Verona-Grenoble France

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Hello again. After packing our belongings we ate at the same pizzeria as yesterday. Was very nice there. We had to do a fair amount of kilometres the next day so we started with a hearty breakfast. Was very busy in the dinning room when we arrived there. A few tour buses had arrived the day before. We had just finished with our breakfast and enjoying the lively coming and going of people arriving there. It is okay if you know your way around but if you come for the first time it is a little confusing. Maybe not nice, but we had to stay and had some more coffee just to see how those new arrivals struggled to obtain orange juice or coffee. First of all. coffee in Italy or France is not the way we have it. It is very strong and a tiny little bit, just covering the bottom of your cup. So here are the newcomers, mostly Germans trying to have their morning cup of coffee. Three machines,all occupied with several ways you can obtain your choice of coffee. They grab a cup, they are a normal size, and stand in front of the coffee machine to push one of the many buttons. There is just a tiny bit of coffee appearing in the cup. You see the confused person looking at the cup, expecting a full cup, not so. Than you see them looking underneath to see if some more coffee might come out. Their eyes slowly turn to other persons for some sort of help, but they all are in the same boat. It is hilarious and we have great difficulties not to start laughing. Even the Servant, we baptised Mr. Bean,he is so exact, could not help having a smile. Pity, we had to move on and after paying the bill and setting up the Tom Tom we left this Hotel and arrived on the Autobahn direction Milan. We took autobahn it is the easiest way to go from A to B. But even that has his surprises. Apart from all the Toll you have to pay, we had the surprise of finishing in front of the Mon Blanc tunnel. The Tom Tom did not tell us that. No way back and to go through we had to pay 37 Euro. The tunnel is nearly 16 kilometres long, so we had to pay about 2 Euro per kilometre. Just another 100 kilometres to go and we arrived with the help of our friend Tom Tom at our Hotel this time. We could not find a Bed & Breakfast at Grenoble. We had another experience that same night. Looking for a place to eat we finished up at a tiny place belonging to a rugby club. All French speaking but we had a beautiful meal with accompanied with beer and wine as well as a tiny coffee, very strong. As we said Good Bye to those nice French rugby players, we had to have a small glass of Benedictine. France is a nice country. Good Bye for now Liz & Allan.

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