Switzerland - Central

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Well, it had to end some time, but we left Lauterbrunnen on Sunday.

Feels like we were there for two weeks, not 2 and a half days.

On our way to Lucerne, we stopped at a tourist spot, Ballenberg, which was basically a Swiss version of Sovereign Hill. The main diffeerence being it wasn't based around gold mining, but simply Swiss living and housing through the ages and areas of Switzerland. It was really excellent, with cheese making, pottery, black-smith's, manual farming, old thatch cottages etc. and Kerryn's favorite - a chocolatier's.

Went on to Lucerne, were we checked out the Lion monument - twice. I saw this amazing sculpture last time I was here, and it is - for some reason - very moving, just to look at it.

We spent a nice morning walking around the 'Old Town' and famous wooden bridge, then had a really cool lunch in a Swiss version of a theatre restaurant. Met some girls from Gippsland, who go to the Boolarra Folk festival every year! :)

After a huge lunch, we drove down to Lugano - passing through about 50 tunnels on the way - one 9.5km and a second 17km long! (Check out the video)

Took a wrong turn (bloody GPS! :) and ended up on the coast of the peninsula just South of Lugano, which was lucky, because when we saw that Lugano was a much bigger city than we expected, we headed back to where we were 'lost' and found a place to stay there.

Got an 11 am checkout, so enjoying a good nights rest, and nice 300km cruise down to Monterosso in Italy today.

Ciao!

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