Cars, Opera & Culture: MoneyPenny goes to Northern Italy

This year's continental touring adventure in MoneyPenny focusses on Northern Italy. We're balancing a pilgrimage to classic car 'must-sees' with some art and culture, good food and sunshine. It's been a year since our Andalusian Adventure and there were some residual mechanical problems with MoneyPenny that needed attention before we set off. So, whilst Mr F was attending to those, I spent a couple of days with a friend, walking in the English countryside and reading novels. Bliss!

Meanwhile, at the cars, Mr F spent two painful days fixing a fuel leak problem in MoneyPenny. After taking out the fuel tank and replacing various filters and pumps he lost one of the clips (had to borrow from PG) and took five hours to get the fuel pump back in. On the morning of the day we were due to leave for France, the car was still in pieces. This is classic Mr F behaviour...what can I say? To his credit, everything went back together in time for him to meet me at Folkestone West train station that afternoon. Oh, and by the way, F was left unsupervised recently and bought a DB2 who we have christened as 'M'. We have a dream to perhaps enter the Mille Miglia in her one day, so will be exploring more on that subject during this trip. I'll also post on the 'Cars' section of this site with more about 'M' in the near future.

We took two days to drive to Lake Como, having caught a late afternoon Shuttle from Folkestone to Calais. If you are looking for a good stop-over we would highly recommend Saint Omer. It's only about half an hour east of Calais and is a quiet town with a beautiful cathedral. We stayed at 'Clos du Bailli' which was a comfortable and characterful hotel across from the cathedral for just 100 Euros. There was plenty of free parking in the street nearby and lots of options for eating out in the town centre.

Day 2 started with kerbside repairs to my seatbelt which wasn't fastening properly the day before. F went onto YouTube and discovered that he didn't have the part needed to fix this. I'm surprised because half of our boot is filled with car spares and tools - but I have learned that you always need the tool that you don't have. Luckily, F had grabbed a spare seatbelt and even more lucky was that it was the right hand one that we needed! Hey presto and we were on our way to Besancon near the Swiss border.

Besancon was quiet but has an interesting history, particularly due to its occupation by the Germans in WW2. There's a citadel and lovely cathedral above the town containing museums and providing great views if you can brave the climb. We stayed at the Mercure Parc Micaud across the river which was close to the town centre and provided a reasonable night's sleep for around 100 Euros. There was onsite parking for 10 Euros per night.

The following day we drove across the Swiss alps to Varenna on Lake Como - our first destination in Italy. The route we took from Besancon skirted past Lausanne then down to the Grand Saint Bernard tunnel into Italy. The scenery on this route is beautiful, but we encountered two long delays just before the tunnel due to bridge and road works. MoneyPenny tends to overheat a bit at altitude and a climb so it was lucky that the outside temperature was reasonable (not like in Spain). The roads around Milan are a driving and navigation challenge and the winding road into Varenna triggered F's experience of driving on the Amalfi coast. We arrived eventually at the stunning beauty of Lake Como, to begin our Northern Italian journey. There'll be more the come in the posts that follow as we move on to Brescia, Verona, Venice, Modena and Portofino.