The air is stiller,
Not clouded by klaxons,
Bella Italia!
Out of Monaco, we rode up and down along more of the rolling seaside road. It wasn't long thereafter that we hit the Italian border. That's another country down! We were excited to think that we are now done with Danmark, Deutschland, Belgium, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and France. All that's left are Italia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Greece, and Turkey! And, fortunately, none of those is as large as Spain.
So, Italia! The road suddenly became a lot more paved across the border. We speculated that all that Roman heritage stuff contributes to Italian people's having a pretty good idea of how to build a nice, smooth road. The sun was lowering, but not yet set when we found our stopping-spot for the night.
It's a town called Ventimiglia, and it's cute! It's just on the other side of a long tunnel. A river splits it in half, running into the sea. We stopped at a bar in the middle of town for a glass of wine to celebrate our completion of another country, and we realised that we hadn't looked at our phrase guide for Italian. At all. Oops. "Vino rosso" was enough to get us through that interaction, but we're hoping to pull that out tomorrow morning or something...
A campsite here wasn't hard to find. Looking to the beach, we actually saw several people who had set up for the night in plain sight. It might be easy in Italy to "stealth camp." :) We aren't even bothering with a tent, though; a sleeping bag in the sand should do.
After our dinner of zucchini and pasta, we are ready to settle down into our new country. It's going to be beautiful.