Switzerland, France and many many many more hours in the car....

Switzerland, France and many many many more hours in the car....

After our relaxing week in tuscany, we felt suitably recharged to start the looooonnnnggg journey back home.  This time I had planned a 3 day stopover in the Swiss alps.  The trip back from tuscany to Switzerland was not too unreasonable, a 6-7 hour car trip and this time we stopped for a break at one of the other picturesque italian lakes - Lake Maggiorri.  Just as stunning as Lake Como.

From there it was a quick trip through to the Valais region in the Swiss Alps. As we passed through the multiple italian toll booths, hubby took every opportunity to yell ARRIVEDERCI to the automated toll machines in a perfect italian accent, soon joined by a chorus of 3 girls. And soon it was goodbye Italy, hello Switzerland!

The road up to the small mountain village where we were staying was as could be expected- windy and mountainous. The GPS on this one occasion did not quite perform its job and took us up a crazy narrow pseudo-street which was apparently two way, but mostly gave me vertigo from worrying about falling off the side of the mountain.  We stayed in a lovely apartment nicknamed TinTin for its very tasteful comic book decor.

















The views from the windows were unparalleled. I am not particularly good with heights so looking down to the steep mountainous drop directly below was disconcerting...  One morning we looked out to see 4 or 5 young deer playing in one of the other chalets gardens. Priceless experience to see for the kids.
















   Switzerland, we soon discovered was not called the most expensive city in Europe for nothing.  The night we arrived, we went to the local ski field restaurant and re-evaluated how much we really "needed" to eat when we found a basic pizza had suddenly gone from 4 euro in Italy to 17 euro just across the border! Thinking that maybe the remote ski settlements were probably more pricey than the rest of the country, we were sadly mistaken and found prices extremely high everywhere we went in Switzerland. However, the upside of this was that the food was delicious. We had our best pizza and best risotto here, slightly ironic having just come from italy. The highlight was the local specialty - a strawberry risotto.  Admittedly, it looked less than delectable when it arrived, a kind of pale pink slop on a plate, but it was beautiful! Highly recommend trying it if you are ever there.

 The swiss also seemed to be a happier bunch. The country felt clean, green and thriving. There was a general air of order and calm. The swiss might also be a bit pedantic, I suspect. The steep wild grass edges of the road leading up the mountains, were mowed on a regular basis???!!! Who does this???

 I hadn't taken too much notice of the exact region that I had booked accommodation but was delighted that we were staying in the french speaking region rather than the german speaking.  We spent a couple of days exploring the local city of Sion, eating lovely food, and using the free local bikes (ok this was cheaper than italy).  Also parking was cheap, as with all of europe so far- 1-2 euro per hour downtown puts the $17-24/hour that downtown Brisbane charges to shame.

On our final day, we took a miniature train trip round the surrounding countryside. I was surprised to see that Switzerland was such a breadbasket. Acres of apricot, apple and pear orchards and cherry farms had us salivating in no time. The hills were lined with vineyards planted on precipitous slopes.  The train took us to a local organic farm which had an honesty box shop where we bought local organic apricots, raspberries, broccolli and apples. Delicious!

On our final day, we left bright and early but with the small problem of 2 out of 4 children vomiting... Luckily I had brought vomit buckets with us with lids (great tip from another travel website).  Our Google maps instructions (which I had printed out from start to finish) estimated a travel time of 7.5 hours.  Quite doable for the almost final leg.  We get in the car, turn on the GPS, put in the destination, and look at each other in horror- estimated travel time = 11 hours!!!  11 hours - how can this be?!! Especially with the possibility of much vomit along the way.... Hearts heavy, we set off, hoping that just this once, the GPS is wrong.  We make good progress until we come to the Swiss-French border, then things get a bit hairy. The GPS and my Google maps are trying to take us in opposite directions. We decide to follow Mr Google with the help of my European road map. Immediately 1 hour gets shaved off the GPS travel time- good choice! But we soon end up off the main roads and no longer have any route maps to refer to. Mr Google and GPS are still arguing between themselves and we are still attempting to follow the rather ambiguous Google instructions, until we come to a roundabout in the middle of nowhere and the road that Google wants to take us down has been closed off.  Google -0, GPS-1. We wander around a bit more in the wilderness until we stumble across signs pointing to McDonalds and eagerly follow the signs to this haven of wifi internet.  More directions were downloaded as we refueled and we set off again, this time with 3 sets of conflicting directions.  Finally we stumble upon the main autoroute and we get on with hightailing it up to Lille.   The rest of the 10 hour and 45 minutes journey was relatively uneventful, and the consumption of all those transfats, and additives appeared to have cured the upset tummies.  Our trip up the middle of france was probably less scenic than the trip down, or I may just have been more fatigued. One difference, we did not see any IKEAs on the journey home whereas there was an IKEA every few 100kms on the way down. We probably counted about 15! 

Arriving in Lille, we were meeting an old friend for dinner. We hastily found the apartment and the parking garage that I had booked, and promptly almost got stuck again as our car with the luggage pod was too high for the garage. A few scrapes and some lights almost taken out and we made it in.  We had a stunning apartment in Lille, a few steps down from the main centre and absolutely beautiful. The type of place I would absolutely book again.  The next day, we spent the day in Lille and found a free zoo and year-round carnival which had inexpensive rides and the kids had a ball.

 The measly 1 hour trip home from Lille felt like a walk in the park and it was nice to finely get home and our own beds.

And that, my dear friends, was our summer adventure.

Things I learnt:
1) the GPS is always right, except when it is wrong, but you won't know this till it's too late. It is best not to abuse it though... You may need it when Google and route maps have left you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
2) my kids have now been broken in to car trips- we could drive from one side of Belgium to the other and back again without a single complaint. (Ok I admit, Belgium is a rather small country really, but seriously , the chorus of "I'm booorrrreeed used to start after about 20 minutes).
3) Take containers with lids for car trips.
4) Italy may be my favourite, or maybe it is Switzerland now. I can't decide. But Paris still holds my heart...

Tuscany- a week in paradise...

Tuscany- a week in paradise...

When you go to Italy there are so many expectations, at least there were for us. Maybe it is better to go somewhere where you have no expectations and then are pleasantly surprised, like I was with Sweden.  Anyway, it is hard not to be excited about going to Italy. Probably similar to going to Paris for the first time.  There is so much hype that you run the risk of being horribly disappointed if it doesn't live up to these expectations, or you fall completely, hopelessly in love and embrace every moment. 

For us, we had both. Possibly the things we expected to enjoy the most (the most famous things) were the things that disappointed, and instead we found gems that we may not have discovered without doing a bit of prior research. 

We had a week staying on a small Agriturismo farm which was a small olive tree and wineyard set high up in the Tuscan hills about 15 minutes south of Florence. We had easy access to the main tourist cities of Florence, Sienna, and Pisa as well as several smaller towns that dotted the tuscan landscape.  The farm had a pool overlooking these hills of olive groves and vineyards and the view was postcard perfect.  

Our "local" town San Casciano

Here's some of the sights we saw: 

The low(-er)lights

Sienna - a medieval town.  Apart from driving around for an hour to try and find a park, we spent a lot of time walking through the old city. It was overrun with tourists and the kids were bored. It is a beautiful beautiful city but the number of tourists, though not surprising, does put a dampener on the whole experience. 

Florence- probably our biggest disappointment. Again too many tourists and not too many kid friendly cultural activities. We went to the famous Ufizzo Gallery after pre-purchasing tickets and this was a great experience for my husband who had studied these paintings and sculptures at school, but I had not, and I found it fairly interesting but not in the same league as the Musee d'Orsay (still my all time favourite traditional art museum). 

 The Duomo was incredible to behold but the queues for even pre-purchased tickets stretched down the street so there was little chance we were going to queue with 4 bored kids for an hour to get in.  The older kids were also rather shocked at the number of "inappropriate" statues everywhere!

Pisa- given our tourist experience in the above two cities, we decided to give Pisa a miss. We had heard that it was extremely touristy and dirty and was an hour drive away. I don't regret it as instead we had a full day at other more interesting (for us) places. 

Food- gosh our expectations were so high, but by day 2 I was kind of over pizza. The pizza was good, but it wasn't substantially better than what we were used to eating in NZ. The pasta that we had, again was nice, but not anything that I would rave about. We had definitely eaten better in Belgium.   Maybe it was that we chose places that were not as good, but we did try many different places over the week with average results. I think we are spoilt in NZ with mostly very high standards of food dining out (and certainly the coffee is unequalled in any other part of the world we have been to yet). The local produce on the other hand was lovely when we bought from the local fruit and veg shops. An odd (to us) custom is that the shop owners serve each person individually. Ie they select the fruit and veg that you are requesting one by one for each person.  So instead of gathering everything you want  in bags and then going to the counter to weigh and pay, the shop owner follows you around the store and does it for you. They do this is in a remarkably leisurely manner and it seems that the italians are just happy to wait for their turn. The gelato of course was wonderful no matter where we went.... :)

Service- whether it was the numbers of tourists (which were less than the peak peak season of august) or the impact of the economy, I don't know, but we found the shop owners uniformly depressed and missing the vibrancy that you expect from italians. It very much felt like they were tourist-weary, another reason to avoid high tourist areas. 

The highlights (in ascending order)

San Gimignano - we had heard from an italian friend that this was a great small town to visit. And it was absolutely stunning. Far fewer tourists and as stunning as the larger cities. 

Lucca - we almost didn't go here, but had a spare day since deciding to forego Pisa, and what a great experience. Here we had an absolutely fantastic day, where we rented bikes (with the little two in a carriage behind) for some ridiculously cheap amount, and then spent a couple of hours biking around the town and along the top of the city walls. We also had our best pizza of the entire trip here, for a grand total of 4euro per pizza, it was definitely a highlight of the trip. And the kids had an absolute blast.

Monteriggioni - a tiny walled village high up on the hills.  Again, we almost didn't go here as it isn't listed in most of the touristy information as a "must see" in tuscany. But oh my goodness this is a hidden gem. This would rate as my favourite place to go in Tuscany. The place was almost deserted when we were there. Parking was almost free and easy to find. We spent a half a day here meandering through the delightful streets full of quaint little shops selling local produce and arts and crafts and had a lovely italian meal (without pizza) for lunch. 

Tuscan scenery- it is like a painting.  We drove from high up in the hills each day and you could never tire of views like this. It just makes you want to relax and drink some wine! 

All in all, we loved Tuscany, we would definitely come back again, although next time we will probably explore a different area of Italy, it has so much to offer. 

Next stop Switzerland-  one of the surprising highlights of our trip whose beauty and enjoyability equalled that of Italy's.