Tuesday, June 12th (San Remo, Italy)

We left Geneva relatively early on Tuesday (it was still dark and drizzly) and drove to SanRemo, Italy. This was one of the most beautiful (but crazy drives) we have had yet. We went through the longest tunnel ever (over 8 miles) - we thought we were going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning! We also saw a glacier (Jim's 1st one) and some beautiful scenes of the alps and waterfalls. This is the land of tunnels and bad drivers. The Italians are clearly the worst drivers in all of Europe and Carla’s challenges driving to our hotel in downtown will ensure that Carla will drive the highways from now on and I will handle all city driving (I never knew that Carla could curse in Italian, but she was rather effective). We checked into our sketchiest hotel so far (which isn’t saying much since we had been staying at Radisson/ Westin/ Marriott/ Sheraton chains for a while now. After checking in and being handed a key and lead keychain that weighed over 5 lbs we went for a walk along the waterfront and through downtown (me with a discernible pimp-lean). The Italian Riviera was more of a giant fishing village than a beachy paradise though. One street off of the water however was an avenue packed with tourists and locals shopping away and a few nice restaurants to boot. We hit the marina where we stalked a restaurant who’s menu we liked (it didn’t open until 7pm and we walked by it three times between 5-7. At 6, we decided to grab a drink at a restaurant nearby (I had a port wine aperitif which drew confused stares from the waitress and Carla since that’s usually a digestif for after-dinner. Eh who knew?)

After dinner we walked back and after a quick call from CIGNA where I confirmed that I still had a job on my return, we went to bed, only to be awakened around 1am by the front desk who asked me to move my car in the garage. This didn’t make sense to me since we parked in the rear corner in nobody’s way, but he spoke terrible English and I was worried someone had hit us so I went downstairs. Turns out some people were parked in by an unknown guest and they were calling all of the rooms one by one to figure out who’s car was downstairs. Needless to say there were a pile of unhappy people downstairs when I got there, but our car was fine so I went back upstairs and left the Italians to argue amongst themselves (very loudly).