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Published: July 25th 2012
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The next morning, the guys are only working half a day before we head back towards Geneva, so I set out on foot (much safer) to find the town by the lake called Ascona. There are about four towns that all seem to converge at the lake. One thing about this area, is that you're so close to Italy, but you're in Switzerland so French and Italian are both spoken everywhere and you're also close enough to Germany to have vacationers there, so you hear plenty of German as well. Now I've gotten slightly beyond the salutations of either French or Italian, but you throw German in the mix and no idea of what to say to whom, and I just pretty much smiled and a little head nod and that's the best I could manage! lol
The town was a solid mix of old and new structures and has been around for a very long time, with archeological finds dating all the way back to the Neolithic Age. References to the actual town date back to 1061 and there are a few historic castles in the area. Though we didn't get a chance to see those as we were
really there just overnight, you did see signs of older historic buildings and monuments throughout town. And like most of the towns anywhere around the Alps, the presence of flowers of every kind were all around you and decorated all the city streets and homes and shopping districts.
I found Ascona along the lake and walked around and took a bunch of pictures. It's a beautiful lake front area of shops and restaurants and parks with boating harbors and a ferry that you can take out onto the lake. I wandered there for a couple hours and then started heading back up to the hotel to meet the guys and head out.
We leave Locarno and plan on heading back a different way than we came. We learned that the way we came on the S337 was not the shortest, fastest or easiest way to get there....good time to find out. lol We naively thought that because we had a partly different route back, the GPS would automatically make the correct choice this time and take us on the major highway. Wrong....a couple miles outside of town the roads and signs started looking all too familiar and sure
enough, we were back on S337 and were going back exactly the way we came. Without knowing what to try to re-route to, we stuck with the GPS and went back through the Alps the same way we came. A little easier this time, maybe just because we knew what to expect.
Not having eaten lunch, we stop at Simplon Pass and grab a bite to eat....hashbrowns wit eggs on top and a Swiss flag in the center. lol It was really good though and took a few pictures there before heading on down the road. Simplon Pass is at an elevation of 6,542 feet and although comfortably warm, there were mountains right beside us with plenty of snow on the upper sections. It was built in the very early 1800s to transport artillary and has been continually improved. In the 1950's it became one of few passes at this elevation that are open during the winter and has made accomodations for avalanche shelters along the route. Almost all Alpine passes at this elevation close from October through late April. You'll see pictures of an eagle sculpture on the pass and it's by Swiss scupltor Erwin Friedrich Baum as
a symbol of the mountain brigade.
Continuing on, we make a few stops along the way for pictures and then drive into Chamonix, France where Mont Blanc is located. Chamonix is an extremely pretty town at the base of the mountain and is very touristy with heaviy flowered streets, restaurants, shops (sound familiar? lol) and views of the highest summit in western Europe standing at 15,774 feet. Chamonix actually hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924. We were too late in the day to take the tram to the top, it takes 50 minutes to get there, but the views were still quite impressive. The name is pronounced shaw (like shawl minus the l), mo (long o, like 3 stooges Moe), knee with emphasis on the knee.....Chamonix....very French sounding. 😊
Mont Blanc also has a glacier called the Bossons Glacier and you'll see pictures of that.
We walked around town a bit and took pictures (I know...it's all I do lol), wandered in and out of a few shops and after about an hour or so, loaded back up to head on to Geneva about another hour and a half down the road. We got in around
10:00 or so, checked back into our hotel in Geneva and pretty wiped out after a long day of driving (about 6 hours total), it was time to call an end to the day.
The guys worked the next day (we're now on Thursday), so I hung out in the hotel, worked on pictures and the blog and took it easy. I definitely had the better end of that deal. 😊 It was first chance in a bit for a little down time and I think everyone needed it. Nothing really to report about Thursday beyond that other than I hand washed some socks and underwear but that's not too exciting, though necesary. lol I will say that Europe has towel warmers that work really well for drying clothes too. 😊
Friday was another work day but as soon as that wrapped up, we headed out for our weekend in Rome, so Rome will be my next report. In the meantime, some Alps and other miscellaneous pictures. The pictures really begin around Crans-Montana since I was driving the first part of the trip, but hope you enjoy them. 😊
Just a note here....the uploader is a little
flakey today and they're not loading them in order so my notes on some of the pictures might not make sense but you can kinda tell which group of pictures go together. I tried to edit and correct that but for some reason it's not working at the moment. It's also only letting me upload 100 per entry, so there are more pictures coming in another post.
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Lee Anne Zeb
non-member comment
Switzerland, etc.,
OMG...what incredibly stunning pictures!*... Just gorgeous!* Keep em'coming!* Love you!* :) <3