Quist World Tour

This morning we didn’t have to make the decision—will we have cereal in our room again or venture out for an expensive but tasty breakfast? Which was good, considering that some sort of party was going on in the room across the hall, which involved numerous groups of people coming and going, knocking on the door and waiting in the hallway, laughing and running around until 4 AM. The kids slept through it, Brian would wake up, hear a bit of it, and fall asleep, while I lay there with a pillow over my head, trying to control my rage. At one point, I did pop my red-eyed, frizzy haired blonde self out the door and, lacking any French, said “Shhhhhh” very forcefully. The 4 people in the hallway giggled and got a bit quieter, but then they went into the room across the hall and more people took their place. Let’s just say that, upon waking, I was not in my finest mood. No matter. Rita was serving breakfast. Back we went for more Selles hospitality: Chocolate muesli and croissants made every...

The rain poured down overnight, and the skies were clearing as we rolled out of bed. Today we leave Italy behind for France . After getting our gear packed in the car, we drove to the road along the beach that would take us northward. I got a chill when Brian said, distressed, “Oh no, we just missed it.” I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about at first, then I realized that we had come to a one way tunnel. We had hit one yesterday, and the sign then told us that the light would turn green every 10 minutes. This tunnel’s light would be green at 5 minutes after, 25 minutes after and 45 minutes after the hour. We got there at 9:47. So we parked our car for the next 18 minutes at the red light, and I took a little walk to see the beach in daylight. Such a lovely summer town—I would love to see it in full swing. The drive took us from our beach town up through Genoa , Turin and on to Grenoble , France . We think we spent as much time going through tunnels as out in the open! We s...