So this is the start of a long awaited journey.
The general plan follows as strictly as possible a publication by TCI (Touring Club Italiano) expressly conceived for motor bikers.
It plans to drive to the entire Alpine arch, starting from Nice (France) and arriving to Trieste (Italy). Many other similar plans are available on the Net and good as well but either less extensive or sort of cut-out.
I plan to enrich the posts with animated charts and video as soon as I can get hold of the required skills and material to upload (and necessary bandwidth…) as follows.
As you see below, today’s plan is to reach Nice (France) and then start as soon as possible the journey to the first mountain pass and drive as afr as possible (without eating up too much my strength, the journey does not end today…).
It takes me more than 2 hours to arrive at Nice, but then there I go!
It is easy to get to Nice, but to take route 202 and to arrive to la Bollène-Vésubie via Saint-Martin-du-Var is not so straightforward, since the first kms are on a sort of a highway and I find that the signals are not clear enough (or maybe I have some problems with them, since this is going to be a recurrent fact in this journey). In the end, I have to stop a couple of times and go back on my footseps before I can take the right one.
This part of, but in general all, Provence is beautiful. Highly recommended, it deserves a visit, if you go to France. It is my second time in Provence and I can say that I could as well come back a third time still enjoying the countryside (and nice cities too).
I finally arrive at la Bollène and then turn to Col de Turini, my first pass in this tour (the conquest 
is documented below on the video).
After Col de Turini, I go down to Sospel and then take the route north to Colle di Tenda, in order to go back to Italy.
I have not yet decided where to stop. In general the idea is to stop when needed, I will improvise each day.
Borgo San Dalmazzo (never been there yet) seems a good place to spend the night (medium to large cities maxime the chance to find clean but cheap hotels). We will see.
While getting to Col de Turini is really nice, Colle di Tenda was really a delusion to me. But it is useful to arrive back to Italy and stop there.
During this first day my GPS stops working, it turns off erratically at its own will. It is a TomTom, I thought it was going to be more robust. I have an excellent map to guide me through so I do not really worry. But it is sort of irritating. I decide I will later investigate the reason of this malfunctioning.
As I said, also Colle di Tenda is documented. In this one, at the end, you can even see the Hero going to and fro at the gas station (wow!!) – do not dare lose it!
That’s all folks for today
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