Our plans to leave at 11 am were mostly met today…but we didn’t come very close to making it to Salzburg by 1 pm. It seems that every slow moving vehicle which could have been on the road in front of us, was. We eventually arrived at the highway rest stop where we were meeting up with our friends at about 2:15 or so. They had been waiting for over an hour but they didn’t seem to mind the wait. Apparently our friend’s 20 year old VW bus was not really liking the drive up until that point so he was happy to let it rest for a little bit before the driving got tougher.
We arrived in Belvedere, Italy, near Grado, at about 7:30 pm. A rather long day of driving but Ayla didn’t complain once. She happily laid in the back seat and slept most of the time. We decided to put the back seat back in the Defender for her during this trip. Previously she had most of the floor in the back seat area to herself but lately she’s seemed to want to sit in the single seat still left in the truck. She can still fit on the floor board with little effort (although we’re not really sure how long that will last) and she can still Newfie rug it on the seat which really gives her plenty of room.
Tomorrow will be a “quiet” day and we plan on going into Grado to pick up some local specialities like prosciutto and Parmesan for the time ahead so we can have a little grill party in the evening. Hopefully the weather will get a bit nicer as it was raining pretty much the entire time we were driving through Austria and it’s not looking all that promising here at the moment either.
