After a sunny start in chambery topping up on gasoil, finding an optician’s to fix the loose screw in lou’s glasses and buying a picnic lunch in carrefour we were off! The scenery to the frejus tunnel was amazing as usual and i was well behaved in the tunnel itself (controlled the rising panic and sweaty palms by counting the blue lights etc).

All was ticketboo until we approached milan. An accident somewhere ahead so TWO HOURS to drive 7km! When it finally cleared lou put his foot down so we made it to padua by seven not five as hoped.

Happily the hotel turned out to be comfy and well placed for exploring. We found a restaurant on the prato delle valle just around the corner and i revelled in the sound of italian being spoken all around. In the dark the prato looked beautiful and worthy of a photographic revisit!