BACK TO FRANCE IN MADNESS

Let me start by saying we have a very beloved TomTom, the result of my best friend having to spend 3 hours in a car with us driving her to Gatwick...let's just say I think most couples suffer with map-reading and following directions. So thanks again Mackenzie, for your most generous lovely gift. Continuing on, we thought we'd head to Milan from Como, then over to Turin and on into France...you know, avoid the traffic along the Italian Riviera and the borderlands of Ventimiglia and whatnot. So Tommy tells us it's going to take about 5 hours, only an hour longer than the motorway route. We hit Milan, have the most outrageously expensive orange juice and coffee on the piazza...I think it was 12 Euros for a mini glass of OJ, makes me sick just thinking about it. Then we went quickly to Turin, slowly climbing up, and up, going through tunnels...no biggie. Then we hit a small pass and a fair bit of traffic at Briancon in France, which is a really pretty medieval town that's a ski resort in the wintertime. It was about 5 by then, so we'd already driven 5 hours and Tommy was saying it'd be just about 2 and a half more. So we cruised and cruised through some lovely valleys along Napolean's Route...the landscape had an isolated beauty about it. It was getting dark, our gas tank was nearly in the red and we hadn't seen a petrol station in about 15 miles. The road had become suddenly unmarked and we saw a little log cabin with a sign that said Haute 2000 next to it. We stopped to find the most delicious smelling joints of meat being roasted in this tiny family restaurant. The waitress told us we were already at 2000 metres, going over the highest mountain pass in all of Europe! We asked her how far away the first petrol station on the other side would be and she said about 15-20K. We went back to car, emptied the emergency canister into the tank and set off. IT WAS CRAZY. No lights, no road markings or signs and hairpin turns every few hundreds metres! I was talking Kris through the turns using the sat nav! 'Sharp right coming up...then a wide left.' Madness! I actually screamed once because we nearly went off a cliff. Anyway, I'm typing this now, so we did survive. But I definitely want a T-shirt emblazoned with 'I survived the D64 in the dark!'