Sep 9 - to and in zurich

This was a memorable drive ...

The part through Italy didn't get interesting until north of Milan, when we started into the mountains. Before Milan it was flat, grapes, corn, light industry, not much to see, really, from the autostrade.

We paid our 17E around Milan for our few hours on the autostrade and then north of Milan a couple more Euros on sections that didn't have a toll ticket system. Approaching one such slowdown, we realized that we were at the Swiss border, not a toll booth and saw lines moving past the inspectors, people being waived through. As we got there we were waived aside -- what now ? -- and dutifully pulled over and I rolled down the window expecting to explain our visit, show passports etc. Not so ...

The lady greeted us with "bon giorno" and we replied in English, that we were from Canada and she told us that she'd spent six months in Vancouver. Well, this wasn't a customs inspection per se, in fact they were checking to see if cars were current in their Swiss autobahn stickers ... and of course we had no such thing. In Switzerland you don't pay per or during use, you pay annually .... 40 Swiss Francs, about $45 USD ... which we had to pay on the spot. Hey -- we can drive for months now, too bad we're leaving today !

We spent a lot more than 40E on tolls in Italy -- too bad they hadn't had the same system.

Anyway, we moved on. The mountains became more interesting. We stopped at a service center just before a huge tunnel to have lunch. With a huge selection of food, we both chose the antipasto/salad/marinated veggie bar. It was great. It was expensive, but then most things in Switzerland are expensive.

We got back on the highway, having picked up a brochure on the tunnel that had all sorts of advisories to check your gas, what to do if you car is on fire, that sort of thing. We ground to a halt, finding that there was a problem with the tunnel, I'm guessing that they only had one tube open, and they were only letting a few cars in either direction into the tunnel at one time. We crawled. An exit appeared and I took it, being interested in the overland route anyway. Sandy wasn't interested in the overland route ...

What a drive ! Switchback up and up and up, climbing from the base at 3000' to over 6000'. Some of those switchbacks were on pillars out over nothing. Up above the tree line we stopped at a lay-by and took pictures (me), and stayed away from the edge (Sandy). It was a real moon-scape. The descent down wound through some town areas and was slow. We'll never know if we saved time, but I'm much happier that we experienced that drive than simply driving for a few kms in a tunnel. I'll have to check out its length on the internet at some point.

From there we continued on the autobahn to Zurich. We couldn't find our hotel, both Navs disagreeing on the location of the street and neither being correct. I did some research and input the suburb name, rather than Zurich, and lo and behold we found it. They agreed, we agreed. the hotel was where it was supposed to be. The front desk man showed us our room, which was quite nice, and we asked if instead we could have a room with a double bed, rather than two singles ... so he showed us another. This room clearly has not been renovated; it's weird. The sink is in the bedroom, not really so weird. The toilet and shower are their own separate rooms -- quite practical, when you think about it, but weird all the same.

We dropped our worldly goods and headed to Zurich. With the futzing around it was around 5pm. All of downtown Zurich, and I mean all, is dug up. I'm not sure what they're doing but it's a complete mess. Hopefully they'll get most of this cleaned up / closed up, before the snow comes ! Anyway, after some driving around, we finally found a parking spot, stopping short of a parking lot. That was a mistake because we could only buy two hours on the meter. We wandered for two hours, window shopped on Bahnhofstrasse -- amazing shopping -- and made our way back to the car. Along the way we checked prices at a couple of restaurants and declined to spend that much money -- entres seemed to run around 60F (multiply by 1.20 to get USD). One restaurant had a meat / salad bar that would have cost us about $150 plus drinks ... no thanks.

Driving back to the suburbs, we parked the car and found a restaurant nearby, having more Italian food. If we had more time we could have checked out the restaurant situation a little better in Zurich itself and undoubtedly found something but we were hemmed in by the parking meter and the increasingly late hour. Had we arrived an hour earlier; had we parked in a lot rather than at a meter; our time would have been more leisurely. The city was teeming with people and traffic -- it was Friday night after all.

Today we head to Meaux, outskirts of Paris. Today's hotel is centre ville ... we won't have any trouble finding a restaurant or church (right across the street) so that I can catch Mass this evening. Tomorrow we head out early for CDG and from there to Montreal and Sheryl's.

It's not quite over ... but getting close.

Onward !