DAY 17 - Geneva

Friday, 6 May 2005

Switzerland/Suisse/Schweiz/Svizzera
Switzerland is an interesting country. There are four official languages:  French, German, Italian, and Romansch and signs are not bilingual, but drastically change from one language to the other as you cross linguistic regions. In fact, this is one of those rare days where we started out with breakfast in the French sector of Switzerland (Geneva), had lunch in the German sector (Zermatt), and finished up right by the Italian sector (Lago Maggiore, which is split between Switzerland & Italy) – all in one day! My brain was challenged to figure out which language to order the food in... :)

Lake Geneva/Lac Leman
We explore a little bit of old town Geneva and along the lakeside. Again, like Zurich, the Swiss cities are clean, but a bit sterile. With not many attractions to explore we then make a beeline for the Swiss countryside.

Chateau Chillon
This is right along Lake Geneva. It's actually one of the better laid out castle tours that I've seen. It's easy to follow the numbers to each of the areas. There is also a local train that runs right by the castle.

Montreaux
This is the town that is right next to the castle. It was actually the nicest town we visited in Switzerland. We had an expensive lunch there – Al had a cheese fondue! – and talked about our drive up to the Swiss Alps.

Zermatt & the Matterhorn
We wound through the mountains of Switzerland to get to Tasch which is the town where the roads end. We then hop on a train to Zermatt, which is at the base of the Matterhorn. What's amazing about the mountain villages of Switzerland is that they are literally built on the side of a mountain, not in a valley or clearing. It truly is amazing. We were less impressed with Zermatt which has kind of become a Swiss Aspen with huge amounts of development going on and commercialization everywhere. The clouds were coming in and out all afternoon and unfortunately, Al couldn't get the Matterhorn shot he wanted. Just a note the Matterhorn you see at Disneyland really does look like a replica of the real thing – at least from the photos that we saw!

Simplon Pass & the Swiss Alps
Traversing through the high Swiss Alps towards Italy...Simplon is one of the more beautiful passes that brings you from Switzerland to Italy. It was very windy when we started the drive and it got really cold at the top (37 degrees). But the winds also moved the clouds about that made for some great mountain pictures. Al also had fun zipping his new car through the Alps on our way to Italy.

Stresa
We hit Stresa on Lago Maggiore in northern Italy. This is a great town. The weather was beautiful as we drove along the lakeshore to the village. There were huge, old but very well maintained hotels on the route with great lake views. They look like they were built in the 40s and 50s. We stayed in a much smaller hotel, but it was adequate and we enjoyed wandering the small cobble stone streets of the downtown area and enjoying an Italian gelato.

-- Al & Locke