11242008 BLOG

November 24, 2008

Our cruise to Greece ended on Saturday morning early enough to spend one more day in Venice and Murano. Back at the apartment, on Sunday, we awoke to snow flurries which we learned, for that time of year, were the first ones in 40 years. Like a bunch of kids, the morning was spent playing in the white powder building snow creatures and having snow ball fights.

Our guests would be leaving on Tuesday and since Italians don’t really have a reason to celebrate Thanksgiving, we thought it would be more fun to celebrate it with friends on Monday instead of alone on Thursday. Trying to find what was needed for a traditional turkey dinner in Italy proved challenging. The girls did a great job with limited resources – turkey, dressing, and a green bean casserole. The only lacking ingredients were cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. It was a great dinner and having friends with us made it even more special.

With the departure of our guests, we decided to cut short our stay by a couple of days and get on with our side trip to Switzerland. Lake Como just north of Milano sounded like a good place to stop for a night after the drive from Padova. However, when we got to the Lake Como area, it appeared to be highly commercialized and wasn’t a place we would miss if we didn’t stop. With just enough daylight left to make it to the Swiss border we pressed on with the intent of crossing at Ponte Tresa, Switzerland. We crossed right at sundown after driving 12 kilometers in snow flurries and fog, had our passports stamped, drove a short distance around Lake Di Lugano, saw a “Minotel” and stopped. We were not going to go on a lengthy search for a place to stay this night. In actuality, it turned out to be very nice accommodations. We got a room on the lake and a very warm welcome from the proprietor which was the first of many pleasant experiences with Swiss hospitality. Even though they were having a big bash that evening he found us a table for dinner and stopped by to chat. And, this was the guy in the hotel parking lot when we first arrived who told me where and how to park. This was one time I was glad I held back a hand gesture before knowing who it was I was hand gesturing. And later he gave up his reserved parking spot for us!

It had been a long day, dinner had been enjoyable and Dorothea retired early. I stayed up to download some Christmas music to our I-Phone while we had internet access. Before going to bed, I took one last look at the beautiful scenery across the Lake and saw it was snowing. Knowing, Dorothea would have been disappointed if I waited until morning to tell her, I got her up and she stood, bundled in a blanket listening to Christmas carols and watching dancing snowflakes and the small hail that followed. (What better Christmas music could Ed have found – Elvis Presley Duets and Henry Mancini Christmas! DZ)

Switzerland, like Austria requires a road permit for all vehicles using their roadways. In Austria it was 7.50 Euros for 5 days and in Switzerland, it was 40.00 Swiss Francs for the balance of 2008. We stopped at a nearby ATM and withdrew Swiss Francs. At a local service station, we picked up our road permit (cash only) along with a few liters of diesel. Hard foreign currency doesn’t seem to have the same significance as U.S. Dollars. After awhile, it’s like using funny money. Even if you do the mental arithmetic using exchange rates, the comprehended value of the currency isn’t the same. If a purchase is 20.00 U.S. dollars, you pull out a twenty and you know just how much you’re spending. In other currencies a purchase of 20.00 Euros is 26.00 dollars and 20.00 Swiss Francs is 14.00 dollars. Also, the use of oversized, brightly colored bills and irregular sized coins doesn’t help the matter either.

The hotel owner highly recommended Lucerne as a stop. We were planning to stay two nights in Ponte Tresa but while checking the internet weather, a heavy snow storm was forecasted for the second day. Change of plans! Dorothea hurriedly searched the internet for a place to stay in Lucerne and discovered the “Minotel” chain was offering a 3 nights for the price of 2 package thru American Express. We booked our initial stay in Lucerne at a “Minotel” in old town, gathered our stuff together, loaded up our trusty steed and headed for the mountains.

The only sane way to get from Ponte Tresa to Lucerne over the very rugged Alps is on a major roadway that runs along a mountain valley. Once you run out of valley, it’s around and through the mountain peaks. Once we left the valley floor, the temperature started to drop and the forecasted snow started. The higher we went, the colder and snowier it got. I haven’t driven on snow and ice for over 45 years and didn’t know how the car would perform in -2 C weather. We took it slow and tried to stay out of everyone else’s way. The road in the high, high elevations starts going through mountains instead of around them but the tunnels, which I general don’t like, offered a welcome reprieve from the snowy roads. After coming out of one tunnel our guardian angels sent us a snow plow which we followed all the way to the Gottard tunnel. The St. Gotthard Tunnel at 16.4 kilometers long is the third longest road tunnel in the world. You enter it high in the Alps and exit it in the Lake Lucerne valley. (For me, the scenery was exquisite! The trees covered with snow and the little towns all bundled up were a sight to behold. DZ)

Finding the “Minotel” deal in “Old Town Lucerne” was fortunate since the Sunday evening we arrived was the evening St. Nicolas (or Samichlaus) made his first appearance before the Swiss Christmas celebrated on December 6th. We kept hearing loud bells and popping sounds and followed the noises to where there was a large gathering. The procession started at sundown and was led by groups of men’s clubs ringing cow bells (BIG bells), followed by other groups cracking whips and then guys with blackened faces followed by St. Nicholas and his attendants. It was a treat to candidly watch the traditions of another culture unfold before us.

Lucerne is a beautiful city with story-book characteristics. Half-timbered houses with the lake in the center of town, covered wooden bridges crossing it and surrounded by the Alps looks like something straight out of a Hansel and Gretel story. It was the start of the Swiss Christmas season with Christmas markets, St. Nicolas, parades, short evening performances for Advent at the performing arts center and Christmas magic everywhere. We took in a concert at a dinner theater with a great and apparently very popular German rock band in a uniquely painted building, visited “The Lion” monument erected to the Swiss mercenaries who died fighting against France and spent the day at the “Transportation” museum which has one of the largest collections of restored steam and electric locomotives. The aircraft display and IMAX theatre presentation of a rafting trip down the Colorado River were also cool. We ended up staying longer than 3 nights to take in all of the sites and moved to a Best Western that was also in the center of Old Town.

And now we’re off to Interlaken!

Ed and Dorothea