We picked up our 2018 Peugeot 208 in Geneva, Switzerland and started driving. Wow the highways here are expensive but amazing! Europe appears to be just one big never ending highway. On our first day of traveling we spent NZ$153 on tolls, half of that was to go through the Mont Blanc tunnel. This is an amazing engineering feat which is 11.6km long and has a ton of rules including the slowest speed you can do (50km/h) as well as the fastest speed (70km/h). There are also blue lights along the walls to show you what they expect your following distance to be (150m).

 

At 2pm we stopped at a service center and booked accommodation for that evening, yep that’s the latest we’ve ever left it but we didn’t know how far we’d get that day. However we turned up to find the host had not got the Airbnb email to say we were coming so we prepared the apartment together. She suggested a pizzeria down the road for dinner and we are so glad we took up that suggestion. It was amazing pizza!

 

After a good night’s sleep and brekkie provided it was back on the road. We weren’t far away from the border to Slovenia and everything looked very Russian to us. We had our passports stamped into Croatia, got back on the highway and headed down the coast, Salmonella Dub cranking. Then our GPS directed us inland which we thought was odd but we didn’t have any better ideas so we followed it and as we went more inland we went up and up and up and the snow got thicker and thicker and thicker and our speed came down as we crept along a big snowy highway. We made it to a service center for a nice lunch then carried on as the road looked ok but after a while we saw signs saying the highway was closed. So we get off but the GPS got confused so we had to manually navigate, oh what a hard life to have to use a map!!! 😄 We continued on our way and saw a truck tipped over, literally centimeters from falling down a very high cliff, luckily we were up against the bank. On our way we go again and soon we noticed the traffic coming to a standstill at the bottom of the gully but didn’t think much of it as we were due to turn back onto the highway before then. However it turns out the highway is still closed and another truck has tipped over, so we wait 2 hours for it to be cleared (by a digger shunting it, which takes 5 minutes once it gets there!) By this time we’ve well in truly missed the check in time for our Airbnb and low on petrol so we stop at the next petrol station, send a quick email our hosts to explain our situation and we are on our way to Split, Croatia! An hour later we are checked in. The next morning we’re told we were lucky to get in as they closed the roads behind us.

 

We spend the next 6 days resting and relaxing. We do school work and take walks to the park. BK and I practice our suburban driving on the wrong side of the car and on the wrong side of the road. We take naps and I do lots of laundry. BK find an amazing co-working space and gets some solid days of work done.

 

We then move into central Split and I collect some friends from the airport who’ve flown in to spend Easter with us. We explore the old town which has the oldest cathedral in the world that’s still in use and has not been completely rebuilt over the centuries. We were very fortunate to come across the starting of Catholic mass on Good Friday and saw boys and men singing through the streets (which are actually very small walk ways between buildings which a built quite close together!)

 

We also explore the Krka National Park and wander our way around the waterfalls for a few hours. I got my first injury, I slipped on some stones and grazed my knee! We also spend some time stuck at our Airbnb because it rained and everything was shut for Easter!

 

The day before our friends left, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day.

BK kindly offered to stay home with the children while the rest of us went to Brac Island which was a sleepy little island as the summer season hasn’t quite started yet but it’s very pretty. We found a restaurant, have lunch then made our way back to the mainland. 7 glorious hours away from our kids was just what I needed. Being with them 24/7 can be quite challenging.

 

After that it’s time to say goodbye to our friends, they’re off home to London but we’ll see them again in Rome.

 

Till next time,

 

Claire