Nasal Tourism

So what do I mean by that. Well, isn't the sense of smell a funny one, or mine is certainly. I can still vividly remember the perfume that my fourth year junior school teacher wore 23 years ago (Oh now that is a scary thought!). In fact if I smell the perfume again now I am taken back immediately to those days. With that in mind I have been loving Italy. The smells, some good some bad are just so exciting. We stayed in a "traditional" Italian campsite that had a certain something about it, and as we got out the van there was the most beautiful fragrance of freshias. It took me straight back to a wonderful holiday we shared with Mark's parents in Italy some years ago where although the flower was different, it was the same sweet and "hot" smell. The campsite turned out to be quaint but functional. I thought is was probably the worst we would stay on until last night. We had a long day driving and we were slightly bermused when the campsite that we had aimed for did not open until May 1st and this was the 30th April. So we drove on and on until on our fifth attempt to find somewhere to stay we picked a field in somebody's front garden. It was the campsite eqivalent of Faulty Towers. There were comings and goings and much loud discussion (arguement) about the quality of the cement being mixed for a job on site. And then there were the facilties! - two showers of dubious quality and no hot water and a toilet that did not really meet my English standards. "Oh well" we thought and made the best of it. Well, this morning as I walked around the building in the other direction I discovered the rest of the facilities 3 sinks for washing up, 2 basins and 2 more convention toilets. It just proves I should use my eyes more.
We have seen some beautiful sights over the last few weeks, some highlights so far include snow topped mountains peaking out of the clouds, bright yellow rape fields, terracotta houses in the Mediterranean and blue, blue skies. Talking of blue skies, where did they go today, we saw our first real rain in 19 days. That brought with that lovely just rained smell.

One last thought, we were receivers of two lovely acts of human kindness today. Whilst in Geneva this morning we were looking at a parking meter with some dismay and a very kind man stopped his car and gave us full instructions in how to use it in English. Secondly, this evening we have stopped at a lovely small French campsite for which we are paying 11 Euros. We saw it had a washing machine and decided it would be a great time to catch up on washing so we asked at reception about using the machine and paid for a wash and a turn on the drier. As, I staggered down the path with two full bags of the washing the lady met me and helped me to load up two washing machines, one being her own personal machine. During the course of the evening she has then been taking it all out and putting it in the drier and removing the dry stuff and folding it for us. All of this without a single word of English spoken, much bad French on our account and much smiling, what a lovely lady! (We have been trying to do it ourselves but every time we turned our backs she is there)