We did it!

We're back!

We returned to Finland by airplane two nights ago, exhausted but rich of experiences.
Since the midsummer weekend is starting today, we don't have time yet to recap the journey, but we plan to make a day-by-day account of our entire trip as soon as we can.

In the meantime, have a good midsummer!

News in the middle of the night

Hello again,

we´ve just returned after an interesting evening in Geneva. As many of you might know, the European football championships are played here in Switzerland (and
Austria) and tonight there was a match between Turkey and the Czech republic here in Geneva. Turkey won the match 3-2, and it certainly showed in the nightlife! The fans were driving around in their cars, honking their horns and waving Turkish flags. The Czech fans were quiet, but drunk. As far as we could tell, everything seemed to go peacefully.

We had another interesting experience at a "Swiss" restaurant- one might say we even got an overdose of Swiss "culture". The restaurant we visited, Edelweiss, had everything from fondue to the St Bernhard- dog, and they even had a houseband which played everything from the saw to the alp horn. We got a whiff of genuine Swiss touristic kitch, but in a strange way it was rather nice.

Now we are quite tired and ready for bed. Tomorrow we are heading to Davos, a small ski-resort in Switzerland. We have a long way a head of us, before we return to Munich.

The trip so far...

Sorry we haven't written from the trip so far- we have been stuck in traffic. Literally.

Tuesday: we left a rainy Finland and landed in Munich about half an hour late. Without too much trouble we managed to rent a car from Sixt- an Audi A6 Avant 3.0 TDI S-line Quattro, black with black leather seats. Fortunately we have air-conditioning in the car; otherwise it would have been a disaster.

Anyway, as soon as we got our car we were on our way. Our route was the following: Munich- Freising- Füssen- Ehrwald (Austria). The weather was fine in Munich, but as we reached the border of Austria, it started raining cats and dogs. Unfortunately the rained stopped us from having a good look of the castle in Füssen- we only drove past and took some photos. As soon as we reached our hotel we went for dinner. After that we were so tired that we just had a Paulaner in the hotel bar and then went to bed.

On Wednesday we drove from Ehrwald to Stelvio pass. You have to go through the Stelvio pass if you have the chance. It was amazing and nerveracking. On our way up to the top, which is at a height of 2700 metres, we had pretty good weather. The higher up we got the worse the weather got. On the top it was +5 degrees Celsius, misty and raining. All we did on the top was buy a bratwurst from the Würstmann, who surprised us by knowing the Finnish word for sauerkraut. We didn’t stay long but continued our journey down the mountain on the other side. The weather on the way down was better. From Stelvio pass we drove through the little Italian town Nauders. We were supposed to take a relatively easy route from Nauders to Limone sul Garda (where we stayed the night). So, we drove up along a mountain road only to discover that the road was closed due to washbasins falling on the road. Well, not really, but that’s how we interpreted the Italian road sign. We had to take a detour on a tiny, tiny mountain road. And again, it was raining cats and dogs. But we got trough and reached Limone sul Garda late at night. We stayed at Villa Margherita, which was a cosy little hostel overlooking Lake Garda. We strongly recommend it.

Thursday then: From Limone to Rapallo via Lake Garda and the Valpolicella area. We went on a little wine tasting at a Masi wineyard in a little village in the Valpolicella area and bought a couple of bottles of Amarone wine. After that we switched drivers and all went to hell. We took the wrong exit on the Autostrada and ended up in the wrong direction. If it had been raining cats and dogs earlier it was now raining horses and hippos. We survived though, turned around and drove to Rapallo. If all would have gone according to plans, we would have been arriving in Rapallo quite early on Thursday evening. It didn’t. We got stuck in traffic for almost 2 hours because of some truck that had tipped over on the motorway. Nice. Our plans were f**ked. We arrived in Rapallo, checked in, went for a pizza and some wine and then went to bed, tired but still quite happy. A really long and exhausting day that didn’t go according to plans at all.

Today is Friday and we drove from Rapallo, Italy, to Monte Carlo, Monaco on the autostrada. The drive was rather uneventful, although we did notice that Italian motorways do not show the distance to any destinations nor do they display the speed limit. Mostly, we were going between 120 and 140 km/h. It rained a little on the way to Monaco, but the closer we got, the better the weather got. When we finally arrived in the little kingdom, it was blue skies and high hopes. We drove down the small winding roads to Monte Carlo with our long station wagon, but we dreaded the search for parking lot. However, after having driven right past all the Bentleys, Porsches, Lamborghinis and whatnots in front of the Casino, we finally found a parking garage. Then we went for a small sight seeing tour round the casino. We didn't want to waste too much time in Monaco, so we mostly photographed the nice cars and then we went on. There's not enough time to list all the cars now, but you can be sure to get a detailed description later on, when we have more time to blog.

After Monaco, we drove on the minor roads by the french riviera towards Juan-Les-Pins, where our next hotel was located. We drove through many nice small villages, but also Nice and Antibes. We arrived at the hotel at around 15:30, after which we checked in. There were some troubles for two of us, since we got the key to a room which was already occupied. After sorting that out, and getting a new room, we threw our stuff in the room and headed on to the beach. We had a quick crepe with jambon et fromage, and then we found the local public beach. It felt so good to lay on the beach, relaxing in the sun, and then to take a dip in the ocean. After a couple of hours of worshipping the sun, we went back to our rooms, and took a well deserved rest. As I (Henrik) am writing this, we are waiting to go out and eat some dinner.

Tomorrow we are heading towards Briancon. It will be an interesting drive via the Verdon Gorge.

Note: This post is a concoction of the writings of Annette, Anna and Henrik.

Packing, packing and some more packing

Well, it is the final night before the trip. It's been a hectic day trying to tie all odd ends together at work so that I can relax on the vacation, not having to think about work. When I got home, it was on to packing the bags. Although quite stressful, it feels good to check off every little piece of clothing or technical equipment that we will need.


It's already 1 o'clock and time for some quality time with Mr. Sandman. In the morning, a little bit of breakfast, some more packing, and then off to the airport...

Tres exciting!

Countdown

I guess as one of the ladies it's my turn to contribute to this blog too. I resent all the implications that has been made here about us "ladies" bringing too much luggage and being otherwise a bit blasé about this trip. That is so not true. I'm really looking forward to this trip, I think it's going to be great fun. I just don't sit every day looking at webcams from the Stelvio pass just to be able to say that the "Würstmann" has finally arrived. For you that don't understand what that means, I can tell you that it means that the pass has finally opened and you are able to drive there. :)

Anyways, yesterday we booked the final hotel, a spa hotel. Yey! :) I hope we acutally have the time to do some spa-ing too. :)

I have to endure a week of work now before we can leave for Munich on Tuesday, but I think I'll manage.

P.S. This contribution has to be read with a bit of humor. :)

Ein Prosit!

Just a quick comment. There is reason why we chose Munich as our base of operations. Firstly, the abundance of nice German cars, and secondly.. well, check out this picture from my last visit to Munich :)

Practicalities

Thank you Henrik for your nice posts! It is now my time to contribute to our blog.

I thought I'd walk you through some of the things we have been planning for the last 5 months. The original plan for this trip was spawned around Christmas in 2007, with the main motivator being the trip done by BBC's TV show Top Gear. In this show (season 10, episode 1), the main presenters took upon themselves the challenge of finding "the best driving road in Europe", and unanimously decided on giving the title to Stelvio Pass located in Italy (close to the Swiss border). The road is famous for its hairpins and nice scenery, which lead to us choosing this as our theme for out roadtrip.




View Larger Map

Our initial purpose of the trip was to do a by-the-books roadtrip, but since we knew that the ladies in the company would not be too appreciative of this, we also decided to throw in some more classical holiday locations for good measure. This would then be the oh-so-nice areas of Lago di Garda, Rapallo/Portofino (Italian riviera) and Nice/Antibes (French riviera). After all, Henrik and myself will probably be doing all of the driving, so we need to offer the ladies some value for money as well :)

I thought I'd share with you some of the resouces used in "the making of" this roadtrip.

Since we are doing this trip by first flying from Helsinki, Finland to Munich, Germany to get closer to the Alps, our first task was to tackle the air tickets. We chose Lufthansa for the flights since they operate a direct connection between the two cities, and because of their reasonably priced fares. For finnish citizens, and excellent tool for finding the cheapeast airfares is http://www.vertaa.fi/.

Our second major task was finding a rental car. Now, since Henrik and myself are avid car enthusiasts, the generic Toyota Corolla I-couldn't-care-less-what-I-drive type of car would not suffice. After having compared all the major rental agencies such as Hertz, Avis, Europcar, Budget, Alamo and so on looking for nice cars, we had shortlisted an Audi A4 Avant class car from Avis for 470€ (for 7 days) and a Merc S350 from Hertz (570€). These alternatives were flawed from the beginning because of various problems and nuisances. For example, Avis charges a lot for a CDW (collision damage waiver), and since we "plan to fail" instead of "fail to plan" we opt to have a nice little document saving us from a whole lot of trouble if something should happen to the car. The other major problem was that we were painfully aware of the fact that the A4 has a ridculously small backseat, and that the S350 has a trunk that won't fit luggage for four persons comfortably (mind you, we have ladies joining us). Luckily, at this point I remembered another rental agency I had used the last time I visited Munich (I rented a Smart ForTwo, incredibly fun but ridiculous car), namely Sixt. This is no small player on the rental agency market, and is widely used throughout Germany. From their homepage, we found their Holiday car concept, allowing us to rent a car with additional drivers free of charge, absolutely no financial risk (complete CDW) and furthermore at a very affordable price! The car class we decided upon is PWAR, in this case the Audi A6 Avant is the reference vehicle for the class. We are also hoping on getting an upgrade to a BMW 530D Touring, if all goes well (I got them to send me the Sixt Gold membership card hoping that this would help us with this aspect, drop me a message if you need to know how to do this). In any case, we are going for a diesel powered car in order to save some €€. Hey, at least we are requiring a 3 liter engine :) Of course, at this point everything is just wishful thinking, AFAIK they can give us something we wouldn't even touch with a stick, but this being Germany, I think we can rely on getting a premium car made by "ze Germans".'


For hotel booking, we have mainly used http://www.booking.com/, a superb site for exactly this purpose. They even allow you to search for hotels in the vicinity of a given location by defining the outward radius/distance to use. We decided to book our hotels in advance to avoid having to spend the last two hours of every day finding a good and affordable hotel, at the expense of sacrificing flexibility.

For the rest of the practicalities, we have stocked up on a lot of different electrical and sofware gadgets. Henrik and myself bring one laptop each, one TomTom and one Garmin navigator (in addition to the one that is supposed to be in the car), Microsoft AutoRoute 2006 installed on both laptops with a detailed itenerary for the entire trip (this software proved to be invaluable when planning daily trip lenghts and schedules). Of course, we also need a 12V cigarette lighter splitter to power all these devices, as well as a 150W inverter to charge the computers in-car. Speaking of maps btw, Google maps has proven to be a superb tool for planning local routes (where Autoroute gets too tedious), checking out nice places to go and generally getting a good perception of the areas to be visited.

Of course no trip can be done without the appropriate photographical equipment. In addition to Henrik's camera, I'm bringing a Nikon D80 with a 18-200mm "multipurpouse" lens, and a newly acquired Canon FS100 video camera that records directly to SD cards. Since in-car photography will be a hot topic, I am currently building a windshield mount for the camera based on a "one-size-fits-all" 10€ mobile phone holder with a suction cup fastening system. This way, the movie will hopefully be less jerky, since keeping the camera from swaying when the driver is practing drifting in the hairpins is doomed to fail.

This has been a long post, however planning this trip has been a quite tedious process with a lot of twists and turns, but in general it has been a fun and rewarding journey. With a week to go, I'm looking forward to this trip more then ever, and we will continue to post here as the H-hour approaches. Hopefully we will be able to blog during the trip itself as well, almost all hotels have advertised having Internet connectivity. All we have to do now is hope that this doesn't mean a 2400 baud modem connection.

We hope that other people planning to do a similar trip will find some advice from this blog, and in case some things are left unclear or you have some additional questions, feel free to contact us!

My next post will contain a more detailed itenerary for the trip.