Some of you may remember our posts a few months ago about driving down to our holiday home in Santa Marina via the swiss mountain passes. Well here are some pics as promised!
When we booked the tunnel crossing for 27 May (ages before) we didn't realise that the swiss passes may not be open that early, but luckily the Grimsel and Furka passes opened on 7 May this year. This was the earliest they had opened in the last ten years.
We had the tunnel crossing booked for 6.20am and drove down through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, missing Basel by using AlanH's detour via Lorrach (no hold ups at all that way - thanks AlanH!) to the Holiday Inn at Neuenkirch and arrived at about 7pm. It was raining when we arrived there and wondered if it would be snowing higher up in the passes. We can throughly recommend the Holiday Inn for their efficient checking in and checking out. The Marche restaurant next door was a bit of a disappointment though, but we were quite tired by then and did really care what we ate that evening. Breakfast was nice and early (from 6.30am) and there was lots of choice and plenty of it (this made up for the restaurant the night before). We were back on the road by about 7.15am that morning and heading to the passes in the hope that they would be open. It had indeed snowed up there the night before, but luckily not enough to close it. A guy at one of the coffee shops was clearing the snow off of his board advertising his prices, when we pulled up. We don't know if it was because we were quite early, but we didn't encounter too much traffic and it felt like the top of the world up there in amongst the snow capped mountains.
We can quite see why some of you drive over instead of flying, with beautiful scenery like this. We hope to come back along the Stevio pass in October, weather permitting!
Hope you like the pics!
John & Toni
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There are 4 replies to this post
Beautiful pics Santa - I want
Beautiful pics Santa - I want to try the Gothard Pass one day and the tip about whether it will be open is a useful one. Otherwise I'm quite likely to have assumed that I could swan through in December!
Webcams are a good tip
Beforehand we found a webcam that is on the top of the Grimsel Hospiz and gives a view fairly similar to the fourth photo. Once we saw the snow melting on the Grimselsee at the end of April we thought that we may be in with a chance. We had often said that it looked like snow on the top of the mountains when we had flown over in June previous years, but were quite surprised to find that several of the passes are only open June to October when we started looking into which passes we would be going through. We did go along the Gothard pass as well, but didn't stop for any photo opportunities because we needed to get to Rome by early evening.
Lovely pictures
We did the Grimsel and the Furka passes several years ago on a beautiful sunny day in September and it was equally nice, although much greener.
We have also done the Stelvio, but that is very different: rather like the Gotthard pass at the top - very much barren rock everywhere, but with the addition of a load of tacky souvenir shops... Last year we came back over the Albula Pass, from the Swiss Engadine over to Chur. That's very interesting because the railway passes through it in a series of tunnels and viaducts and is most spectacular.
Oh My!
Gorgeous pictures. Someday I'll travel from Philadelphia to see the Alps.