Day 7 January 20, 2009

Date: January 1st, 2009

The Plan: Drive to Florence, See Florence, Drive to Pisa, See Pisa, Drive to Geneva.

Our original plan was to wake up at 6.00 AM and be on the road by 7.00 AM.  Since we did not go to bed till 2.30 AM the previous night and as we had a long drive ahead we decided to get some rest.  So we out of Rome by 10.00 AM (little later that we would have liked, but we were well rested).  Rome was the southern most point in our trip and we knew it was gonna get chillier.  So enjoyed the warm 13C while it lasted.

Temperature in Rome

The drive to Florence was pretty and we started seeing the clouds, and we knew it was going to rain, and not just rain like here in San Francisco, but pour like back in India.

Drive to Florence, was cloudy

And as we had guessed, it rained heavily.  We drove in the rain, then after a while we stopped for gas and Cappuccino it stopped raining.

Drive to Florence, was rainy

We got to Florence and we were way behind schedule so we decided to just drive around Florence and have a quick look around.

Florence City - I

Florence City - II

After Florence our next stop was Pisa, this drive was not on the Autostrada.  So the roads were not as great as the ones we were used to in rest of Italy.  We got to Pisa, saw the leaning tower of Pisa.

Leaning Tower of Pisa - I

Leaning Tower of Pisa - II

After walking around the leaning tower we decided to get something for lunch.  We went to the city center found a cafe, got 2 sandwiches and Cappuccino.  We got some extra pastries to go and walked around the Pisa city center.

Pisa City

I wish we had more time to spend in both Pisa and Florence, but we didn’t as we had to get to Geneva and it was starting to get dark.  The rest of the drive was uneventful.  We drove through Genoa , it pitch black by then and did not get to see anything.  In the dark, Genoa looked very pretty.  The drive by Genoa was by the ocean, we were bummed that it had gotten dark and we couldn’t see anything.

Driving to Geneva, we had to drive over the Swiss alps.  Most of the rides were under the mountains through tunnels.

We crossed Mount Blanc Tunnel, its 11.6 KM long and we felt like it went for ever.

Mount Blanc Tunnel

The tunnel ended in France, where it was snowing.  The snow plough was ahead of us cleaning the snow and putting salt.  As we exit the tunnel we saw this sculpture on the right.

Sculpture in France at the tunnel's exit

During the day the sculpture would look like this.

We were spending the night at Archamps, and the drive to Archamps from the tunnel exit was around 30 minutes.  That drive was the hardest one of the whole trip.  We got to the hotel around 11.00 PM, we were so relived to be done with this drive.

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