Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

The Swiss Alps

July 13th, 2007 at 03:55pm James

After Lauterbrunen we took it easy for a bit, driving to the lakeside town of Lucerne where we camped for the night. We were hoping to try Raclette, yet another Swiss dish involving copious amounts of cheese, but on walking around the lake into town we only found one restaurant that served it and it was hideously overpriced.

So we had to be content with a kebab, a beer and a walk around the old part of town, most famous for its covered wooden bridges.

There are two of these in the town, and the less obvious one is decorated with paintings apparently depicting "The Dance of the Dead". We couldn’t read the writing but the pictures were quite cool.

The evening was spent using the campground’s thankfully unlimited use WLAN connection to update the website and send emails. We got an early night because the following day we had a lot of driving to do – we were crossing the Swiss Alps.

The drive the following day was by far the most spectacular either of us had ever done. We avoided the motorways and instead wound our way up through the mountain passes, enjoying the alpine scenery.

We had planned on once more trying to find raclette for lunch but with a landsape as beautful as this we changed our minds. We made sandwiches and pulled over to enjoy the view.

We stopped at plenty of places along the way, including this colossal dam, collecting the water from the melting snows.

I had to resist the urge to keep saying "Mountains, Gandalf, Mountains!" in a childish hobbit voice. I did let it slip out a couple of times though. Can I be blamed with vistas like this?

Coming down from one of the passes we suddenly came up behind two blokes in full leathers and heavy gloves on big skateboards. We gave them a wave as we went past – crazy stuff!

We made our way through yet more passes and the steep, twisting mountain roads were great fun to drive. The Sunny did an admirable job hauling up the mountainsides in low gear, though we could smell the brakes a bit on the way back down.

We dipped down into the Italian alps for a stretch and then back up into Switzerland where we eventualy made camp just outside St Moritz, playground of the rich and famous.

The next morning we had a quick look at the Olympic ski jump…

…and then we were off again, headed north-east toward Lichtestein. The scenery in the Swiss alps was absolutely stunning and even though the photos really don’t do it justice there’s a few more to check out here.

Entry Filed under: Europe