The drive took us though the French Italian boarder near the coast. We opted to take a toll road at this point due to the high volumes of August traffic along the coastline. Our German T3 friends had just come through this bit of coastline (without using the toll) it took them hours just to travel a few miles.
On French side the road took us past Cannes, Nice, Monte-Carlo and gave us some great views of these places. Nice was somewhere we thought we would like to explore further, being a city however, not appealing in the van. On a road trip, traffic is obviously your arch-nemesis…
We drove though the Alps and once in Italy we went over (or directly through) mountain to mountain. The tunnels and bridges on the A10 motorway were extremely impressive saving Bluestar miles of hairpin turns and low gears. Near Genoa we took the A12 heading towards Tuscany and spent our first night in the glamorous location of a service station car park on the way.