4th Jan - Tour Day 8

Switzerland is a *insert list of superlatives* beautiful country. It doesn't take the prize from Scotland, but it's a close second. You'll look at something passing by outside of the car window, know you're looking at it, but you can't grasp what you're seeing, well, let me speak for myself.

The other immediately noticeable thing about Switzerland are the tunnels. There are tunnels everywhere, miles of them. The Swiss will go out of their way to tunnel through anything they can find, they'll even make a tunnel where there isn't a mountain, I don't know why, it's just what they do - even their cheese is full of holes going in no particular direction.
We wanted to see the St Gotthard tunnel, which we did... twice!

I don't know how it happened, but the kids developed this zombie-like droning mantra for driving through the kilometers of tunnel. "I must be dreaming, stop the car, I must be dreaming, get this dream out of me, stop the car, stop the car..." Repeat any of these phrases any number of times, and in any order, from the moment we enter the tunnel till the moment we leave it. Importantly it must be said loudly, very slowly and in the best low monotone one can muster.

We'd planned to fit in a trip on the Jungfrau train and a visit to the Aletsch Glacier today, but didn't manage either. The directions on the GPS didn't work out to be doable - turns out that we'd need to be on the other side of the mountain range, so the plan was scuppered!

We stopped for lunch at Hospental,

and, while we were having lunch were informed by the owners that the road passes we needed to take to get to Sion were all closed. Fortunately there is a train that will get us there, and surprisingly TomTom knew about it... It took us to a point and then said "Take the ferry..." well ok, it's a train ferry, but fair enough, we took the ferry.

The train is a long flatbed, mostly under roof, we drove on and parked waiting to make the trip.

Waiting for the ferry at Realp...

There she is...
Most of the trip passed by in complete darkness because the train is in a tunnel for most of the journey.
Nevertheless, we got to the other side of some mountain and continued on our way.

Switzerland, and some of the closer parts of Germany, have these very oddly shaped houses... Typically made of wood, look ancient, and appear to have been slapped together during a very cold winters night. Like someone was in a hurry to have a shelter and paid no attention to symetry, right angles or any other key design principles... then never went back to remedy the construction when summer rolled on - oh, but they add on new rooms that look equally hastily scrambled. This is not a particularly good example, but you get the idea...?

Look at the avalanche countermeasures on this hill... I wonder what the property prices are like below that lot.

A windy, windy road going up a mountain...

By late afternoon we had made our way to Sion, me feeling crook, all I wanted to do was get into bed... tomorrow was another day
This is Tourbillon in Sion from our hotel parking lot... on tomorrows schedule

 

A very blurry picture of Sion on the mountainside - pretty in the dusk, lights coming on etc

 

 

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