Day 33: Die Zugspitze

It was absolutely the best weather today, so today would be superb for Zugspitzing.
So we were up nice and early to get the 8:30 train, but still we just missed it.  Probably didn’t help going to the wrong station, but hey.  We grabbed a coffee and caught the next train up through the beautiful scenery of green grass fields, villages of painted houses and kids riding their bikes to school through the town streets and bike paths all framed with a beautiful snow covered mountain backdrop.

Everybody wants a photo of the blue train

Day 32: Lake Como to Garmisch. Five countries in one day

I had planned to head to Garmish via St Moritz, but without any internet, and relying on my phone to look up the road conditions pages which were all in German, I couldn’t confirm 100% that all the roads would be open.  So we had to take the boring safe route and go back out the way we came in, and up the freeways. That meant those narrow roads from Hades back along Lake Como.
To makes things worse, Sygic carked it that morning, and there was no way I was able to get it going again.  So we had to resort to the old fashioned way: paper maps and road signs.  Now this can be a bit tricky when your paper map covers the entire continental Europe, and road signs aren’t in English and don’t always clearly depict the direction you need to go. Getting back to Como was simple enough, if extremely hairy.  But in Como, the signs for the A9 said Milano (southbound), and didn’t say Lugano (northbound).  So rather than risk it I decided to keep going on rather than just heading to the A9 and seeing where we ended up.  This meant we went all around the outskirts of Como.  I decided in the end to just head to the A9.  Worse case was at least we’d be on it, and if heading the wrong direction would just have to turn around when we were able to.  As it turned out, this was the correct course and we were thankfully on the motorway heading north.  The views from up high over the lakes are just spectacular, even today when the weather was overcast and hazy. As the paper maps were proving a little dubious, I turned to back up navigation, Google Maps.  This worked well enough for the most part, even though it chewed through $30 worth of overseas mobile data.  Still that would have been what some decent maps cost would have cost.

Day 31: Lake Como - Lenno, Tremezzo, Bellagio, Menaggio, Varenna

Today we had a good long sleep in after all that walking yesterday.  It was about 11:30 before we left and drove into Lenno. At Lenno, we walked along the promenade to the jetty and went to get the boat ticket, but arrived just as the boat was arriving.  I didn’t have enough cash on me for the tickets, and I thought the ticket man was saying that the EFTPOS was not working.  I asked where the nearest bancomat was and he said "distance."   So I walked back to town, asked in a restaurant where the bancomat was and headed off to get some cash.

Day 30: Ode to Joy, George Clooney, Padme and James Bond.

I got up early today as I wanted to try and catch our church bells playing Ode to Joy, like they did last night.  But I had no luck.  I think somebody in the belfry was watching and spiting me. :-(

We walked along the Green Way from above our apartment into Lenno.  The Green Way is a walking path, which for a good portion of its length follows the Antica Strada Regina, an ancient road along the western shore of Lake Como.  Rebuilt by the Romans and used as their main route between the north and south of the alps, through the ages seeing the passing of traders and armies, and now tourists and dog walkers.

Day 29: Leave the car behind when travelling to Italy.

Breakfast at the hotel again.  Same fare as yesterday.  They should alternate days or something.  Anyway, again not that hungry, so why am I even talking about it?
Grindelwald put on is best weather for our departure.  The skies were so blue and the air so crisp; I could see every little detail up on the mountains and the glacier.

Day 28: Gorgeous Grindelwald

Breakfast was included in our hotel price, so we felt obliged to partake.  Breakfast fare was OK, a large assortment, but since I have been eating so much for lunch and dinner I had generally been skipping breakfast,.  In fact there is a packet of muesli I bought in Uzès I’ve been carrying around with me still unopened.  But that's enough boring breakfast talk....

What every good hotel buffet should include

Day 27: Nudist colonies, pedibuses and erotimechanica. This is Switzerland.

Sorry about the News of the World style headline, I'm trying to attract a larger readership ;-)
Today I got up nice and early to help walk Marianna to school; she's such a cutie.  She talked and talked and talked the whole way there, and she made sure her bat was kept nice and warm tucked away in her top. Pedibus?  yeah I had no idea until Henric explained it.  One volunteer parent is the head of the bus, one volunteer parent is the tail of the bus, and they are both holding a rope which all the kids on the bus have to hold onto.  The bus then makes it rounds, stopping at the pedibus stops to take on new passengers, and bring them all safely to school. Very cool for the first year kiddies.  Very uncool for the 2nd year and older kiddies. We walked back via the lake shore which was lined with a multitude of market gardens.