The camper story goes on

Coffee break in the Italian alps. First sun of the trip.

Ooohhhh! Back from 14 days with Hymer Exsis, where it really showed flying colors. Downpour in Germany and France, off-road like main roads in Italy and mountains up and down in Greece as well as manoeuvering in tightly packed sreets in Athens. No problem whatsoever, apart from a tyre puncture.
We used the German motorways to coast along at a sweet pace of around 120 km/hour. Easy. Then we enetered north-eastern France and drove along the winding roads of the Alsace Wine Route. Winery after winery and several wine tasting feasts were highlights of our 2 days there.
Parking overnight at the StPeters church (oldest in France) created a wake up shock when the church bells started chiming at 7 am. We did not know that it was bank holiday Monday!

Photo from the Italian motorway, off Verona

After Alsace and with a considerably heavier Hymer we crossed Switzerland into north eastern Italy. We drove to the Miasto meditation centre outside Sienna, where at least the undersigned meditated and hopefully became a snippet more enlightened. We visited Sienna itself with its magnificent central square, had an absolutely delicious lunch at an unobtrusive trattoria off the square and managed to get lost a few times whern navigating to Firenze to visit famous parks.

This is from the Medici gardens at Firenze

We then steered through Tuscany and its amazingly bumpy main roads and impressive "Castellos" overlooking small villages atop sweet hills, to Ancona where we grabbed the boat to Patras in Greece. An uneventful trip that led us to two days in Aigion, on the Pelopponese between Patras and the Corinth canal. The beauty of the place was, to say the least, astounding.
Aigion is next to the sea but still only 30 minutes to 2000 mtr mountain tops.
We visited the World Heritage Pantokrator monastery with attached duck pond, birds in a cage and a tap in the rock with holy water. We also bought rose petal marmalade and capris leaves in brine.
Of course, we also donned bags of local wine and 10 kilos of home pressed oil at Petros house close to the monastery. To be continued, it is past midnight.

Lemons from outside the apartment door at Greek Aigion.

Everywhere a symphony of colors. This is Aigion in Greece.

The monastery of Pantokrator close to Aigion.