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| Zug waterfront |
Slept very well and timed out trip downstairs to breakfast (included in the price) to 9.30am so we could get the most of sleeping. Pretty much ate continuously until 10am to help offset the price of the room against buying any lunch/dinner later in the day. Alastair did himself proud but even he got stumped after his 8
th plate of goodies.
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| Switzerland can be a little too clean and neat |
Waddled out to the car with our baggage at the 11am checkout time and, after taking a little time to fit our gear plus our expanded selves into the car, headed southwest towards Lausanne. The attraction at Lausanne, on the extreme western border of Switzerland with France, was Marco. He was a guy who couch-surfed with both J & I in Nelson and also Alastair in Wellington. AJ took him mountain-biking. He is a 30-ish extreme sport junkie, who spends his life alternating between working in IT, and taking extensive trips around the world to indulge in his passion of sports. He works 4 days a week in Geneva and reckons he earns twice that of his friends who work any adjacent country. Swiss salaries are obviously huge, and Marco obviously considers travelling outside Switzerland costs peanuts.
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| Lucerne |
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| Lucerne's Kappelbrucke |
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| The Spreuerbrucke, Lucerne |
We visited both Luzern and Interlaken on the way to Lausanne. J & I had visited Luzern on our 1982 trip and it was great to return. In our wanderings this time, we discovered a second ancient covered bridge, so that was a bonus. The strange paintings adorning both bridges were typically painted in the 1500s. We find we are getting pretty blasé about the age of things. If we see a church or something younger than say 1700s it doesn’t get much of a look-in now. I admit it’s pretty sad. However, we are forever struck by the general age of the houses and other buildings that people are living and using on a day to day basis in the centres of all the villages and towns we have passed through. We love the way everything is used in a no-nonsense everyday way, e.g. kids kicking a soccer ball against the side of a 1600 year old church.
Our stop in Interlaken amounted to a drive-through of the centre area and along the waterfront only. It was raining steadily and it was already about 5pm. There had clearly been some sort of local festival on, as there were plenty of locals wandering around in Swiss costume, hauling very long tubed trumpet like instruments. Would have loved to get a photo but not possible. Continued our drive and arrived in Lausanne at 7pm, still raining. Marco directed us to a nearby parking zone and we lugged some of our gear to his 2nd floor flat. It was very nice to chill out and chat over a beer with him. His planning his next trip – Ironman in Aussie in Dec and then probably on to NZ again to catch up with some people, and he may well stay with us again. He is thinking his might make this trip another year-long one. Marco is really nice, but we suspect is too bound up in his sports/training to have much of a social life. We all pitched in to make a meal of scrambled eggs, salad etc. No-one felt like venturing out in the rain for an expensive meal.
