Thursday 17th
May – Saturday 19th May 2012
Across the French Swiss
Alps, the Swiss Italian Alps the next…..then the earth shaking in Lucca
The next few days we spent scooting up firstly with a brief stopover
to once again say hi to Kevin, our long lost caravan who will come out of
hibernation mid June. All has gone
exceedingly well with its storage over the Winter here, so we said goodbye to it
knowing with confidence that leaving it here each European Winter will be fine. We choofed off through the Alps past the
famous ski fields of France…Grenoble, Albertville, Chamonix, Mt Blanc…. taking
routes that we hadn’t yet explored, trying to improve our local geographic
knowledge. Surrounded by beautiful
mountainous country and lovely old villages we overnighted in Allevard,
enjoying our first raclette for this trip, being the specialty of the house in
a local restaurant. With snow on the
Alps we set off early morning for another long drive into Switzerland to see
Petra et Jogi, in Luscherz, who also have Caroline and Albert, our friends from
Darwin staying there. Our stay was short but full of fun and friendship…it’s
fun being able to drop in on an increasing number of friends around Europe this
year. We ate well, tasted lots of wine, told lots of stories and slept over
before heading off towards Lucca with Caro and Albi the next day. This time it was a fabulous trip through the
Alps of Switzerland, starting with a drive the car on the train at Kandersteg
which took us through tunnels to Brig.
Then over another engineering marvel…a viaduct in the snow covered pass
into Italy. The rest of the trip to
Lucca was in the hair raising motorways that bypass Genoa and the famous Cinque
Terre..(next time)… and on to Lucca. The
earth moved that night after our dinner in the old part of town…maybe it was
the side effects of the red, but there was a .6 recording of an earthquake a couple
of hundred kms away near Bologna. We
headed past the area the next day and saw no sign of damage from the
motorway…we were concerned that we would be at Venice airport by 2pm.
Phew, we’re covering lots of kms during this phase of the trip…as
planned of course…but it will be nice to slow down when we get back to
caravanning next month in Provence.
