Being the last day of our trip, we had nothing on the agenda except to cover 250 miles or so back from St Gallen CH to Frankfurt DE. This is pretty easy because almost the entire route is A-road (the equivalent of an Interstate in the US) and so travel is quick along smooth and mostly straight pavement.

The trick was to somehow work our way around the blue laws that prohibit employment on Sunday in Switzerland (with a few exceptions), so we could buy some food for breakfast and lunch. Looking up the generalities of the law we discovered that train stations and other tourist areas are exempted, so after checking out of the hotel we drove to the hauptbahnhof (central train station) and found an open convenience store where we could get a few pastries and some yogurt.

We still had plenty of other small food items in our backpack to augment this, plus the last helpings of Dr Oetker. Breakfast was very glamorous; we tailgated in the parking garage. That’s the second parking garage meal and the fourth or fifth in the car. Can you tell we aren’t “glampers”?

From there it was an uneventful ride through Switzerland and back up to Frankfurt, partly following the route we came down earlier. Since it was uninteresting I can break away from the travel saga to comment on bathrooms.

In Europe, you often are expected to pay for the public bathrooms. This is well worth it because in exchange for half a Euro or Swiss franc you get a facility that is actually clean and stocked with supplies. Today we were out of francs and didn’t want to get more at an ATM because we were leaving the country, so we stopped at a highway rest area with free bathrooms and the difference was … enlightening.

We got to the Frankfurt area around 5:00 pm and didn’t want to go directly to the boring airport hotel, so we called Eleanor’s brother who lived in Weisbaden for several years, and he suggested we go back to Mainz to see a few things we didn’t catch the first time. We took this advice and found a huge Sunday crafts market going on by the river. Parking was a challenge (as it always seems to be in every European city, so nothing new there) and once we got settled we found the crowd at the market to be overwhelming, so we moved on.

We ran into a guy from Florida who was visiting his old friends in Mainz. Like a lot of Americans in this town, he used to be in the military at the nearby American military base. Apparently when we stopped to take pictures of a fragment of the old Berlin Wall (on display here and in many other places), we brought it to his attention. He’d driven past this spot for five years and never noticed it.

He introduced us to his local friend and we got directed to one of the very few restaurants open for dinner in Mainz on a Sunday night. You get a choice on Sunday nights: Greek, Mexican, pizza, or whatever the hotel restaurant serves. We chose Greek.

The last day of a good trip is hard to face. We didn’t want to let the trip go quite yet, so after dinner we wandered through Mainz again and found yet another beautiful church (St. Peter Mainz), the Natural History Museum with its giant hourglass, and some floral parks.

At this point Eleanor started talking about how we should have booked just two more days, and I felt the same way but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. It’s the same reason we set out to travel full-time in our Airstream for six months and ended up traveling for three years. We could travel forever and I think we’d still want just a little more.

Today we fly back, and the next things will start to happen. It’s really not the end of anything, just another step along the long road.

I want to thank those of you who have written in during this trip to say that you enjoyed reading about it. I do occasionally get those notes but in the past ten days I’ve gotten more than usual. I’d probably write the blog even if only one person read it, but it’s nice to know so many people are interested and find the story entertaining.

In tomorrow’s blog I’ll write about the technology that I used to help smooth the trip and keep in contact with work as we traveled. Geeks will like it; others may wish to check in a few days from now!

After our late wake-up in Milan, we didn’t have much time to meander around. (Those black-out drapes in the hotel room really work too well!) Since the hotel was in an area with no local restaurants and few shops, we just took off in the car hoping to spot a grocery store before we got on the Autostrada.

As luck would have it, we were making an unscheduled detour from our route and that brought us to a panetteria. We were getting hungry and I was busy doing the usual Milan traffic thing, which means driving like I’m in a video game, when Eleanor shouted “PANETTERIA!” To raise this to a miracle required the availability of an open parking space nearby, and so we felt doubly blessed when we scored that too. To be accurate, it was on the sidewalk, but that’s where they park here.

When in Europe I tend to go for muesli and yogurt for breakfast, although I am easily tempted by a good pastry. I’ve been carrying around a half-empty box of Dr Oetker’s “Vitalis” FrüchtMüsli since we left Germany, and whenever I can get yogurt I mix the two together. So we came out of the panetteria with pineapple yogurt, two small pastries filled with nutella (for later), and an apricot tart, and made a quick breakfast while parked on the sidewalk.

Yogurt note: The best yogurt I’ve found in Europe is in Germany. I wish I could take a few dozen containers home on the airplane.

Traffic note: Driving in Milan is only slightly crazy, far better than Rome. The abolition of 2-stroke motors means that the urban streets are now breathable, too. Anyone who has lived in the Boston area can easily handle Milan.

From there it was straight to the Autostrada and rather quickly to the Swiss border. The border dips south there, so from Milan to the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland is not far at all. The route passes through the stunningly beautiful Lakes region of Italy, up past Lugano, and then into the Alps—almost every inch of which is scenic. We only wished there were more frequent pull-outs for the many places we wanted to stop and take pictures.

Right after the border on the Swiss side there’s this unusual piece of architecture. It’s a shopping mall. We tried to stop and take a look inside, but couldn’t find the entrance to the parking lot! This was a solid 20 minute detour, during which we found a sign telling us where to enter. Following the directions, we found only an exit.

Our route this time would take us over the San Bernadino Pass, toward Chur. The tunnels begin on the Italian side, and get longer as you head north. I didn’t keep track of the number of tunnels we passed through, but three or four of them were longer than 1 km, and the longest was 6.6 km. After that one, I noticed that the exit ramp signs had changed from ‘USCITA” to “AUSFAHRT”, indicating that we had passed from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland to the German-speaking part. The tunnels are the only times the road is not scenic. In a way they are a break from the almost overwhelming vistas, allowing time to digest what you’ve seen.

We saw a castle ruin high atop a hillside and stopped off to explore it. The ruin is unmarked from the road and there is no signage indicating its presence, but the narrow dirt road leading to it is easy to find. A short walk up the hill revealed an old and still active church, then the ruins, and then a surprise: the area of the ruins has been nicely refurbished with walking paths, modern bathrooms, and open grass for gatherings.

We had walked right into someone’s private gathering, perhaps a family reunion. They had elaborate tents set up with food and even a dance floor. Nobody seemed to mind our presence, so we wandered around for a few minutes and took some pictures.

I have been meaning to note the sounds of this country that we’ve enjoyed all week. Our favorite sound is the cow bells in Switzerland. Once in a while we’ll go past a field with cows or goats and hear the clanging of their bells, which sounds like an orchestra of bells tuning up for a performance. It’s a little like the sound of bells that you sometimes hear atop sailboat masts in the harbor.

The other sound that I love to hear is the church bells. They are different in every town. The first time I heard them on this trip was on Sunday in Weilburg (Germany) at the Airstream gathering, and they were fantastic. I’m pretty sure we could hear more than one church at a time, ringing those huge bells for all they were worth. It’s an old-fashioned sound that you rarely hear in the US anymore. They ring on Sundays but also in some towns they ring out significant hours, so you can be pleasantly surprised by a bell at unexpected times.

Along this route we also saw a lot more of the snowmelt cascades that I mentioned in an earlier post. It always seemed that they were located where we couldn’t exit the highway, so we have few pictures of them. We finally got a good opportunity to photograph this one. Multiply this by about 50 and you’ll have an idea of the scenery along the Furkapass.

Today the goal was St Gallen, Switzerland. We had no preconceptions or guide book references to steer us here—it just looked interesting and was along our route back. It turned out to be an excellent “find”, not touristy but filled with interesting things: great architecture, a huge pedestrian area in the downtown, students doing some sort of rituals (which involved singing and towing a little wagon filled with alcohol, often wearing costumes), and (my favorite) the Mühlweggbahn.

The Mühlweggbahn is just a little funicular that goes to the upper part of town, but it had a couple of the hallmarks of being worthy of exploration: (1) the rail car disappears into a tunnel; (2) we had no idea where it went and there was little explanatory signage. So we bought a pair of tickets from the machine and rode it up the tunnel. At the top we found ourselves in a quiet residential part of town with, yes, more gorgeous views and beautiful buildings. It’s a lovely place, Switzerland.

Today is our last drive, back to Frankfurt. The weather has turned gray and much cooler so we are finally getting a chance to wear the long sleeves we packed. The church bells have been ringing this morning, reminding me that it’s Sunday. In Switzerland that’s a bit of a problem because of very limiting Blue Laws in this country—we are going to have to be clever in order to find breakfast—but we have read up on the exemptions to the law and have a few ideas where we can get something to eat as we depart St Gallen. In any case, in a few hours we will be back in Germany and wrapping up our trip.

Even though it put us out of our way a little, I think we made the right choice to come down to Milan. The drive was only 90 minutes from Verbania (on Lake Maggiore), across the lake on the same ferry we took the day before, through some pleasant countryside and down the Autostrada. The day started off cooler and quite a bit less humid than we’ve had lately, so the breeze on the ferry was the type that makes you just want to spread your arms and grab as much of it as you can.

In the photo above you can see our technique for self-portraits. I hold the iPhone with one hand, and Eleanor taps the ‘shutter’ button. This results in the classic iPhone self-portrait with arms extended as if we are about to grab and hug you. We haven’t done a lot of these, but we do a few as insurance because I’ve noticed when you give your camera to a stranger to take a picture of you, the result is often awful. We have photos from many beautiful places showing us as tiny dots or dark blobs in the foreground.

The Italian Autostradas used to have a fearsome reputation but I have always found them to be very convenient, despite the tolls. We emptied my pockets of Euro coins but soon were landed in Milan, so it seemed a fair trade.

It would be impossible to attempt to absorb in a single day even 10% of what Milan has to offer. This is a city of great art, culture, architecture, and design. Our goal was only to walk some of the city’s center and find a great plate of risotto. This turned out to be harder than we expected. While walking is easy, the restaurants of the center are mostly pizzerias. Risotto takes time and effort to make, so places that specialize in feeding tourists or providing quick food won’t bother with it.

We started at Milan’s “Duomo” station on the Metropolitan (subway). This is a tourist mecca, and there was a line to go inside the Duomo complete with inspectors. Since it was once again hot, and the line was long in the sun, we opted to keep walking.

You really can’t go here without walking through “the world’s oldest shopping mall” Galleria Vittoria Emanuele, right next door. It’s all high end brands in here, and Eleanor joked about doing some shopping but we kept on going. (At least, I think she was joking.)

We walked for miles, literally. I can’t begin to describe our route, since it was convoluted, but we pretty much checked out every street in a half-mile radius. The Castle of Milan was a highlight, where some Italian artist (musician?) was doing a dance routine for what will probably be a music video later.

Energy flagging … water supplies running low … no risotto in sight. What to do? Eleanor supplied the solution: a massive cone of gelato in two flavors, coffee and cinnamon. It’s amazing what gelato can do to revive the spirits. Refreshed, we continued our quest for risotto.

We finally found what we were seeking at a well-hidden restaurant down a narrow side street. You can’t rely on Yelp for restaurant recommendations here (there are few reviews to rely on). We found it the old-fashioned way, by poking our heads in every corner until we found a menu that worked. This was the Calafuria Unione, on Via Dell’Unione, 8, and it had a very nice risotto con funghi (Porchini mushrooms) for Eleanor, and a risotto osso bucco (saffron rice with a very tender veal shank) for me.

It’s even more satisfying to find a good meal when you’ve been on the quest for several hours. I had gone through a water bottle or two from my backpack on this long and hot walk, and killed a half-liter of sparkling mineral water at dinner too. Dinner was around 9 p.m., which has been typical for us this entire trip.

It was a good day in Milan, and a full one. We walked roughly 4-5 miles over a period of six hours, shot dozens of photos, saw many beautiful things, and ended up with a great meal. The train had us back to the hotel in 20 minutes. Everything was wonderful … except that we remembered we hadn’t bought anything for breakfast.

So we kept walking past the hotel to a grocery store that a certain online service told us was four blocks away. It wasn’t. It didn’t exist. Should have asked the hotel concierge instead. All we found were a lot of quiet dark streets and two hookers. (One of them gave us a distinct “hmph!” and turned away as we passed by—not sure what we did to offend her.)

Ah well, you can’t let a little thing like no breakfast or an irritated prostitute ruin your day. It’s the next morning now. We slept till 10 a.m. and will have to check out in a couple of hours. We’ll pick up breakfast along the road, as we head north now, back to Switzerland.

It’s funny how quickly we settle into what I think of as our “Italian mode.” Eleanor and I haven’t traveled together to Italy since the late 1990s but I notice that we are in the same pattern as before: two meals a day, gelato in the afternoon, exploration all day long, and an earnest search for good food and good atmosphere every night.

Being on the shore of Lake Maggiore certainly inspires relaxation. Although our hotel is along a busy street right at the waterfront, it is quiet in our room. Just a few feet from the front door are narrow alleyways paved with cobblestones that lead to hidden ristorantes, shops, and pasticceria, forking off at angles periodically in a fun-house maze.

It’s impossible to ignore the draw of these alleys; after all, this is where the fun is. They are sort of the Italian version of malls, filled with life, and unlike American alleyways they are safe and clean. We rarely buy anything but we do take a lot of pictures and find surprises. I’d much rather wander the alleys of any Italian city, especially the hill towns, than follow a guidebook.

Inevitably in any Italian city you will encounter the duomo (church), near the center of town. Being a fan of architecture I will always stop to take a look, but the real beauty of the duomo is inside, so even if you are shy it pays to walk in and quietly explore. Because we know we will be doing this, we are careful to leave the hotel with appropriate clothing. (You can get tips on what to wear from any decent guidebook.)

After walking the town for a couple of hours, we hopped on the ferry across Lake Maggiore to Laveno. The warm humid weather has continued, so it was a nice change to feel the breeze on the lake and get a cheap tour in the process.

I have been noticing all the motorcyclists along the route through Switzerland and here in Italy. The passes we drove were popular for motorcycling, probably because of the narrow twisting roads and of course the exceptional scenery. I didn’t envy them, though, because the Furkapass was rife with blind corners where cars were encouraged to honk their horns before continuing. That’s a little bit outside of my comfort zone on a motorcycle.

For my brother I have taken a few pictures of BMW motorcycles in action, which is not hard since it seems that about 80% of the bikes here are BMWs. The photo above shows two fully loaded BMW F650GS bikes, the same type we ride in New England.

Laveno is a smaller town than Verbania (our base location), and the main attraction is the Funivia (gondola) that climbs steeply up a mountain overlooking the town and Lake Maggiore. At ten Euros a person for the round-trip we thought it was a little expensive but then we didn’t have a clue what we were in for.

The gondola baskets are offered in open and closed varieties. The closed ones I suppose are for sissies or when it’s raining, so we happily chose the open one. It’s one of the steepest gondolas we’ve ever ridden, and quite long, ending up at 3,000 feet elevation about 25 minutes after you board it.

Your vista of Lake Maggiore quickly emerges, and it is stunning even on a cloudy day such as we had. I thought I’d be a little nervous about being in an open basket strung on a wire high above the ground but honestly it’s a very pleasant ride—and the view is distracting.

The top is developed with a restaurant, bar, gift shop, snack shop, a small hotel, and an antenna farm, along with what appears to be a small house for permanent staff. A hiking trail leads off to points unknown (to us), and with the tiny peak being so exposed, the wind is ever-present.

The big surprise at the top is a platform for launching hang-gliders. It looks like a place for convenient suicide at first, but then after considering it I could actually see myself jumping off a spot like this with a trustworthy wing strapped to my back. After a lot of training. After a lot of gear checks. After a lot of other circumstances fell into place. The sign at the launch ramp says that launching in a north wind is not recommended, for example.

We thought it might start to rain so we walked back through town without much more exploring … but we did of course stop for a couple of gelatos. That’s just mandatory.

At dinner we just popped into a place around the corner (in an alleyway). Here in Verbania we have found, unlike Switzerland and Germany, most of the waiters, gelato servers, newsstand clerks, ticket sellers, etc., speak no English, so we have finally had a chance to dredge up the Italian words & phrases we remember and put them to use. Ordering dinner last night was fun, and I finally had a chance to say “piu lentemente” so that our waitress would go through the dolce choices a bit more slowly. Dolce is serious business and you want to be sure to get the right item. I had creme caramel, which in Tucson would be called flan.

We’ve planned our final days. (Having wifi in the hotel is extraordinarily useful for that purpose, and these days almost every hotel offers it.) Today we are heading to Milan for a night, then we will work our way back north via St Gallen Switzerland, and up to Frankfurt. We return to the US on Monday. I hate to think of leaving, but we have had a very good trip and the memories will sustain us a long time.

We have settled into the town of Verbania, on the shore of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, and I think we will stay here for a few days. I’ve been driving too much, primarily because there are so many incredible places to see. It’s just too tempting to get in the car and drive over the Swiss Alps, as we did yesterday, but I have to remind myself that driving in that part of the country is not speedy, especially when you choose the scenic route over the Furkapass and the Solonpass.

We spent most of the day in the car (after having driving half the day on Tuesday and three hours on Monday) so I’ve requested a three-day rest here. We’ll still do some daytrips.

Even though it was cloudy in the morning, from the moment we left Luzern the drive was spectacular. Eleanor kept trying to get shots from the car, which rarely turn out well (it didn’t help that our windshield was rather bug-splattered), so we stopped frequently. The Alps loom over everything with their sharp snowy peaks and down below flat-bottomed valleys are green with farms and dotted with small villages.

You probably know this, but the Swiss are absolutely amazing at building tunnels. At one point I began to feel as if we had spent more time underground than above. The tunnels are toll-free (that’s what our vignette helps pay for), smooth, and sometimes incredibly long. Since we skipped the Gotthard Tunnel the longest one we traveled in was nine kilometers. We’ll probably take Gotthard Tunnel on the way back, for 14 kilometers under the mountains.

The Furkapass was our favorite section of road. At points it is a highway with a 100 kph speed limit, and then it drops into a village for 50 kph, and then later it narrows into a 1.5 lane road that winds like a snake up into the elevations. It’s definitely not for the timid driver or someone who has a fear of heights, but we loved it and the photo opportunities were spectacular. The snow is melting rapidly in June, and so incredible long cascades of water can be seen tumbling down the steep sides of the mountains. It should be obvious, but in case it isn’t: Definitely don’t come this way with a trailer.

We ran into a bit of a delay along the road to the Simplonpass, and a detour that sent us up a lonely road far into the mountains, which was … exciting … Because of road construction I had plenty of opportunities to check wireless coverage in out-of-the-way spots and I was consistently amazed to find 4 or 5 bars of coverage everywhere. That has helped answer a key question about my ability to work from Europe if we come back with an Airstream someday.

(By the way, the worst place for cell reception I’ve noticed so far has been Stuttgart. All that masonry and concrete construction creates many dead spots even in the middle of the city. It’s much better along the major roads.)

Road construction has been the one constant in every country on this trip. Tis the season, I guess. I’ve been to Europe many times, driving in England, Wales, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, but never in the summer. Only on this June trip have I encountered so much construction. Building an expectation of road delays into the trip plan would have been a good idea.

Still, the scenery was so great everywhere that we didn’t mind. Every village begs for exploration, every corner reveals yet another astonishing vista, every tunnel and cliff-hanging section of road is cause for amazement at Swiss engineering. Both Eleanor and I brought big 16gb memory cards for our cameras so we wouldn’t run out of storage space. My card will hold 2,100 photos, of which I think I used 80 or so just on this section of the drive.

After driving across the Italian border (with a cheery wave to the agent who was sitting in his office), we descended for the last time to yet another picturesque valley and then down to Lake Maggiore, one of the beautiful vacation spots of northern Italy.

Of all the European countries, I think I am most comfortable in Italy. Perhaps it’s because we’ve spent a fair amount of time here in the past, but I think it’s really just that I like the easygoing feel of the country. If I have business to do, Germany is a great place. It’s clean, organized, modern, and efficient. But for chilling, Italy is my choice. We’ve spent weeks touring here and always have a great time.

… which is what I’m going out to do today. Our hotel is near the lakefront, and the ferry dock is a short walk. We’re going to just browse in town for a while and then ride the ferry aimlessly to other towns around the lake. It will be 81 degrees today (finally a little cooler than it has been) and humid, so the ferry should be a nice way to spend the afternoon. We’re packing a picnic lunch again and we shall see what we shall see.