It’s been a hectic week. Starting last Saturday we headed home from Slovenia to our cottage in Tuscany. Two days later we headed north to Nice on the French Riviera to swap cars – and spend 5 days at Villefranche Sur Mer with Mike, Charmaine and James – then it was back home on Friday.
Daisy takes everything in her stride
Time for a cup of tea and a lie down I think.
One thing you notice driving on the highways in Slovenia is that they have great roads – on a par with the best in Europe in terms of width, smoothness, etc.
How does a country of 2 million people maintain such a great road network? We wondered this as we drove from Italy to Slovenia’s capital Lubiana recently without having to pay any tolls.
We discovered they do, in fact, have a toll system but one that differs from the usual take a ticket and pay system that operates in Italy and France. They run a Vignette system. You purchase a windscreen sticker which covers a period of time – 7 days up to 12 months. Get caught driving without a valid sticker on your windscreen and a fine follows.
Slovenian driving tip - have one of these
You would think with such a system the Slovenian authorities would publicise it widely for visitors – billboards, notices at hotels and the like. Well, not really. We found out once we’d arrived in Lubiana only because Gill and Andre who had preceded us, passed on the tip.
Apparently if you don’t find out and try to leave the country without a sticker on your windscreen the police at the border will impose a fine of between 300 and 800 Euro.
We know this is true because as we went through the border with our 7 day 15 Euro sticker a gaggle of Slovenian policemen complete with little paddles to flag cars down were scrutinising every car that went through.
On the car trip home from Slovenia we were driving south from Bologna towards Florence on the A1 – Italy’s main north/south motorway – when we passed a flashing sign warning of an accident ahead and after another kilometre we gradually slowed and slowed and then stopped.
Both southbound lanes were blocked by cars as far as we could see. Clearly there had been some form of accident ahead and the road was blocked.
When it became clear the delay was more than just a momentary stop all around us car engines were turned off and the drivers and passengers got out of their cars to have a smoke, stretch their legs, have somethnig to eat or drink, or just chat with other motorists about what may have happened ahead.
Now we were not used to this behaviour but quite clearly in Italy this is what you do when there is a delay. No one seemed to be getting anxious or stressed, everyone just smoked, stretched, ate, drank and chatted until the traffic eventually started moving again about 25 minutes later.
This movement was short lived and 300 metres further down the motorway we stopped again. Same drill – the cars emptied out and the impromentu social gathering reconvened. We did our bit to amuse the locals by taking photos of the traffic and having Jean and the girls pose by the car.
After another 15 minutes we were on the move again, this time for good.
La dolce far niente 