What now?

Sat 31^st May – Sun 1^st June

Our last days in May were spent at Lake Garda doing mostly van cleaning and figuring out where the heck to travel to next. Our original plan was to avoid the Alps until the end of the trip, in case it killed the van and also because it landed nicely next to Oktoberfest in Munich. But the more we travelled, the more places we added to our list of must-sees and suddenly making it back to Munich by September 19^th to meet Michele and Kate for Oktoberfest meant cutting several countries from the Eastern Europe tour.

Michele, Kate & Brenda on the Amalfi coast of Italy, 2006

Around this time, Kate decided to move to Australia and Michele agreed with me that a girls' weekend in New York to spend our saved money on shopping instead of beer at Oktoberfest was an excellent idea. I'm crushed that I wont see Kate or Michele at the end of this trip -- something I was picturing as the culmination of the van experience in a drunken celebration with dear friends I'd been missing since they left London. (See video clip below from Oktoberfest 2007 with Michele, my sister Teresa and her husband Woody. Don't worry guys - it's nothing incriminating!)

Overlooking a beer tent at Oktoberfest 2007

Thank goodness it's true that when one door closes, another opens. No more Oktoberfest = no friends this summer but it also equals no deadline. So I pulled out the large planning map of Europe I had secretly packed against Bevan's wishes to “wing it”, and I started my project plan.

While creating what was my funnest project plan ever, I soon realised we'd be nowhere near the Alps again until late September. We'd survived the snow once before on this trip but snow, ice, and 24% gradients in the Alps can only equal disaster.

A June detour into the Alps was the only answer ... Austria here we come.

BTW, we have 2 hotel rooms reserved in Munich for Oktoberfest that I haven't cancelled yet so get in touch if you're interested in taking one or both of them, otherwise I'll cancel them in July. I've also got the secret project plan of where we'll be and when (shhhhh – don't tell Bevan!) so drop us an email if you can't think of where to spend your summer holiday and want to meet us in route!