For the shoppers at heart.

On Monday we reached a tourist destination for the shoppers at heart (name no names) the Allessi factory shop. Allessi, for the uninitiated, is a Italian brand primarily associated with kitchen stuff, but they also make other just plain cool stuff.

We came here after being inspired by the van Peel’s coffee cups (see the Antwerp entry). They happened to be out of the coffee cups, but it was really fun just to wonder around and marvel at the wondrous designs. We did make a few purchases (won’t give any details) at a ‘bargain’ price!

From the Allessi we moved to onto Orto (again at Guy’s recommendation). Largo d’Orta is the smallest (I think) lake in the area, very quiet and very pretty. We parked at a fantastic site, literally on the shores of the lake and walked into the village San Guillo Orta. An absolutely beautiful village that is almost traffic free. We got as far as the main plazzo and then found a café and had chardonnay’s and ice creams. The walk through the village was brilliant, little bridges over the road connected the houses on their second levels, frescos painted on the walls and a small island out in the lake with a 15th century basilica.

In the morning it was hard to leave this place, the only push was that it had clouded over, but the view in the morning across the lake was still magical. It has been a great few days around the lakes, lovely villages, wonderful views and good ice cream!

We have now just finished a big drive down to the Mediterranean coast, our target had been Portofino… but… well there are some things you just can not do in a campervan and one of them is go to Portfonio. After getting completely stuck in Santa Marghireta we asked the tourist information office where we could park in Portofino, and the answer, a town about 15 kilometres away!

So we said bye to that idea and, and asked Fiona how to get to the next campsite we had spied in our book further south to explore Cinqueterra from. Fiona excelled herself this time, instead of going down the autostrada she led us through a series of tunnels under the cliff along the coast. A great drive, although very nerve racking as the road was labelled 3m high and 1.8m wide and given that the campervan is 3m high and 2.3m wide it seemed like a BAD idea. There was a small local bus in front of us, so I figured that if he could do it so could we. We made it and are now nestled up in the hills a couple of k’s from the coast. Tomorrow we explore Cinqueterra.