We made our way out of Germany relatively early, and planned our route through Leichenstein...the 5th country of the Alps. It's such a teeny tiny little sliver of land, it's kind of amazing that it stands alone in Europe. We listened to Warm Foothills by Alt-J and drove through a beautiful little valley of farmland surrounded by towering peaks, through the checkpoint, and into Switzerland.
I'm just in awe at the fact that a country can be made up entirely of mountains...it really doesn't get much better if you ask me. We quickly found ourselves on the Grand Tour Route...which I didn't even know was a thing, but is now on my "list". We were winding through a towering canyon along the Hinterrhein river and saw some restrooms off to the left, so we parked and took a little break. It turned out to be the Viamala Gorge, and after paying about $5 bucks, we found ourselves climbing down for a closer look.
From there, we continued through Switzerland with the intention of stopping in Lake Como for bit, but found it to be super crowded and crazy, and frankly couldn't wait to get out of there. We found another mountain pass on Google Maps and pointed towards France.
The pass was absolutely incredible, through various ski towns and fort ruins, and eventually into a little town called Briançon. Little did we know that it's the highest city in the EU and dates back to the 1st century BC as part of the Roman Empire. The history in Europe is just insane...I can't even begin to wrap my head around it. We parked and walked up to a massive fort that housed an entire city of crazy old, adorable houses and restaurants, shops, and motels. I felt like I was on a movie set as we walked the streets. Being off-season, it was relatively quiet aside from someone playing piano from their apartment and a man singing opera (I'm not kidding...it was the most charming thing I've ever seen). I pictured a husky older man shaving in his little bathroom mirror and singing to himself to start the day, and we really wondered if we were in a dream or something.
After a couple of hours, we decided to grab lunch from a cute little French restaurant (Les Ecrins) and ended up having the fanciest meal ever for $40. I'm not one for fancy French food or snazzy restaurants, but it was amazing and we sat outside looking out over the fort and the Alps and just enjoyed every second of it.
We continued south into Provence where the terrain totally changed into sweeping vineyards, olive groves, and my favorite: poppies as far as the eye can see. I'd hoped to see lavender, and found that they weren't quite ready yet, but the poppies more than made up for it. We pulled over a half a dozen times at various wildflower fields so that I could frolic, and then I was trying to look up something on our GPS and missed a massive field of poppies, but Brian stopped anyway to make sure I didn't miss them <3 It was absolutely heavenly. We followed narrow winding roads through the hills and snuck into an abandoned chapel. I'm pretty sure that we also witnessed some sort of drug/money/hostage drop off/pick up situation, but we'll forget that we saw anything ;)
The following day, we made it to the Mediterranean. I wasn't expecting it to be as beautiful as it was, and the hills and little villages around made it even more beautiful.
We managed to find a little RV park right on the water for $17...and thank goodness because we hadn't taken a hot shower in about a week at that point. We spent the day on the water and then made our way to the 8th country, Monaco (where they were setting up for the Grand Prix), and then Italy where I basked on the rocks and Brian explored Bordighera for a bit before meeting up for a late lunch and afternoon siesta and hitting the road once again.
We landed in Brussels early and took a train from the airport into the city center where we spent the day exploring. It was a busy religious holiday, unusually warm, and we had our packs with us, so we made our way (5 miles) to our motel and got cleaned up before walking back into town for dinner that evening.
Our flight out was a real doozy...I ended up having a panic attack and getting sick...to the point that a flight attendant had to assist me. Our flight back to Washington DC was the longest flight I've ever been on, and about 2 hours in, I was throwing up. It continued during our layover and finally started to let up in Denver...but I've been feeling pretty crappy all week. I think I'm just crashing after 2 weeks of euphoria. I'm not sure if it's jet lag or if I'm actually sick, but it's no bueno...definitely makes me think that I really never want to fly ever again, but we all know that's not going to happen...especially since I already have 3 more trips lined up for the summer :)