Last Day Together and Heading to Switzerland

June 30, 2024

This is 2 days in one post.

Yesterday morning, we all checked out of the hotel in Verona. We boarded our buses and headed off to Dolo, which is a small town not far from Venice. Dolo is on the River Brenta and drains into the Venice Lagoon (Adriatic Sea). Many Venetians, back in the day, built villas along the river - their summer homes. So we saw lots of those while we drifted down the river on a tour boat.

A couple of examples:

It was quite a pleasant float, although it was hot until the sky clouded over. Then it wasn’t bad.

Of course there are several bridges which need to be “moved” while this big boat is floating. There are 2 guys that open the first one, then move to the next one by driving their van down the road to reach the bridge before we get there. Keeps them busy!

We stopped for lunch at another villa. Beautiful spot. And that was our farewell lunch. One group was going on to Venice, one group was going home, and a few stragglers were doing other things in Italy. But we finished our boat tour and the buses met us at the end. One bus to the airport hotel and one bus to Venice.

Those of us not going to Venice (did that already) went to the hotel near the airport and enjoyed some drinks and nibblies together in the hotel bar. In spite of that, we were up at a decent hour this morning to head to the airport. Of course most people were checking in to fly home, but Gerard and I were renting a car from there.

So we did that and headed off down the highway - sort of back to where we came from - past Dolo, past Verona, past Lake Garda and Cremona, all the way to where the highway would turn down to Milan. But we went the other way - north. Along the way:

By the way, this is our licence plate:

Interesting start to the plate, I’d say.

We’re heading to Switzerland, through the Alps! But first, we passed by Lake Como.

And after travelling through many tunnels, a couple of which were at least 4 km long, we started climbing to the Spluga Pass, which is also where we entered Switzerland from Italy. There were 52 switchbacks in total - true switchbacks. Along with many other twists and turns while climbing. And that was just going up! We had several going down the other side as well. I got used to cranking the wheel around. The only real difficulty was seeing if other cars were coming on the other side. Yikes! I have to say though, the guardrails in Italy were a bit better than the SINGLE WIRE guard rails in Switzerland where the edge just drops off.

A couple of shots of the mountains. Unfortunately, quite cloud-covered.

We stopped for a break at a rest stop. Had to take a picture of the toilet - a huge bowl.

After being on the road for 7-1/2 hours (including stops) we finally arrived at our B&B in Buchs. Lovely spot in someone’s house on a quiet street. The hostess is so gracious. She let me do some laundry in her machines. It has been 2 weeks of sweating, so it’s time.

We found a place open for dinner (it’s Sunday night, so not many). These were in the yard outside the restaurant. Thought they were pretty cool.