Monaco in my window but a long way still over roads

Why I'm still butchering country songs, I don't know.

When we planned this trip, we designed the lovely drive from Monaco to Genoa (outside where we were staying) to be in the middle of the day so Mom could spend the 3 hours enjoying the view along the coast.

It was raining.

Again.

These are actually not pictures from that specific drive.  But we'll get to that later.  

So instead of a glorious not-quite-three-hour drive along beautiful scenic Mediterranean roads, we had a nearly-five-hour drive with hair pin turns, slick roads, and a disgusting view of grey clouds and choppy waves.    At least there were no hills.  Actually, no:  At least it was mostly downhill.  

So it's now dinnertime, everyone is hungry, Steven has sent a text (because we can't manage to make our phones make calls more than 62% of the time)  that he's gotten the Italian rental car and is 2 hours ahead of us, so will stop at the grocery store and have dinner ready for us at the apartment.  This sounds lovely.  The charming lady who owns the house where we're staying has given us very specific directions and we should be there in 10 or 15 minutes.  

The first direction says to take a left at the roundabout just off the highway.  Except that it's under construction.  No problem! Susan says.  We've got GPS, she says.  We'll just turn at the next street and make a u-turn, she says.   What's with the line of cars all trying to turn left at the next street? she says.  

The whole town now seems to be trying to make a left turn.  At every light.  So we keep driving, ignoring the continually louder and louder GPS telling us to turn left and make U-turns at roads that were dead stopped.  Eventually we actually got out of town and then took the very last road in the grid that is Chiavari.  (Kee-AH-vah-ree)  And I actually got into 2nd gear.  It was thrilling.  

We finally did reach the tiny hill road up to where our house is.  And were told by the Elisa, the incredibly sweet landlord, that Chiavari had flooded the day prior and was without power for almost 24 hours and there had been a landslide on the other side of the city and 2/3 of the roads were closed because of the mud ....... and suddenly we realized that perhaps the {expletive} trip to Monaco had actually been a blessing.  Because if we had gone to Italy immediately from Nice, we would have been arriving in the midst of the floodwaters.  

Of course, Steven had also gotten stuck in the traffic and then missed the house along the unlighted roads, so I spent a terrifying two hours trying not to imagine him plunging off of the sheer drops or another landslide or other horrifying deaths.  I am now counting down the minutes until we return that second stupid car.  

But now we can say we've been to Monaco.