We began to hit our stride in 2019, though due to a lot of stuff coming up in the summer we did not make our usual North American trip, so we only had one short trip in North America this year. In total we spent 124 days on the road, and visited 7 countries if you count our accidental incursion into Austria one day while traveling thru Germany.
We spent extensive time in Germany, Belgium and Italy. While we had a great time everywhere, Italy really captured our hearts. The cities were interesting, the people were kind and helpful, and the food was fantastic. It is interesting because we initially approached Italy with a little trepidation as several of the people we talked to had bad experiences there. We were a little extra cautious about where we stayed at night, and I will confess to using the Autostradas for most of our travel so we missed the back road experience. The secondary roads in Italy are challenging so neither one of us felt very guilty about our decision. Since we gravitated more to campgrounds than in the past Ton declared that she thought campgrounds were worth the extra cost to have unlimited electricity and use of the showers.
Because we traveled differently our cost per day was higher in Italy than anywhere else we have been in Europe. We paid to camp every night in Italy, and while the costs were not excessive it did add up. Also, while the autostradas are not as expensive as the autoroutes in France, using them frequently did add to the costs. Having said that Italy was worth every extra cent.
Once again we had no trouble with either François or Scout. For the first time we did have some routine service done on François and the costs were higher than we would expect to pay for the equivalent work here, but not excessively so.
Another good year, we can only hope to continue with our positive adventures in North America and Europe.