The Familia in Italia - Meeting up with Nicks Parents (2nd - 22nd July 07)

We flew from St Petersburg (Russia) to Milan (Italy) to meet up with Nicks parents - Alison and Brian - and his brother Tim. In Milan, we were extremely lucky because we were had a true Italian experience of staying with an Italian family. This was with Cecilia's family who stayed with Nicks family in NZ a few years ago.

Cecilia had a fantastic apartment in central Milan so we spent a few days roaming the city and doing some frantic sightseeing including the Milan Duomo, Leonardo's Last Supper, and the fashion district of Milan (where we felt totally out of place in our tired travelling clothes). We had some fantastic meals cooked by Cecilia's family, including one amazing night sitting on her grandfathers balcony which has a stunning view of the Duomo.

After a few days in Milan we caught a train south to Genova followed by and overnight ferry to Sardinia, a large island off the west coast of Italy. We then went to the far north of the island to a place called La Maddelana where Cecilia has a holiday house. When we turned up we were mind-blown. The house was set up on a hill above the small town and had a huge deck with stunning views of the La Maddelena archipeligo. (Unfortunately we burnt a CD with our photos and that went back to NZ, so we cant show any pics of how beautiful it was).

We were in La Maddelena for a week and had a great time on the beaches, cooling ourselves with gelato or cafe shakerato (shaken ice coffee). On our penultimate day we hired a boat and driver and 8 of us went out crusing the islands, stopping at secluded beaches for swims - magical.

After Sardinia, Nick's family hired a campervan and we did a whirlwind tour of Northern Italy. Bologna - a bohemian uni town that we loved, Lucca - a small historic town, Pisa - known mainly for its leaning tower, and the Italian riviera. We then left Nick's mum and brother in Cinque Terra while we and Nicks dad headed for the french alps for 4 days to follow the tour de france.

The alps were packed with cyclists riding over the cols (mountain passes) or getting ready for the tour. On the col de galibier there were campervans parked up 4 days before the tour came through!!

We watched two stages of the tour where we parked the campervan at the bottom of a climb then rode our bikes up over the top then found a good position to watch the race. Then we waited..........First was the 80 sponsor cars and trucks throwing freebies into the crowd and we were happy with our free coffee. Then about 1 hour later the riders came through. Even though we were near the top of the mountains that they had been climbing for hours, they flew by....and the field passed with 25 minutes.






Then we headed back to Italy and spent a few days at Como Lake north of Milan where we visited a church which is blessed by the patron saint of......italian cycling.



After Como we all went back to Milan to go our seperate ways - Alison and Brian to NZ, Tim to London then Greece and us north to Switzerland. Our decision to head north was mainly due to the unbearable heat in Italy, and the cooler climate that the higher altitude Switzerland held was very appealing.