Grimsel & Furka passes

Some of you may remember our posts a few months ago about driving down to our holiday home in Santa Marina via the swiss mountain passes. Well here are some pics as promised!

When we booked the tunnel crossing for 27 May (ages before) we didn't realise that the swiss passes may not be open that early, but luckily the Grimsel and Furka passes opened on 7 May this year. This was the earliest they had opened in the last ten years.

We had the tunnel crossing booked for 6.20am and drove down through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, missing Basel by using AlanH's detour via Lorrach (no hold ups at all that way - thanks AlanH!) to the Holiday Inn at Neuenkirch and arrived at about 7pm. It was raining when we arrived there and wondered if it would be snowing higher up in the passes. We can throughly recommend the Holiday Inn for their efficient checking in and checking out. The Marche restaurant next door was a bit of a disappointment though, but we were quite tired by then and did really care what we ate that evening. Breakfast was nice and early (from 6.30am) and there was lots of choice and plenty of it (this made up for the restaurant the night before). We were back on the road by about 7.15am that morning and heading to the passes in the hope that they would be open. It had indeed snowed up there the night before, but luckily not enough to close it. A guy at one of the coffee shops was clearing the snow off of his board advertising his prices, when we pulled up. We don't know if it was because we were quite early, but we didn't encounter too much traffic and it felt like the top of the world up there in amongst the snow capped mountains.

We can quite see why some of you drive over instead of flying, with beautiful scenery like this. We hope to come back along the Stevio pass in October, weather permitting!

Hope you like the pics!

John & Toni