Ciao to Switzerland

We have all loved Switzerland, particularly around Interlaken and are sad to say goodbye. It was clean, green and friendly, lots of English speakers. The girl in the tourist information office amazed us, she spoke seven languages, and was skilled at the art of diplomacy. We heard her politely putting down an Indian chap in line before us who had seen enough lakes and wanted her to recommend something different. She very politely told him she was suggesting viewing some waterfalls not the lakes but he could do whatever pleased him and have a good day, all with a smile.

I hadn't realised that Switzerland is almost three countries in one, there are distinct French, German and Italian speaking regions. French was our first night in Fribourg, then Bern and Interlaken are German while Lugano is Italian.

The drive from Interlaken to Lucerne was quite scenic as you would expect, the roads are very good with lots of tunnels. One actually spiralled up inside a mountain. The longest we used was later in the day near Gotthard, nearly 17km long and the third longest road tunnel in the world. There are no actual toll roads in Switzerland, you buy a 40 Swiss Franc sticker, a vignette, at the border that covers use of all the motorways for 12 months. Tim the GPS keeps asking if we want to avoid the tolls which is strange because you can't really avoid paying the toll, it is practically compulsory. Apparently if you don't have the sticker and are found using a motorway you are fined and have to buy the Vignette. It would be pretty difficult to enter or leave Switzerland without it though as most of the border crossings are on the motorways. It's relatively cheap as tolls in France and Italy have cost us 30-40 euro a day on long journeys.

We stopped at Lucerne after leaving Interlaken. Another pretty lakeside town. We visited two of it's famous attractions, the Lion Monument a 6m x 10m carving of a wounded lion in the side of a hill. It's located in a park in the center of town and commemorates the death of Swiss mercenaries who were serving Louis XVI during the French revolution. Soldiers for hire were a major source of income for many poor Swiss towns throughout history, I wonder if this is how the Swiss ended up guarding the Vatican?

We also walked across one of the two covered wooden foot bridges that link two parts of the city separated by a river running into the lake. Originally built in the 1300's it was nearly totally destroyed in 1993 by a fire caused by a discarded cigarette. It was decorated with triangular counter-reformation artworks on the roof trusses, many of which were lost in the fire. Some were in storage at the time so have been used in the new bridge, along with reproductions of the remainder.

We spent some more time wandering around the old part of the city. It had a very nice feel and I could imagine it is a quite pleasant place to live.

We stayed in Figino a small lakeside village near Lugano. It was our last youth hostel night and we decided to try eating in this time. It's a bit like a school camp, you collect your portion of food then serve it up yourself. It was really quite nice, Cordon Bleu, potato gratin, grilled zucchini and a large salad. We could even buy a half bottle of wine. There was a couple of large groups staying but in a separate building so we got a quiet night.

Em wanted to call her schools friends in their lunch break so got up at 5am to use the computer which meant we were all a bit tired and grumpy yesterday. They're not supposed to use their phones during the day so had to hide behind the library.

The hostel itself was an interesting building. It was apparently an old 'Patrician' house. The patricians were a post-roman governing elite in many Italian towns. Patrician status was passed on through the generations. The house had ornately painted ceilings and mosaic tiles.

We went for a walk down to the lake after dinner and watched the sunset over the lake. Lake Lugano is part of the border between Italy and Switzerland so the other shore was in Italy. Quite amazing.

The kids were glad to finally have some room to play football, even Emily had a kick with Sam coaching her in preparation for summer soccer. Unfortunately she kicked the ball over the fence into a neighbouring property. The yard was surrounded by thick hedges so they had to go and ask if they could go in and look for the ball. We heard them through the hedges, the part of the yard down near the lake that was where they thought the ball had gone was a bit of a jungle so they were getting scratched and having trouble getting through. We gave them some directions from our side and they eventually found it out of the jungle just near the water. All their bush bashing hadn't been necessary after all.

We drove around the lake in the morning and had a brief stop in Lugano to use up our swiss francs. It turned into a bit of an adventure as we had parked in a pay car park and needed one franc to get out but Tan had used nearly all the money at the supermarket and only had 85 cents left.

None of the shops would swap a euro so we thought we were going to have to withdraw more francs from an ATM until Tan found two francs under the shopping trolleys. We now know where Ollie gets his coin finding skills from.

It was a long drive yesterday afternoon and we experienced the usual transitional anxieties of entering a new country when we arrived in Italy shortly after leaving Lugano. I find it a bit stressful driving at first, having to figure out the roads and signs in a different language.

We drove down to Tuscany via Lake Como which was very pretty. Tan unfortunately didn't see George Clooney and we ended up in the uglier part of town with lots of traffic. A lake cruise would have been nice to see all the beautiful waterfront villas but we didn't have the time.

Our accommodation here is very nice, it's an apartment in part of a stone house in a village near Lucca. We've got a bit more room and two bathrooms again. The boys have been enjoying the pool and there's even a friendly cat and dog so it feels homely.

Time to catch up on washing, blogging and emails before supermarketing to stock up for the week.

Switzerland Day 3

Switzerland Day 4