ROAD TRIP PART 2 ~ Germany, Switzerland, Italy

Wilkommen to Lauterbrunnen Switzerland!!!

After Interlaken we went up the canyon towards Lauterbrunnen, my favorite place in ALL of Switzerland. It was tucked in the valley of the Swiss Alps and they were towering all around the village. Banners and flags, waterfalls pouring over the sides of the peaks, moutain dogs, hikers, mountain bikers everywhere. The feeling was so inviting: Come, explore. That we did!

Down town Lauterbrunnen...

We took the Gondola up to Murren. An even smaller alpine village that you can only reach by Gondola. It went up... and up.. and up... and up. You can see little Lauterbrunnen way down below.

And then the view from the top was so breathtaking. The clean mountain air and light breeze was so crisp I found myself taking deep gulps of it in. We stopped on the top of the mountain side for a while, waiting for the train that went along the ridge to Murren.

The train stopped at the edge of Murren and we walked through the small village and admired all it had to offer. Swiss Chalets dotted all over the landscape with the shutters that I love, all the banners, flags, cowbells, and decorations.
The next Gondola over to another lookout and working our way back down the mountain side.

After a liesure afternoon wandering through the mountainside, we looked at the time and had to admit that it was getting late and we still had a 6 1/2 hour drive to Rosolina Mare, Italy. The sun was setting and we knew that we must say our goodbyes. We made it down after another Gondola ride only to find out that we missed our bus by about 5 minutes and the next didn't come for another hour. We were stuck. Now, being "stuck" in a gorgeous valley, a waterfall and river on one side, and a lovely little kiosk selling fresh alpine foods: cheese and bread, it just might be the best place on earth to be "Stuck". We just enjoyed the company.

After seeing these photos, I have many more that I will try and post on FB, you can appreciate the beauty of this area and how easy it was for us to become completely mezmorized by these mountains, luring us away from paying for our parking!!!! Yes, we got a 40 swiss francs parking ticket. Could've been worse I suppose.

We left and followed our trusty navigator "TOMTOM" and he took us back to Interlaken then up towards this insane mountain pass. The switchbacks lived up to their name for sure, and TOMTOM kept saying "turn around", but it was only because of the severity of the turns. About 10 miles in, we started wondering if we really were going the right way. TOMTOM isn't incredibly reliable, especially through the back mountain roads of Switzerland. It turned out to be a complete blessing, this new road we were heading down. The sun was setting and the clouds were moving in over the peaks. It took us 2 hours to drive 27 miles, a motorcyclist's paradise. We kept zig-zagging up and up, through tunnels, under waterfalls, by green pastures with inredibly content cows practically strutting around showing off their cowbells and full on knowng that they live in paradise.

The road ended up taking us to the autostrade that we needed to head towards Italy, thank goodness! We then entered the 17km tunnel that spit us out near the border of Italy and then all of the sudden the exit signs read "Uscita" which meant we were definitely in Italy. We drove for what seemed like a lifetime and had to stop multiple times to wash off our faces and even take a little snooze. We were exhausted. We kept inching closer and closer to Rosolina Mare and knew we were close when you could smell the salt in the air. We had about 13 min left to reach out destination and we came upon this...... a dead end! What!?!?! We had to turn around and go back to find another route. We were not happy with TOMTOM at this point. After the roadblock and the random detour, we arrived in Rosolina Mare around 2:30 am. Shyqyr!