Born Free Leap'n Lions RV Club Info & Discussion Forum

Metz is a small walkable city, and the municipal campground is right in the city and on an island on the river. It’s one of our favorites. We returned because the new Pompidou Center had finally opened and we were not disappointed. It is an unusual and beautiful structure, and the art chosen for its...

We tunneled our way to Switzerland: tunnel after tunnel, several of them 2 or 3 or 5 miles long, and one of them a full 10 miles. It is not our favorite way to travel. Really long tunnels give one too much time to think about exactly what it is that is above one’s head . . . and pressing down . . . ...

Batteries charging away, we drove the 50 miles from Vienna to Melk, a small town on the Danube River with a massive Benedictine abbey towering above it. We stopped in a small campground on an island in the river. Usually campgrounds run a small snack shop or restaurant, but this time the popular res...

Susan did not lobby hard enough for a new battery, and David did not think enough about the accessories that could drain a weak battery. We’re such a team. We drove the 125 miles from Graz to Vienna without incident, but when we got there, all it took to kill this battery once and for all was using ...

Arrivederci, Italia. Guten Tag, Austria. From Venice we drove on the Autostrada along the coast almost all the way to Slovenia before heading north toward Villach (the traffic-stopping accident being on the other side of the road this time). First swamp land in Italy and then the low, camel-humped m...

We are trying to write a description of our visit to Venice, combined with a farewell to Italy, while trying to convince the campground owner’s dog to go away (the latter is harder than it might seem, because he is really good at begging for attention and we find we really miss having a dog). There ...

In a stunning departure from their history of closely fought battles, Italy devastated the team of David and Susan in two consecutive contests, Ravenna and Padua. Utilizing their nation’s traditional strengths--lunatic drivers, serenely unhelpful “service staff,” treacherous roads, tawdry campsites,...

We hated to leave the beauty of Iseo and the lake country, but we haven’t seen quite all of Italy yet. So we drove a long way (for us): 103 miles to Modena. The campground there is practically within the cloverleaf exit of the Autostrada--lots of traffic noise, but great wifi. We rode our bikes the ...

Getting to the lake country is not relaxing. The mountains along the coast provide few opportunities for going north. So David got to drive his favorite road, the A12 tunnel/bridge/tunnel/bridge, for about 50 miles east before we could turn north and get through the mountains. Then the country turns...

May 24 The weather finally cleared to beautiful sunshine. Our next visit was to Pisa, just a few miles east of Florence. Our stopping point there--”The Leaning Tower Campground” is how it translates--is only about a quarter mile from the Tower, so we parked Rover and walked to it. The medieval city ...

We are in Florence. Well, shoot. . . . It is truly a lovely city. (So is its name in Italian: Firenze.) We drove straight to Camping Michelangelo (!) from Casina with no detours or problems. The campground is quite large and spills down the hillside on the south bank of the Arno River, overlooking t...

The rain started around 10 pm on Friday night and didn’t stop for 24 hours--a nice, gentle, steady drenching. We spent most of the damp and chilly Saturday inside Rover until around 2 pm, when we put on our waterproof shoes, raincoats, ponchos, gloves and pink (!) Giro hats, took up our umbrellas an...

We got mixed up trying to get out of Rome. We were headed in the right direction, parallel to a nice 4 lane highway but couldn't find out how to get on it. After making a big U turn and returning almost all the way to the ring road in Rome we were finally headed north again on a better road. We head...

We are in a large campground just north of Rome. On our way here, we had stayed one night at a camping “seaside resort” on the Adriatic. We were the only ones there amidst a hundred aging, rusting trailers. It was run by a friendly family busily working to improve it for the high season. And while i...

CHARM ALERT: IMG_0673.JPG This is a trullo house. The little town of Alberobello has more than a thousand of them, quaint and cute as can be. This morning we drove from the crummy unlevel campground just up the hill on the outskirts of town to a large, level motorhome parking lot practically in the ...