samedi, août 16, 2008

switzerland road trip

This post is a long time coming but I get so lazy when it comes to trying to select the best pictures of the trip and then shrink them so they take less time loading etc... Yeah, I'm a bad blogger!

Mystery Guest and I left on our road trip and drove from V-town through Normandy, down to Chartres and finally ending up in Dijon where we spent the night in a BandB (yeah, I thought B&B but no, its like a Formule 1, only 4e extra and a lot nicer). The next day we got an early start and decided to avoid paying tolls for the highways so we cut across from Mulhouse through the bottom of Germany (autobahn! dude they just zip around those mountain curves!) and finally arrived in Switzerland. We went to go visit some wonderful family friends who live in a little village above Lake Constance. Their view is amazing!
Our hosts L&M :-)

The next day we drove down to Appenzell to check out a typical Swiss village and eat some cheese!! This is one of my all time favorite cheeses and although you can find it fairly easily in the deli in France it is a lot cheaper in Switzerland.

Our last full day in Switzerland we went down the valley where L&M keep their two horses, Mystery Guest even got to ride the dressage one! Then we continued our merry little way down the valley to Walenstadt to go to the lake but we didn't find a good place to take a dip so we backtracked a little to Bad Ragaz.
My parents lived in Switzerland for 4 years and I was born during their time there. Going back is always fun even if I left when I was 2 years old and don't have Swiss nationality or speak German (nor SwissGerman!)
The valley is just so stunning. Mystery Guest and I tried to decifer some Swiss Geocache hints to find a cache in the ruins of the Bad Ragaz castle. We didn't find the cache but the ruins were beautiful and the view over Bad Ragaz is awesome.
On the way back up the valley we stopped in Sargans where my parents used to live. We went up to the castle there to get a good view of the valley.
The way back was a little easier, we found a better route and came home in one (long) day. We also chose a good time to leave France since everyone said that the weather was just terrible. In Switzerland we had amazing weather, beautiful sunny skies and temperatures between 25 and 30C - just perfect in my book!

Yeah for road trips!!

3 commentaires:

J a dit…

Yay for Switzerland! I love those little Alpine villages. And Lake Constance is so so pretty! Paying 30 euros just to drive on the highway is a bit annoying though... especially when you're in a rental car and can't take the sticker with you to use on another car.

Bruce Anderson a dit…

Never been to Switzerland, it looks lovely. Might have do a road trip there when we move.

MilkJam a dit…

Yeah, the vignette is a little annoying but I really wish they'd start that system in France! I would SOOOO pay 60e a year or even a bit more to be a little tranquil on the road and not have to think about paying each time you drive somewhere. The payage to Paris from here is over 20e one way! Crazy...