The Scenery

Still feeling off and not able to eat apart from very plain pieces of toast, banana etc.  But we did share a gin an tonic - I think the fizzy drink helped.  Anyway, marginally better than yesterday and hoping for much better tomorrow.  The journey was amazing.  Difficult to put into words how awe inspiring are the mountains of Switzerland with their glistening partners the lakes.  Switzerland has long been my favorite landscape and it did not disappoint, especially when the sun came out.  And so we proceeded from Colmar into Switzerland, which had a surprising number of traffic jams and the Satnav made a couple of helpful detours to avoid traffic in a standstill.  Unfortunately, that did involve us having to navigate multiple hairpin bends in the van, which is trickier than it looks without crossing over the middle line.  However, we arrived safely, and at one point, L was looking at google maps and forecasting how many hairpins were coming up - " there are three in a row coming soon."  My heart sank.  

What I hadn't realized was just how beautiful were the lakes of Northern Italy, almost as if we had not crossed a border.  This photo is from the lengthy drive virtually round more than half Lake Lugano and the road hugged the side of the lake such that views like this were frequent.  Extra is of the Gotthardt Pass, where we reached the peak of the mountains and after the multiple hairpins.  When we exited the Black Knight it became clear why there was still a lot of snow on the ground - despite being 25 Deg C lower down, here it was 10 deg!  

Very grateful for having booked a campsite yesterday and so no searching around fully booked sites this time.  We found a delightful spot right in between Lake Lugano and Lake Como.  Tomorrow we'll drive by Como and onwards.

Anyway, we are in Italy, and tomorrow head down to Firenze.