Lucerne was absolutely stunning, but I had to move on. I headed to the south of Switzerland in the afternoon after saying my goodbyes to Miriam. It felt like I was living there by the time I left, very comfortable and relaxed environment. Southern Switzerland was again stunning, I wish I wasnt driving so I could take photos all the way down, with massive mountains either side of me, it was like something out of a dream.

I just so happened to pick a spot on the map and drive to it (Locarno), it was set on a lakeside and looked like a good place to spend the night. While I was driving around I happened to stumble apon a massive dam. I thought.. I recognize that dam from somewhere?? It was the one used in the movie Golden Eye! I had watched that movie so many times, this place was engraved in my brain. All those times playing the Dam level on Nintendo 64 all coming back to me in a flash. They had a Bungi jump set up in the same place as where James Bonds stunt double jumped from, it was 250 swiss francs which I thought was a bit out of my price range so I gave it a miss, still an incredible sight to see.

I left south the next day into Italy, the remains of the border control still there, yet no stop was required. I drove straight to what I google told me was the factory for MV Ausgusta, on arrival I realised google had it wrong. On the plus side, it had led me to a very nice lakeside, so I spent the entire afternoon lying in the sun reading the rest of my book.

The next day I got up early and headed to the Moto Guzzi factory, really hoping this time that Google had got their facts right. It ended up taking me 4 hours to get there after getting lost a couple of times and taking a few wrong turns, but I finally arrived. The museum is only open for 1 hour every day from 3pm till 4pm. There were only 25 of us that got to go through the museum, people from all over the UK, Australia and Europe. It was very cool seeing the factory and Museum and reading aout how they really pushed the boundaries on what was possible for motorcycles in the mid 1900’s. Their greatest achievement was creating a 500cc v8 engine for one of their motorbikes! It smashed all records for a bike of that size when it was raced in that time, but due to all italian Motorcycle companies pulling out of competiton it was never developed further.

I left for Milan after my factory tour, it was only an hour away (without getting lost) so i got there in the evening. I walked the streets at sunset, what a magnificent city! The center square gives all other cities I have been to a real run for their money. The architecture is incredible and very much the style I like.

It is a city you can easily fall in love with, with plenty of character and history. The out skirts of the city were quite rough actually, it was supprising to see not so far from the city center, but Italy has been going through a lot of economic struggles being inundated with refugees. It is tragic to hear how so many people are fleeing their countries to provide a better, safer life for themselves. I read an article today about a 240ft ship called Monica that was spotted in international waters and being told to leave Italian shores when women and men onboard thretened to throw their infant children off the side of the boat (and were infact dangling them off the side) if they were refused access to Italy. At what point in our fight for survival would us as a human race be willing to make that kind of a sacrifice? It breaks my heart to think that life is so, extremely terrible where they are coming from that they would feel no other option, but to resort to putting their own chidrens lives on the line in order to secure the saftey.