July 11, 2016
What a nice breakfast they had at this hotel. It had a very personal feel where the owner was on premises and she seemed to have a genuine interest in the wellbeing of her patrons. Nutella was present and at this point I just assumed it would be ever present.
After breakfast, we loaded up the car and headed to Lauterbrunnen where I had been as a wee lad of 8 or 9. I remember it being a sleepy town at the foot of the Eiger and the Jungfrau mountains. Giants in their own rights. It was a sleepy farmer town.
There are two ways to get there, both go to the same place, but one is the adventurous path and one is the boring path. Guess which one the GPS decided to use based on which side of town we were on… yeah, switch back one lane road up one side of a small mountain and down the other. No fear, I am an expert at this now. This road eventually joined the boring road which paralleled the rail way and slowly winded it ways through the valley.
At some point in the last 30 years, the world had discovered my little sleepy town.
At the entrance to town there is a parking garage that had 9 tour buses and no shortage of cars. The main street was a cacophony of Asians and Indians and hotels and tourist shops and it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be for my kids. Plus the clouds still had not cleared out so you couldn’t really see past 100’ up. We walked around and looked at stuff regardless of the tourism take over. There is a gondola that goes to top of the Jungfrau for the small price of €120. Each. Well, anyways, I did take a picture of a waterfall that I know I have a picture of from previous visit. Kind of felt let down by both the town and the weather. So, we left and went on our way to Milan. Never been there either.
If the trip into Interlaken had windy roads over mountains and treacherous conditions, I was mistaken because the road over the Southern Alps really made that road feel like a country drive on a main street. This road had some serious pucker worthy corners and cliffs. My ass was pretty much puckered the whole way. Guard rails were basically 2’x2’ concrete blocks like every 8’ apart. I could easily squeeze my car through that. Then is straight down to the road you were just on. Add to that tour buses and tractor trailers coming down the mountain, the low clouds and just generally crappiness made the drive really bad. I think that I past a couple of mountain goats that looked at me with sense of surprise that I was still going up. Did I mention it was raining at this point? Then, you break through the clouds and there is a freaking dam that has created a lake like a million feet above sea level. Just BAM! “Let’s put a lake here!” At the very tip top was a restaurant and rest stop. Someone drove all the way up this cliff face and built stuff. Man. Who has that kind of energy?
The down side was just as bad, but foot on other pedal. Brake now instead of gas. Still switch backs, still semi’s and buses, but I could see them now. We eventually make it down into a nice valley and pull over for a break. There was a small gas station/restaurant and we decided to have food. It was really good and I wish I could remember the name of the place, but it was a train station/gas station and restaurant on the only road from Interlaken going east then south. They had a specialty dich of bread with stuff on it then cheese melted over it. It was a welcome break to not drive anymore. We still had a little mountain driving left but it wasn’t bad. We finally came out the other side and it was like we were in another country… Ha, it was Italy. Not really, we were still in Switzerland, but it was like Italian Switzerland. Architecture was very Italian, signs were in Italian and the rest stop we stopped at everything was in Italian… They took credit cards… oh how I loved this side of the Alps. Snacked up and it was all nice Highway until we reached the actual Italian border. Then OH MY GOSH. Everyone forgot how to drive. It was like a Mad Max movie. I think someone threw a bomb at us once. Ok, I exaggerate, but not as much as you’d think.
We survived the highway until we got into Milan proper. My GPS had been such a trustworthy friend. We had to drop off car in the middle of town. In most countries, they have these things on the roads like painted stripes and what that does is guide drivers as to what “lane” they should be driving in… LOL… Not in Milan. A 2 lane road can easily fit 4 cars across and 800 motorcycles. I was initially scared, like seriously thought we were going to die. We were on a 6 lane road. 2 lanes on my side, 2 “trolley” lanes in the middle and 2 lanes on the far side going the opposite direction. If there is no trolley, that becomes another lane for your side. Then the round abouts… oh man… the round abouts with stop lights and the drag race as you jockey to get to the turn you need to get off on. Every one drives these little cars. Like Fiats and SMART cars and things even smaller. And the motorcycles, scooters and mopeds obey no laws that I know of. Weaving in and out of lanes, between cars, on sidewalks, on the curb,,, After a couple miles I figured out the order in the chaos. There was actually a pattern I was able to discern to the driving and what cars got priority and who did what when. I figured it out but hear me now. I WILL NEVER DRIVE IN AN ITALIAN CITY AGAIN.
Eventually we make to our destination in one piece with all of our own paint on the car. The EuroCar drop off is next to one of the finer hotels in central Milan. There was no parking though. I drove up on the sidewalk and received a couple well intentioned gestures from the natives like they were wishing me a good day or something similar. Tell the kids to get everything out of the car and stand over there. No bear in mind that I asked them to get everything of ours out. I went in and it was like a bad 70’s movie. A skinny Italian guy with a bad comb over smoking a cigarette behind a yellow counter arguing with a fat guy about something in Italian. Arms were flailing about in wild gestures and the words were coming a mile a minute. I just stood there for a bit waiting my turn. I called Uber in the meantime for a lift to our Hotel I was tired.
Gave the guy the keys, and he gave a quick inspection and said ok. Signed it over just as the Uber got there. Take a nice, relaxing ride through town to get to our hotel which had me worried because it was a “Best Western”. Apparently, Best Western went through and just purchased a bunch of hotels and renamed them. This ended up being my favorite hotel we stayed in. We get out of the Uber and I see my son digging through his suitcase. “I think I left my wallet in the car.” *^%^… Ok, get the wife and girl child into the hotel and tell her to get checked in as we need to rush back to the car and find his wallet before a cleaner does as he easily had $300 in it… Uber? Yeah. Though this is the last one. We get back to the rental agency and explain what happened and the guy with the bad comb over leads us into the bowels of the hotel attached where the rental cars go. Lo and behold the wallet was still there. It had fallen out of his pocket into the slot between the door and the seat. Everything intact and as we get back outside the skies decided to just open up on us. Lightning striking the building right around us. Like Lightning and BOOM! No count… The rain came in buckets and we are standing under the entrance to this fancy hotel when the water just starts pouring through the lights shining down. It’s like there was a faucet. The bellhop disappeared and came back with a maintenance guy. I don’t understand Italian, but I watch this conversation go and I laughed the whole time.
“Look! The water is coming through the roof!”
Maintenance guy looks up and ceiling, moves head around a bit.’ Yep” nodding his head.
“Well, what about it? What can you do?” asked the bellhop.
Looking a bit more intently at the water pouring through the lights “I guess I could get a bucket?”
Bellhop starts waving his hands at the waterfalls “A Bucket?! There is water pouring from the lights!” waving very energetically now.
Maintenance guy looks at the bellhop and back at the lights “yeah, that’s a lot of water. We’ll need a couple of buckets.” And then leaves.
Bellhop just watches as the maintenance guy leaves and stares at the door…
It was really fun to watch. I am not sure what the actual conversation was, but that what I imagined watching it. Another rental car pulled up on the sidewalk next to us and was now blocking the entrance to the hotel. But it was pouring out. We decided to catch a cab at this point as the rain basically shut down Uber. Prices tripled and there were no cars available. Bellhop eventually gets us a cab but we have to leave our protected shelter and go to the road because of the lack of parking at EuroCar… Ends up cab was about ¼ of what Uber was charging (I later found out I had accidentally changed the car I asked Uber for on the app from a regular car to a luxury car and that was why there was a shortage and price was so high).
Finally get back to our hotel and we get checked in where we find out that both rooms were a standard queen room… Man! Just once I was hoping it would get right. But, since we can’t have both kids in the same bed and they understood that, they upgraded their room to a mini suite for same fee. Now they had a better room than I did… grumble. Laundry was free for patrons, there was a pool, a bar, and in a nice neighborhood (I guess? I mean we didn’t get mugged or anything…).
Got dry and the rain stopped and we went out for a walk and looked for a place to eat dinner. Italy, it turns out, is a bit like Spain. They have a siesta. So nothing is open in the afternoon. And restaurants don’t open until like 7pm. So, stores are open until 7 and then restaurants open after the stores close. So, walking around at 5 in the afternoon looking for a place to eat was fruitless. The area we were in was nice though. We walked for a while and then found a pizza place that was open. It was good because it started raining again. It was a relaxing dinner. We found our way back to the hotel and just spent the evening unwinding and catching up on mail and doing laundry. It was a long, but good day.
