We had the coordinates for a Bordatlas point close to the centre of Como, but it turned out to be a fairly dodgy looking truck parking area in an industrial area with no other motorhomes to be seen.  Only took us about 10 seconds to decide that we weren’t going to stay there overnight and we drove on to look for somewhere else to stay.  We even had another motorhome follow us in there, probably with the same coordinates we’d found, but they also opted to give it a miss!

After enjoying our first real Italian pizza (awesome) and doing some research, we headed for some other sketchy coordinates we’d found online, mind you we did not have high hopes.  Turned out it was just on-street parking near a Seaplane launch, right next to the lake.  It was late evening by the time we got there, and we pulled up where we thought looked like a nice spot.  Right next to us was a foggy windowed station wagon with a couple of locals ‘enjoying’ the serenity.  Apologies for scaring them off…

We woke up in the morning to an amazing view over the lake right outside our window and nobody came along to move us on.  We spent some time wandering around the Lake, having some lunch, beers and gelati on a pier, but got bored after a while.  Seems like the kind of place that would be great fun if you had a speed boat and loads of cash to blow on overpriced cocktails.

Of course the great thing about the motorhome is the freedom to do as we please!  Bellagio was one of the places we wanted to visit, and the road from Como looked like it hugged the edge of the lake, no problems, right?  Wrong.  The road was barely wide enough for two cars and packed full of crazy impatient Italian drivers in hatch backs who didn’t enjoy being stuck behind a 3 metre wide behemoth!  Had a few sketchy moments, but made it to Bellagio unscathed.  Deb spotted a few motorhomes by a grassy park in San Giovanni, which turned out to be where we stayed for a night for free.

Bellagio was more what we were hoping to see – steep and skinny cobbled streets and walkways.  I had a swim in the lake here, a beautiful spot where a set of steps went straight down  into the crystal clear water that dropped straight off into nothing, deeper than I could see the bottom…  Exactly what I like.

We also picked up our first sticker for the back of the van, a nice badge style with the colours of the Italian flag.  We had to try a few different shops and finally hit pay dirt after I found out how to say ‘sticker’ in Italian. A good tactic that I’ll be using in future…

Next day we went to Lake Garda, but it was tourist hell with high priced camping sites and absolutely no parking for motorhomes.  Completely packed with families as well, especially at the camping site we eventually settled on.  Spent the whole time dreaming about school holiday being over…

That was about all we wanted to do in Northern Italy, so now we’re heading for Slovenia!  Oh whoops, I forgot about Venice!  Stay tuned…

The plan for Stage One was simple – get to Italy as fast as we could be bothered. There was a few ‘gotchas’ though. Firstly, I’m the only licensed driver in our duo, since Deb left it to late to swap her Aussie drivers license for a UK license. There are some whispers that perhaps she wanted no part of driving a 3.5T behemoth through many countries renowned for having crazy drivers, and on the wrong side of the road no less. Who could blame her? Not me, and I’m a control freak anyway, so having sole control of the vehicle is ok with me.

Secondly, France is full of Aires. These are free motorhome servicing points, of which there are thousands scattered all over the country, many of them in idillic settings. So when you park up in one that, for example, has a panoramic view of lush vineyards nestled next to a quaint village with a patisserie, it’s kind of hard not to stay for a night at the least.

Thirdly, France (and supposedly many other parts of the EU) has ridiculously expensive tolls for their motorways. I don’t mean expensive like bananas-after-a-drought, I mean bend-me-over-and-tear-my-arse-up expensive. We were literally forty five minutes out of Calais on the motorway and the first toll was €10. We figured maybe they like to ream tourists fresh off the boat, but then a couple of hours later it was another €15! At this point I when to the navigation setting of our Garmin GPS and ticked the ‘Avoid Tolls’ box. Of course this means a less direct route, but we soon realised this is much preferable anyway, since you get to see really beautiful countryside and cruise through little towns, rather than nothing but service stations and the back of trucks.

First failure of the trip was our little iPod radio tuner gizmo – for some unknown reason the quality of every radio frequency we tried was unbearably crap. So crap, I briefly went back in time and found myself huddled in front of a wireless, excitedly listening to some bril creamed git making an announcement about the crisp audio of AM radio that scientists had discovered, and imagining the possibilities. It was that crap. So we had to settle for local stations of which Deb observed them playing very strange mixes of English music, like AC-DC and Beyonce back to back.

Our very first stop was in a small town called Arras. We’d mostly stopped just to find some fresh ingredients for our lunch, but we quickly realised that nothing is open in France on Sunday. We wandered around aimlessly before throwing in the towel and leaving. We’d resigned ourselves to having McDonalds for our first meal of the trip, but thankfully found a small store open in Reims and managed to put together my favourite meal – cold plate! Fresh baguette, cold meat, pickles, olives etc.

First Aire we chose to stay the night in really set the bar high – it was the one with the panoramic view of the vineyards. All the other motorhomers there were extremely friendly, inundating us with helpful tips as soon as we arrived. We must have looked a bit confused … also we drove around the Aire with our back door wide open until someone alerted us to it! Literally five minutes after parking up, a local guy and his son had pulled up with a hatch full of fresh produce for sale, really cheap! We bought the hugest zucchini I have ever seen in my life (which supplied 4 days of zucchini-themed meals) and some cherry jam, all for a couple of Euros.

All in all, a pretty damned good first day of our adventure!