There is a certain amount of cheating in this post because I did not drive straight from France into Italy... I went to Switzerland first and even Germany. But since I consider Switzerland a second home after having lived there for two and a half years, was just visiting friends and did not take a single picture, I decided to skip blogging about the country. Germany is a different story since I just crossed the border and stayed for a couple of hours to buy cheap organic tofu. I swear!
How to enter Italy from Switzerland was not totally obvious because the weather was still quite bad at this time of the year and the mountain passes across the Alps were closed. The only option was taking the Gotthard tunnel, a two-lane 17km hole through the rock connecting the German speaking Uri canton with the Italian speaking Ticino, which is the gateway into northern Italy. So far so good... but crossing the tunnel requires having paid the Swiss vignette and I had not done that. Border guards try to make people think that vignettes are necessary for all Swiss roads but that is not the case: you just need to purchase them when driving on highways. Sadly, the Gotthard tunnel is also included in the Swiss toll road network and I had to sneak in after having avoided all other previous highway sections in the country. More cheating!

Enough with cheating... now I would like to share with you how it feels to drive your motorcycle under heavy rain for the whole day: damn wet. No matter how good your clothing is, you will definitely get wet. This is what happened between the Alps and Genova, it was pouring cats and dogs and I ended up catching a toll highway to make it safer and faster. Which was a good idea because the only incident I had was dropping my motorbike on a U-turn when I had almost reached the hostel. The road was full of mud dripping from the wall and it was as slippery as an ice rink... I am lucky my bike is tougher than a rock. Just a couple of scratches in the engine protection bars and side cases, then got some help to lift the bike quickly and finished my driving day.

The next day felt much brighter. The sun was shining and I could see most of the city from the dorm windows. The hostel was almost empty and I had an eight-bed dorm entirely to myself, which was good to let all my gear dry up in the morning sun. This is how the port looked like from those windows.

I walked around town for a few hours, focusing mostly on the port and the old town. This is the city where Christopher Columbus was born and it obviously has a very strong maritime vocation, which is still present today. The old town is made up of many small alleys and the majority of the residents are from African origin, which makes you feel you are in the 'medina' of some Muslim city elsewhere.

Genova is a city by the sea and on the hills, with steep slopes going up and down everywhere. The hostel was high on one of the hills surrounding the city and it took almost half an hour to walk there from sea level, taking cobbled passages that were used by locals as parking space for their scooters. Don't ask me how they drive some of those scooters past rock steps, 40 degree slopes and slippery sections covered with moss. I guess that is one of the best-kept Italian secrets.

My next stop was supposed to be Naples but, after a very long drive and a couple of hours trying to find a hostel bed there (with horrible traffic and miserable street conditions for my two-wheel tank), I gave up. I drove two more hours to Agerola, a small town in the middle of the 'milky mountains' (monti lattari) in Italy, where I was literally alone in the hostel. I am still wondering why all hostels in Italy where either full or totally empty... for two rainy days, I just spoke with the owner and one nice Irish guy who lived in town and used the hostel's internet connection regularly.

But I have to admit one thing: mozzarella is one of my favorite cheeses, if not my favorite, and they make the best mozzarella ever in that area. Although for locals (and please correct me, dear Italian readers), the cheese made from cow milk is called 'fior di latte' and the term 'mozzarella' is reserved for the one made from water buffalo milk. Hence the term 'mozzarella di bufala campana' since the region around Naples is called Campania. In any case, for two consecutive evenings my dinners centered around the cheese I bought from the local shop. Simply delicious.

Finally, I had to move on and drive to Brindisi, where I would catch a ferry to Greece. I drove part of the spectacular road that stretches from Sorrento to Salerno along the coast, via Amalfi. It is popularly known as the 'via amalfitana' and it was a pleasure to enjoy with good sunny weather.

This drive was probably the best since I left Spain, not only the Amalfi road but also the rest of the way to the Adriatic sea. I have to admit that I was fed up with having had two weeks of bad weather since I went north from Madrid... in any case, I was going to catch the ferry into Greece soon and going further south should mean better weather. Right?

Stay tuned if you want to exchange lasagna for moussaka, grappa for ouzo and the Roman alphabet for the real alphabet. At least the Greeks should be able to speak English...