Euro Road Trip Recap: Day 1 - Driving Through the Countryside

After many weeks of planning and discussing, we set up what we thought would be the perfect road trip through Europe. First, take a picturesque drive through the Swiss Alps into Italy. Then drive down to the Mediterranean coast and zig zag along the French Riviera all the way to Barcelona. Lastly, cap it off with a tour through the southern wine country of France. It was the perfect getaway trip -- especially if you were 3 guys.

Waverly unfortunately could not come along on the trip since she had school (psshh), so it was just the guys -- Scott and Viphak, two buddies of mine from back home who were visiting.

On Sunday morning, we hopped in our Toyota hatchback with GPS device in hand and took off from St. Gallen. Within minutes of getting onto the highway, Scott decided to get all paparazzi on the Swiss scenery and began snapping dozens of photos of the snow-capped mountains, rolling green hills and lakes nestled in valleys along the way.



The highlight of the Swiss route had to be driving down a winding road along the mountain side with the car in neutral for 20 straight minutes.

We eventually crossed the border into Italy (a simple wave of the hand by the border patrol) and were immediately greeted with the dreaded toll roads. Nevertheless, we raced through northern Italy as quick as possible, dissing Milan on the way (hey, have something worth visiting besides a Cathedral and stores filled with overpriced designer clothing, and maybe we'll stop next time).

Driving through the coastal region of Italy seemed like forever, but man, what a view. We were on an elevated highway, driving through tunnel after tunnel, mountain after mountain, all the while passing over small towns (seemed small from up there anyway) that ran right up along the shores of the Mediterranean.



Upon crossing the border into France (another simple wave through) and 30 Euros worth of tolls later, we began to twist and turn along the mountain side to our first destination city: Menton, a place where some call "the Pearl of France" and the "most beautiful town on the French Riviera." We however simply referred to it as "that place where Viphak's relatives live" and "that city where we could get free food from their restaurant."

Menton actually reminded me a lot of the beach towns in Southern California; miles and miles of sandy beach, with small shops and boutiques that lined the main coastal road.

After a wonderful dinner at Viphak's cousin's restaurant, we drove to nearby Nice where we spent an uneventful night of going to some crappy tourist bar and getting lost driving back to our hostel. We finally hit the sack at around 1:00am for some much needed rest because the next day would prove to be an adventurous one -- well for Viphak anyway...