Ride to Torino, or Turin as you and I would call it.
1/8/12
We finally made an early getaway today. It's time for us to cover some serious Ks, get back to the UK, arrange some stuff, and plan the next stage of our trip. It's Autobahn time.
We hit the Autobahn and after a bit of settling in found our happy cruising speed was around 150 kph. It sounds fast but I'll tell you right now, we were getting passed about once a minute. I'm not talking about exotic sports cars either, just your average street cars. These guys don't hang around. Mid morning we were passed by a guy on a GSXR 1000 and it scared the hell out of me. I constantly check my mirrors, but I didn't see him coming. Then bang. He was there. Then he was gone. He was going for it and I bet he's still laughing about the old guy on the BM who jumped out of his seat as he was passed.
I've mentioned before about changing names of places and people from the native language of the country they are in, into something some mono lingual, English speaking person thinks is a good name. What a bloody stupid idea. If Roma's name is Roma, surely we should call in Roma, not Rome. Why change it? Roma isn't too bad, but Torino, as the Italians call it created some problems for us. We searched accommodation websites for accommodation with very little luck, the sat nav didn't want to know anything about it, and most places we looked didn't seem to even register Torino. It wasn't until we were in a hotel checking in that I realised we were in Turin. I ask again, why change the name.
Anyway, on with the story...
We got to Torino with with just over 500 km under our wheels. We were on the road for about six hours and had a couple of long breaks along the way. It was a pretty easy day, until...we couldn't find anywhere to stay. I don't mean everything was full. I mean we could not find a single hotel building anywhere. We punched hotels into the sat nav and it took us to:
1st hotel - Was called Six Love, a "Themed Rooms" rent by the hour hotel. I was happy to stay but Suzanne didn't seem keen.
2nd hotel - There was no hotel at the location.
3rd hotel - There was no hotel at the location.
4th hotel - Full but told us to go to this hotel and they have a room for you.
5th hotel - When we got there it was "I'm sorry we don't have a room, but check in here and give us your passports (which is normal here. Hotels hold your passport to ensure you pay your bill) and it's a five minute walk to the hotel room you can have". Sight unseen, no way bucko! We were so stuffed we couldn't walk for minutes carrying all our stuff anyway.
6th hotel - Holiday Inn - Bingo
We have gone from one extreme to the other. In Croatia just about every single building has a room for rent, yet here we couldn't find a thing. It took three hours of riding around in the heat before we finally found something. The Holiday Inn is very nice, and the air conditioning is extremely cold. About six penguins on the Suzanne scale of coldness. The plus side of this is that we got to see a lot of Torino.
Speaking of penguins, has anyone been able to find the Kinder Pingu chocolates yet? We had then in Slovenia, but haven't seen them since. I might have to try and get Kinder to sponsor me on this trip. I wonder how I can I stack fifty boxes of chocolates on the bike?
We have a very easy day planned for tomorrow. About a three hour ride to Montreux. I wonder if I'll get the tune from Smoke on the Water out of my head soon?
Where's Rex's Buff?
1/8/12
We finally made an early getaway today. It's time for us to cover some serious Ks, get back to the UK, arrange some stuff, and plan the next stage of our trip. It's Autobahn time.
We hit the Autobahn and after a bit of settling in found our happy cruising speed was around 150 kph. It sounds fast but I'll tell you right now, we were getting passed about once a minute. I'm not talking about exotic sports cars either, just your average street cars. These guys don't hang around. Mid morning we were passed by a guy on a GSXR 1000 and it scared the hell out of me. I constantly check my mirrors, but I didn't see him coming. Then bang. He was there. Then he was gone. He was going for it and I bet he's still laughing about the old guy on the BM who jumped out of his seat as he was passed.
I've mentioned before about changing names of places and people from the native language of the country they are in, into something some mono lingual, English speaking person thinks is a good name. What a bloody stupid idea. If Roma's name is Roma, surely we should call in Roma, not Rome. Why change it? Roma isn't too bad, but Torino, as the Italians call it created some problems for us. We searched accommodation websites for accommodation with very little luck, the sat nav didn't want to know anything about it, and most places we looked didn't seem to even register Torino. It wasn't until we were in a hotel checking in that I realised we were in Turin. I ask again, why change the name.
Anyway, on with the story...
We got to Torino with with just over 500 km under our wheels. We were on the road for about six hours and had a couple of long breaks along the way. It was a pretty easy day, until...we couldn't find anywhere to stay. I don't mean everything was full. I mean we could not find a single hotel building anywhere. We punched hotels into the sat nav and it took us to:
1st hotel - Was called Six Love, a "Themed Rooms" rent by the hour hotel. I was happy to stay but Suzanne didn't seem keen.
2nd hotel - There was no hotel at the location.
3rd hotel - There was no hotel at the location.
4th hotel - Full but told us to go to this hotel and they have a room for you.
5th hotel - When we got there it was "I'm sorry we don't have a room, but check in here and give us your passports (which is normal here. Hotels hold your passport to ensure you pay your bill) and it's a five minute walk to the hotel room you can have". Sight unseen, no way bucko! We were so stuffed we couldn't walk for minutes carrying all our stuff anyway.
6th hotel - Holiday Inn - Bingo
We have gone from one extreme to the other. In Croatia just about every single building has a room for rent, yet here we couldn't find a thing. It took three hours of riding around in the heat before we finally found something. The Holiday Inn is very nice, and the air conditioning is extremely cold. About six penguins on the Suzanne scale of coldness. The plus side of this is that we got to see a lot of Torino.
Speaking of penguins, has anyone been able to find the Kinder Pingu chocolates yet? We had then in Slovenia, but haven't seen them since. I might have to try and get Kinder to sponsor me on this trip. I wonder how I can I stack fifty boxes of chocolates on the bike?
We have a very easy day planned for tomorrow. About a three hour ride to Montreux. I wonder if I'll get the tune from Smoke on the Water out of my head soon?
Where's Rex's Buff?
Meet the lovely Julie from Calais.
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