining although we should have, global warming had arrived in Brittany.

We found ourselves in a lovely village called Trevou-Treguignec – also on the coast – during February and we were back in Perros-Guirec in March during which time we were able to successfully complete our latest residency application. We extended our stay here until early April hoping that our new residency cards would be available before we left Brittany, but that was a bridge too far.

It was during our time in Perros-Guirec that Adri received a request for an interview regarding our travels from Monique who runs the TiaraTribe web site. You can check out the resulting blog post here.

Hoping to get more sun on our skin in the South of France, early April saw us heading to our old haunt in the wider Montpellier region, to a little town called Saint-Thibery. While there we finally did get the eagerly awaited SMS from the prefecture on 2 May 2019, but there was no way to pick up the residence cards in Saint-Brieuck before our road trip that was due to start in two days. Oh well, we’ll just have to be back in Brittany by September again, and we of course have no problem with that. Brittany has become our de facto home away from home.

We planned to leave Saint-Thibery and our comfort zone on Sunday, 5 May 2019 for the long-planned road trip to Corfu, some 2400km away. The initial idea was to head towards the east coast of Italy and then take a car ferry from there to Corfu but sadly ferries from Venice, Ancona, Bari and/or Brindisi to Corfu only start operating mid to late June… pity.

The plan was to do this trip in five days, thus approximately 500km per day, sleeping over four nights somewhere along that way. Seemed reasonable at the time of planning, everything always seems reasonable at that time. During these five days on the road we would pass through eight, yes 8, countries. We started in France, travelled through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and finally landed up in Greece. Our journey ended up looking something like this… We will be in Corfu during May while in June we will move to the island of Lefkada further south. During July and August we will slowly make our way back to Brittany – on a route yet to be determined – and be there by early September.

But now, back to the present… We left Saint-Thibery on Sunday morning, 5 May 2019 at around 10:30 after having yet again packed our lives into our Clio. We usually prefer taking the roads less travelled along country roads and lanes and whatnot, but this time we had no choice, we had to make good time and thus had to jump onto the toll roads. And these certainly took its toll on us, or rather from us. We sped up the French south coast past very familiar signboards that flashed by; Marseille, Toulon, Saint-Tropez, Saint-Raphael, Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Monaco and finally we crossed the border into Italy.

It was around 16:00 when we stopped for a coffee and to find our Hotel California (My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night). We figured we could keep going until about 19:00 so searched booking.com for a place to stay some three hours away and the dart stuck to a little village called Capriati d’Orba.

Without much fuss we found our B+B which came with the wonderful and helpful Debora who made us feel right at home. We were still fully fed from our padkos (food for the road) that Adri had packed for us, so there was no need to go for supper, we almost immediately fell into bed for a well-deserved rest.

After a hearty breakfast on Monday we left Capriati d’Orba for Croatia, stopping off at a highway petrol station rest stop for some sustenance and to relieve ourselves from excess water, or was that the ample coffee we consumed at breakfast. Going to public toilets is always an experience, could be good or bad but either way, it is an experience. I entered the men’s toilet area with high hopes as the general vicinity seemed rather well cared for and clean. There were two doors (or odours?), one with the occupied dial set to green, and the other set to red.

There was a man and his small son in front of me, they inspected the green cubicle but refused to go in and decided to wait for the red one to turn green. Unperturbed I waltzed into the green, closed the door and that’s when it hit me. There it was, in full view and aroma, an Italian drol (Afrikaans for turd) drifting in the bowl which stubbornly refused to be flushed, seemed like it was somehow aerated. In French drôle (pronounced drol) means funny… and this drol was not drôle.

Having failed several times at attempting to flush this brown brother down – it just kept bobbing up to the surface – I tried to at least conceal it from view by burying it in sheets upon sheets (no pun intended) of toilet paper, but that automatic flusher kept undoing my handiwork, and that drol just kept on bobbing up to the surface once the paper was flushed out. What could I do? I put on my thousand-yard stare right into the distance of that toilet wall and pretended to be somewhere else, anywhere else. I finished up and flushed and, there it was again…

Just before we passed into Slovenia we thankfully remembered to stop at the petrol station to buy a vignette in lieu of paying tolls on their roads. Once you get the sticker – minimum validity to purchase is one week at €15 – you have to stick it to the top left inside of the windscreen for the toll scanners to identify it. Being caught without a vignette will attract fines of between €400 and €800, so I suggest it’s best to relieve yourself of that €15.

We entered Croatia at their one-stop border post with Slovenia, scrambling to get our pack of documents ready for the man. First off there was the carte gris (grey card, the vehicle registration document), followed by the two passports, followed by the two expired French residency cards, followed by the two letters of extension of residency. When the man reminded me with a stern look that the residency cards had expired, I pointed towards the extension papers and that seemed to satisfy his curiosity. Without further drama we were waved through.

It was around 18:00 that we reached Novi Vinodolski on the Dalmation Coast, I always love arriving in Croatia, the bright blue ocean with its craggy coast against a backdrop of green mountains, always a welcome sight.

Before we could enter the premises of our hotel, we were whisked away to their deck overlooking the ocean for a welcome drink. We each chose a grappa, turned out to be a rather large one. I liked this place already. After checking in we would return to those same seats for another drink or two, staring out over the blue ocean. And that’s when I saw it.

Across the seaway we could see the Pula Peninsula with a little town just visible on its east coast. I wasn’t so sure about my calculations after my second beer but the waiter confirmed that it was indeed Vrbnik. We visited Vrbnik in October 2017, and at Pizzeria Gospoja you will find the very best pizza in the world, I kid you not.

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Tuesday would be the highlight of our trip to Corfu. It just so happened that our friends from South Africa, Erna and Fanie, were spending their last day in Croatia (Split) with friends of theirs from Ireland.

It was around 14:00 when we entered Split and the town was bopping, there was a carnival atmosphere in the air. And not surprisingly so, it was indeed the Festival of Flowers that was held between 5 and 7 May, and today was 7 May which also happened to be the feast day to celebrate the patron saint of Split, Saint Domnius, thus a double whammy of festivities.

We found our booked accommodation for the night but we did not find parking. The landlady just shrugged her shoulders with a “on a normal day there is plenty of parking in the street, today is not normal”. We circled the few city blocks in the area like a vulture, looking for a recently opened spot, but so were many other vultures. I assume Saint Domnius heard my passionate plea and took pity on us. As we circled back to our accommodation for the umpteenth time, a car pulled out right in front of our accommodation, had I blinked I would have missed it. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the luck of the Irish whom we would meet later in the day that played a role. Erring on the side of caution, we thanked both the Saint and the Irish.

It was exactly 15:00 when we met Erna near the Golden Gate of Diocletian’s Palace, an ancient palace built for the Roman Emperor Diocletian at the turn of the fourth century AD, and which is essentially now the old town of Split. We had a few drinks with Erna and Fanie at their apartment after which we had another few at Paul and Claire’s. Their apartment had a wonderful roof terrace which was situated right on this ancient city’s wall – which was rather unique – and this is where we enjoyed our drinks… Wonderful views, wonderful people, and the drinks were rather wonderful too.

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Soon enough it was time to go for dinner at a lovely restaurant that Erna had booked for the six of us. An amazing evening ensued of chatter, laughs, eats and more drinks, until late in the evening. How wonderful it was to spend time with old friends and new ones, a true blessing. And yes Paul, we will still make it to Ireland and yes, we will definitely look you guys up.

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I tended to stick to beer and white wine during the evening. Adri, who is a very light drinker, tonight seemed to be all over the place, drinking whatever was glancing her way, even if it was a sideways glance. A mixed bag of whiskey, white wine, red wine, liqueur and gin and tonics made it to her side of the table, and she certainly felt the effect of her waywardness in the morning. But, after a breakfast burek at a roadside tavern, she was good to go.

Not long after that burek we left Croatia and entered Bosnia Herzegovina, heading towards Montenegro. Once across the border the deteriorating roads hit your suspension like a bad dream. I’m only half joking here; the roads are truly not in good repair. I also suspect that Google Maps did me no favours as it kept on sending us on roads that does not exist. I cussed and cursed Google constantly, maybe there were in fact better roads that could have been used, ask Google… Hold on, maybe not. I again cursed myself for not using Waze, but then I don’t think Waze has offline navigation, and soon you’ll discover how important that is.

The parts Bosnia Herzegovina that we drove through, although pretty in nature, is godforsaken. The little dusty towns that we passed through were almost devoid of movement and/or life. It just seemed like an unforgiving environment to live in.

And somewhere along these makeshift roads we passed a large road sign that read ”Welcome to Republika Srpska”. Hey, say what? Where did we make that wrong turn? But we needn’t have worried, Republika Srpska is one of the two political entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sounds confusing, hell yes.

And it just happened to have been along one of Republika Srpska’s potholed roads that I received the second SMS from Orange, my cell service provider in France. An SMS from them is not uncommon, but two within 15 minutes of each other was a warning sign, and it was. Well, the first one was a warning, the second was a notification that they had suspended my 3G internet roaming to save me from myself. I had apparently already reached my supposed limit of €40 which I didn’t know existed but was now thankful for.

Truth be told, I was not even aware that I was using 3G. Just yesterday I had downloaded the relevant maps in Google Maps to use in offline mode, but obviously Google did not have the same thinking pattern as me. Anyways, I turned off 3G roaming although it was a moot point now, it was already suspended and the damage was done.

With wifi freely available that evening I Googled the Orange charges for 3G roaming and was literally in a state of shock. Not because of the extra amount I now owed Orange, but for what it had bought me. I had used a minuscule 3.28Mb while roaming, that’s Mb, not Gb, costing me the grand total of €43.93. This is preposterous, internet highway robbery methinks, this at the official rate of €13.31/Mb! And yes, that’s Mb, not Gb.

The Customs guy at the Bosnia border post asked me be to open the boot for inspection. He pointed to our lives in the back and asked “narcotics?” I put on my wounded face and smiled a gentle “no” in his direction. He seemed to believe me and sent us on our way with a reciprocal smile.

Not long after this we came across a road closure. They’re building a new road and this part of the old road is closed for two hours at a time, twice a day. Fortunately we hit it towards the end of the second innings and only had to wait about 20 minutes before we were ushered on.

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It was around 17:00 that we got hungry and stopped off at a roadside diner for a bite. We were in Montenegro and we just had to have a Cevapi, something we’ve yearned for since we left it behind in February 2017. And we were certainly not disappointed.

It was getting late by the time we crossed the border into Albania and finally came to rest at our hotel in Shkoder (which lies on the beautiful Lake Shkoder). Today we managed to travel through four countries and it felt as if I carried the weight of all four on my shoulders, I needed beer.

After checking in we went in search of that beer and found it in one of the many upmarket pubs and restaurants on the very pretty and wide pedestrian street of Rruga 28 Nëntori. The beer was beautiful and ridiculously cheap at around €2 for a 500ml, roughly a third of the price in France… I could live here. The little we did see of Shkoder we liked, a place we would definitely want to return to at some stage.

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Thursday morning after a small but delicious breakfast we tackled the final leg of our journey, we only had about 400km to go. We experienced the expected lovely scenery on our drive past Tirana, Durres, Vlore and Sarande, but oh woe, the roads were still in total disrepair as we left them 10 years earlier when we visited here. Nothing had changed. We were expecting highways but sadly all we found were the same old byways, it seems that Albania was frozen in time. Albania has so much to offer, it is a truly wonderful place, but I assume with politics at play nothing much gets done, much the same as in most of the world unfortunately.

On these scrawny roads it took us forever to reach the border of Greece which we eventually got there at around 17:30. Truth be told, the road between Sarande and the border post was remarkably good, I suspect they expect more trade traffic through there in the future, but for now we met few vehicles.

After crossing the Greece border, it was a short drive to Igoumenitsa which we reached at around 18:30, found a ferry that was heading our way, boarded ourselves with car in tow and 19:30 we headed out towards Corfu. The last few days had been a whirlwind with not much time for checking emails between driving and sleeping. It was only now that I opened the email from our new landlord in which he requested our arrival details. A flurry of emails followed and an hour later we were met by Alexander in front of the Lidl Supermarket. Just as well we met him there, it would have been impossible to find our accommodation through the maze of little streets and the haze in my head.

And now it was time to kick off our shoes, get out the suntan lotion and hit the beach, or so we thought, but more about that in the next post.

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