Day 11 The Alps - Climb Every Mountain!

Today we had our first proper taste of switch-back driving, no that's not the movie about the cowboys and the mountain!

We left Lugano on the SS2 and headed up into the Alps, to be immediately deluged with more biblical rain that reduced our progress a touch to 45 MPH, all the way up through and past Bellinzona and the off at JCT 41 (bit confusing) as the St Gottard Pass was definitely open, but we were met by a road sign with a large RED X on it but a few yards down the line and we hopped left after Mike franticall shouting down the walky talkies, onto the San Gottard Pass road...so we started to climb through the clouds to our first set of bends and up to a vantage point for a stop and to get the roof down..

The road up to the summit had some wonderful surprises instore, especially when we were confronted by 2 people on uni-cycles climibing the mountain the other way...much respect!

Then some exhilirating roads, views and great times as we overtook things, pushed nervious drivers off the road, ran over a few locals.

With great sceneray also

So we drop down the Furka Pass (through James Bond Strasse) and down towards our stop for lunch (well we tried the main town, only to find that find it was like a Boomtown Rats song...We Dont Like Monday's!). So a drive back up the pass for a few miles and we climbed up a gnarly little road to a restuarant called The Castle in Blitzengen. What confornted the team was a Michelin Star restuarant with some exotic menu options (which we had to translate from German to English!----what would we do without google translate?

Awesome food, Jan asked for Mayo and the owner nearly cried!

Then down to Fiesch and our overnight stop, great little hotel at the foot of the Alps, where they had a pool, Sauna / Steam Rooom and for Jan a Bar! so we sent the girls out on a shopping expedition to buy some scram for the evening, so we could have an al fresco dining experience on the largest of the 3 x balconies.

With the boys all huddled around Andy's phone watching the 4 day of the test match, a nice evenings repasse was had, followed by a journey into the bar for a night cap.

So tomorrow we travel up the Furka, down the Grimsel Passes on our way to Interlaken.