Monday 27th May
After a lot of deliberation and brain storming, we crossed the border into Switzerland. We were waved through by the police and as we parked up at the crossing, the lady came to sell us a vignette (40 Swiss Francs for 12 months).
We continued on to Lugano and the Swiss Aire/Sosta that we’d found on Park4night (20CHF/24 hrs).
Luckily we could pay in Euros as we had no Swiss Francs on us, so after lunch we went in search of an ATM.
The town of Lugano is nicknamed the Monte Carlo of Switzerland because of its growing popularity with celebrities. There’s a lot of steps going down to the town and the lake from the parking area, but once down there it’s quite pretty, even on a cloudy day.
There were some fancy old buildings right next to very modern ones, most of which contained expensive shops like Louis Vuitton.
We did laugh though when we saw the familiar H&M, the only high street shop that’s been in all of the 29 countries we’ve traveled through, apart from Turkey!! We visited the Church of Santa Maria Degli Angioli which looked nothing from the outside but had some nice fresco's inside.
We decided on a trip on the dotto train too which took us from one end of the town to the other.
Then we had to climb the steps back to Harriet, phew!
Leaving Lugano we went Truckin’n’lookin over the simply stunning Simplon pass. We drove on roads hugging the sides of mountains full of very curly corners!!
We crossed the border into Italy and back again into Switzerland.
We saw waterfalls and lakes and swathes of wild flowers.
We peered over the edge of the road and looked down through pine trees at the rivers and valleys below. We saw lots of snow and stopped at the top too.
It was a spectacular drive across the mountains.
We spent the night in a secluded car park in Visp and then continued on to CERN the next morning.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. It was somewhere I really wanted to visit and learn more about protons, electrons, quarks, and all sorts of particles. The World Wide Web was invented there, (where would we be without that piece of technology?!!) to allow information sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.
It was free to park and free to enter the interactive exhibitions. An amazing place!! I can’t wait to watch some more Professor Brian Cox on TV when we get back home.
We parked over night in the CERN car park with some other motorhomes and next morning took the tram into the centre of Geneva. It took 30 mins and cost 3CHF each.
We found the 13th century clock tower on the Pont de l’ille, the starting point of the walking tour,
and 2 1/2 hours later we were sat eating lunch and swapping travel stories with our new friend Jacquie.
The walking tour was great. These are just some of the things we learnt.
Some of the streets have been given a second name honouring prominent women of Geneva as we could see from the blue and pink signs.
The Swiss watchmakers started in Geneva and the flower clock was made to honour them and has the longest second hand in the world.
The blue plaques on the water fountains mean the water is drinkable as opposed to the ones with red plaques meaning it isn’t.
Henry Dunant (one of 5 men) founded the Red Cross here and his statue stands where executions took place by guillotine, maybe that’s why there’s only his head?!! He also won the 1st Nobel peace prize. And the Red Cross flag is the opposite to the Swiss flag!
The four men on the Réformation wall were nicknamed the “Beatles”.
The same artist built Christ the Redeemer in Brazil. There is just one woman honoured on the wall but just her name and it’s hidden (men!!)
The “broken chair” outside the United Nations Building symbolises opposition to land mines.
Geneva is home to the longest wooden bench in the world.
The Geneva convention was signed in the Alabama room in the parliament building.
Mary Shelly came up with the character Frankenstein whilst staying with Lord Byron.
Lenin lived in Geneva and still has an account at the library in the university building.
In 1850 Geneva was surrounded by bastions.
The beautiful Maccabees Chapel in St Peters Cathedral used to be a salt store.
70% of Switzerland is made up of Mountains.
And the list goes on ... so you could say, after the last few days, we’ve learnt about ...
🎶Math 🎶Science 🎶History 🎶 Unraveling the mystery 🎶 That all started with the Big Bang ... Hey!!🎶
We loved Geneva and would definitely return.
We stayed a second night in the car park CERN and then made our way to Lausanne and a campsite next to the lake.
It was really hot so went for a paddle and a Toblerone ice cream to cool down. The locals were out in their hundreds all enjoying the water and having BBQ's in the park.
Sunday morning it was time to leave and head for Thun (pronounced Toon) and to meet up with my old school friend Shari who lives in Switzerland. We hadn't seen each other for 39 years!! But thanks to Facebook we'd kept in touch. The scenery was spectacular as we drove along, so much so, we forgot to watch the sat nav and ended up driving 30 miles out of the way. Which wouldn't have mattered apart from meeting Shari & Stuart at 12 o'Clock lol.
Luckily we got there in one piece and parked in the Ice Rink car park.
We headed down to the lake in Thun after having lunch and talking constantly for a couple of hours.
After a walk around Schloss Schadau, we had an icecream and wandered back to our Harriet to say goodbye to Shari & Stuart.
