Ahhh...France we've missed you and your wine!

Day 202-206

From the island of Sardinia, we took a ferry out of Porte Torres to the French port town of Marseille. We've taken a few ferry rides on this trip and this one turned out to be not just the cheapest but the best (albeit nauseating for a period of time as we bounced up and down in a large swell).

Having a private cabin and not having to sleep with truck drivers between the 'airline' seats on deck was a god send and we even got our own power point, so didn't have to fight with other passengers to charge phones/laptops etc.

From Marseille we quickly headed south with a plan to cover a few quaint French towns before we entered Spain for Christmas. 

Although not in France for a particularly long time (again), it was very refreshing to arrive into a country that welcomes wild campers with open arms. It was also great to be surrounded by the French who are so conservative and well mannered and don't bother us at all, unlike those pesky Italians.

The Arles Roman Amphitheatre dating from 90 AD and still showcasing events to this day, including bull fighting.

The colourful backstreets of Arles.

The 'North Pinus' in Arles. Interesting name for a hotel.

Marseillan Oyster Farms on the coast of southern France.

It turns out the French also have a long lunch break and we found ourselves walking the empty streets of Pezenas after we had finished ours. Bloody rude.

The town of Roquebrun and it's surrounding wineries. We managed to pick up a bottle of the local drop that afternoon and for $3 Euro's was very impressed.

The Roquebrun Bridge high above the River Orb.

Wandering through the quiet streets of Olargues.

On top of the Devils Bridge in Olargues.

The Devils Bridge in Olargues, which dates back to 1202 and is said to have gotten it's name as the local residents would do a deal with the Devil here. 

The town of Minerve, which was besieged in 1210 by four catapults. It took them six weeks to conquer the village as catapults in those days were known to take about 1-2 hours to load and fire.

Panoramic view of the valley around Minerve. The valley was once covered in water/ice and now holds many fossils.

View of the town of Minerve from the perspective of one of the catapults.

Some of the old wine barrels of the local wine region. Although many people associate French wine with the likes of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne etc it was amazing to see so many vineyards in the southern areas of France. Literally every inch of land in this area has a grape vine growing on it.

The Carcassonnes Fortress. 

If you had one castle to take a school group learning about castles to, this would probably be it. 

Gargoyles guarding the church inside the fortress. 

Getting into the Christmas Spirit in Carcassonne.

One of the 35 turrets at Carcassonne.

A monk hurrying off to do whatever monks do at the Lagrasse Abbey.

The town of Lagrasse in the Corbierres region of France. It turns out that this region is the largest producer of wine in France, so our observation on all those vines wasn't wrong at all.

One of the rare couple shots at this end of the trip.

Butcher in Lagrasse with half a sign. Maybe he specialises in half cuts. Dad joke......

Ville-De-Franche and it's fortified ramparts and castle nestled a little further up the hill.

French snack bar specialising in deli meats, bread and free rooms.

Look like Australia? Well it's not, it's off the route 168 and we managed to wild camp here after the road got very dark, windy and narrow.

Luke taking the first 'sober' call from any of his family in Australia. Thanks Dad!

Sardinia: It's Not Italy.

Day 193 - 201

After waiting an extra day in Sicily, we finally got on our ferry from Palermo and headed towards the centre of the Mediterranean to the island of Sardinia. 

By this stage we had spent 21 days in Italy and were a little over the pace of things on the mainland and Sicily so it was a very welcome surprise to find that Sardinia was completely different to the Italy we left behind and almost like stepping back in time. The following photos capture some the towns and sites we visited during our 9 days in Sardinia.

Before you scroll down to the photos though, we have compiled a list of the more 'interesting' things about Italy over the total of 42 days we spent there.

Top 9 Idiosyncrasies of Italy

1. Italian Driving Standards - after thousands of kilometres through western and eastern Europe we have managed to see some pretty poor driving, however, Italians cannot be beaten in this category. Here is a short list of some of their more common habits - 
• Phones - Italians love to talk and also love to talk while driving. It's actually more common to pass a driver with a phone attached to the side of his head than one without.
• Erratic Parking - i'm not sure why they bother with parking bays in Italy as nobody takes notice of them putting their cars in any available space, whether it is on the side walk or double parking with your hazard lights on, while you duck into the shops.
• Kids are Unrestrained - if you don't have a phone to distract you while you're driving then the next best thing is an unrestrained child. On many occasions we saw kids jumping up and down on the passenger seat while mum hurtled around a roundabout or a bunch of them having a play fight in the back seat.

Despite their erratic and dangerous driving, there is also no road rage whatsoever. Pull out on another car at an intersection, causing them to pull on the anchors and you would expect a barrage of abuse (in Australia at least), but the Italians just go about it like it's a part of the traffic rule book.

2.  The Half Day - we always thought it was the Spaniards that took the big siesta, but it turns out that the southern Italians also like an afternoon nap. Shops would close around 1:00pm and re-open around about 3:30pm. Why people need two and a half hours to eat lunch I don't know, but towns are literally locked down and diserted. It is a good window of opportunity for a free car park though.

3.  Frequenting in car parks - we may be biased in this department as we're often camped up in car parks, but Italians do seem to have a strange gravitation to these concrete spaces. It wasn't uncommon to be in a quite deserted car park and have a dozen or more cars pull up at strange hours. The inhabitants could stop from anywhere between 15mins to 2hrs and then never been seen again. On closer inspection around the car parks we did find a lot of used condoms, so that may have accounted for some of the visits.

4. The Great Wall of Pasta - we all know that this is a staple of the Italian diet, however, why you need so many different types of the stuff is beyond me. It was not uncommon to go into supermarket isles 25m long, stacked four high and on both sides with pasta. On the topic of food, the Italian's also don't seem to eat (or at least sell in supermarkets), much other food than Italian. If you're in the mood for some Asian cooking then you'll probably have to get it mail ordered as we couldn't even find soy sauce.

5. Not one Police Force but Three - maybe remnants of their once facist past, but the Italians have three police forces. Of these you have your local police (municipal police), who are given the shittest cars and sometimes no car at all as they fight crime on scooters. Then there is the 'Polizia', who appear in a light blue cars, are very well dressed and there's often five police in the one car. Finally you have the 'Carabiniere', who are paramilitary police who look like a SWAT team. Out of all these police forces though, we never really saw any of them doing anything other than pulling a few random cars over with their little red paddles. ** After writing this, we actually researched and found there are 7 Italian police forces and not just 3.

6. Apartments rather than Houses - it's probably Italian's love of living on top of one another, but in our travels around Italy it was quite uncommon to see a standard detached house. Rather the bulk of the  population lives in apartments stacked 15 floors high.

7. Ring Road is a Dirty Word - whether it's an economic choice by guiding traffic through towns or just that they couldn't be arsed building another road, the Italian's do not really partake in ring-roads. Instead you're guided through a labrinth of streets and often in an illogical pattern to get to the other side of town half an hour later.

8. Bullet holes in Street Signs - probably 87% of street signs in Italy have bullet holes in them. I don't know if this statistic is correct, but there are a lot of holy street signs.

9. Glued to TV's - whether it's football or the current soap, Italian's seem to be enchanted by the old boob tube. On one ferry we were amazed as about 100 Italians sat like Zombies for hours on end watching tele-shopping.

Where the Italians put their football pitches is often an engineering feat. We spotted this one on our first day in Sardinia driving up into the mountains.

Another day, another mountain pass. This one is in the Gennargentu National Park on the east coast of Sardinia.

Taking a hike just outside the town of Cala Gonone, we came across a cave by the name of Bue Marino, .

The hike out to Bue Marino wasn't the easiest of walks and we had to climb down ropes at some points.

From the east coast of Sardinia, we cut right across to the west coast and one of the best surfing spots in the Mediterranean - Capu Manu.

It turns out they have pink Flamingo's in Sardinia!

Still on the west coast we came across the very colourful town of Bosa. Many of the buildings are painted in bright blues, yellows, pinks, greens etc.

The town square of Bosa and a couple more of the colourful buildings.

In the town of Bosa with the castle in the background. Unfortunately the castle was closed at that time of year but we managed to get a look inside the grounds.

Rooftop garden overlooking the town of Bosa and the coast not too far away.

Although the Med's oceans are flat in most places, Sardinia is the best place for surfing. We pulled up to watch a couple of surfers on a cold December day.

About six guys braved the cold to get the last of this swell. By 5pm that day, the sea was as flat as a shit carters hat.

As mentioned above, street signs with bullet holes in them is a common sight in Italy.

The town of Alghero and one of the many buildings with Spanish/Catalan influence.

One of the old catapults used within Alghero.

Taking a stroll down the cities 16th century walls.

Algheros western walls.

With the weather beings so nice, we took the motorbike out and around the Porto Conte national park.  The original objective was to visit the Netuno caves, however, at $13 Euro's each (and considering we visited caves for free 2 days earlier), we gave this tourist trap a miss.

Sardinia is scattered with these types of ruins known as Nuraghe. The Nuraghe was a civilisation believed to exist somewhere between 1900 - 730 B.C.

Basilica di Saccargia - finished in 1116 and still going strong. Except for the slight lean to the right.

After about 200 days on the road and some pretty fine weather, we finally got our first real taste of winter. The hail didn't last long and we were treated to some snow covered mountains in the distance shortly after so it wasn't all that bad.

Rena Majori beach on the north coast of Sardinia. Despite the sunny weather, the sea was rough and it got pretty windy on the beach that night, so we had to move the van into the cover of the surrounding tea trees in the middle of the night.

An old shack perched on the Rena Majori beach.

Despite the beach appearing popular with tourists, it's good to see they can stop the destruction of old settlements like this in place of a car park.

Taking a long coastal walk from Rena Majori.

A sunny 12 degrees.

Football pitches are not the only places to get great locations and views.

Another brightly coloured Sardinian town. This one was Castelsardo and the castle itself dates back from 1102.

We discovered a few of these Bonzai plants scattered throughout Sardinian towns. It's nice to see that the locals are so trusting of their neighbours that they can have them out on public display without fear of some moron trashing it.

An Italian icon - the three wheeled Piaggio Ape.