Day 5. Planes, trains and a French car.

When you plan a trip you know there are going to be some days that are more complicated than others. Today began happily as we boarded the 0732 train from Zurich, bound for Milan. At an early bird price of about $30 AUD each, this four hour train trip through the Swiss Alps, reminded us of why we have always loved to travel through Europe by train.

At 1130 we arrived at Milan Centrale and took some time to find the local train to the airport. It was about an hours ride to Milan’s Malpensa Airport and we were quickly reminded of the fact that Italian trains are not necessarily the best trains in Europe.

You may be wondering why we caught two trains to an airport when our plan was to pick up a car. Good question.

We had decided to hire a car for this trip so that we could access a number of interesting places that are inaccessible by train. Car hire is usually expensive, however a friend (thanks Stuart) had told us of a wonderful deal that French carmakers extend to foreigners. Essentially, we are leasing a brand new Citroen C4 for about $57 AUD a day.

Unfortunately for us they don’t allow you to pick up the cars from Switzerland, so we had arranged to pick it up from Milan. However, to avoid the city traffic we had arranged to pick up the car from Milan airport (this made sense to Richard last October when he was planning this trip but seemed a bit crazy today as we were going through each stage of the plan).

Of course, with budget deals there are sometimes complications. Our instructions were to meet the rep from Citroen at the airport on level 6 near the departure gates. After a lot of confusion and a little panic we finally found a bloke at exit 6 near the arrival gates. He drove us in his beaten up old van to a parking lot about 10 kms away, where we were finally introduced to our little French car.

Then the trouble really began. After the necessary paperwork the guy showed us how to work the all-important GPS. An hour later at 1500, with it almost working, we found ourselves in a left-hand drive manual car, traveling down a five lane freeway surrounded by huge trucks all traveling at or above the 130 km/hour speed limit. Our plan was to travel 250 kms across northern Italy to find an obscure hotel next to a lake and get there before dark.

A lot more will probably be said about Italian roads, French cars, an Aussie driver and his long-suffering and mostly patient co-pilot.  There are always challenges when traveling independently, but the room with the lake view at Hotel Lago di Garda in Nago-Trebole was well worth the effort.