We had to leave Krimml and Andy and Steph. It was sad. We didn’t want to go.

So we delayed it a bit longer to clean the house, put out the garbage and to have one more coffee at the slopes.

That was a BIG mistake.

We finally got on the road at midday for our 4 1/4 hour car ride, Evie was already about 30 minutes overdue for her nap. We thought we’d done pretty well when she nodded off finally half an hour later. The scenery was beautiful as we travelled through the Zillertal arena.

Until she woke up that is, exactly 20 minutes later.

Hello, over tired baby. We thought we’d stop in Innsbruck for lunch but after such a short nap we figured we better keep driving while the going was good.

Thea had been awake since 6am, so we hoped (prayed) that she’d drift off for an afternoon nap. But nope, she held on the entire 5 hours, oh joy.

We got to the Austrian/Italian border before we decided to take our first rest stop. It hadn’t helped that the Austrian toll gate took us 15 minutes to get through either.

Craig and Thea went to the bathroom and Evie had a feed/nappy change in the front of the car. She was coming up to another nap time so we figured after a rest stop (feed/nappy), surely she would drift off.

We also bargained on there being more rest stops along the Italian Autostrade. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. After 2 stops in the SOS emergency bays on the side of the motorway for emergency breast feeds and re-settles, Evie finally went to sleep at about 3.45pm. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the car was once again quiet other than the radio. A chorus of “when are we getting there?” arose from Thea about every 5 minutes after that. Along with a screamy, “I want food”.

It was probably a mistake to not take the rest stop on the border for proper food because the queues were so long. It was probably good that I had a range of snacks (biscuits, fruit, water etc.) that I kept feeding Thea to keep her on side over the long car ride.

Finally we drove over the hills and down towards the lake. I caught my breath as the lago (lake) came into full view surrounded by the almighty Dolomite mountains. It was beautiful and suddenly the screamy, long, long drive seemed worthwhile after all.

Evie woke up with 15 minutes left to get to our Air BnB according to the GPS. As per usual our GPS proved to be flawed as the GPS co-ordinates the Air Bnb app sent to Google Maps were for the regional council and not in fact for our holiday home. A few tweaks and exasperated sighs later we arrived at our apartment.

A beautiful old villa, about a 30 minute walk from the lake. The view from the balcony out to the setting sun washing the hills in hues of pink and gold helped lighten the mood. We couldn’t help but look forward to the coming days relaxing in Italian style.