Great Adventure: Friday: Luzern

Friday morning we checked out of our fabulous house.  It was time to say goodbye to Switzerland.  So sad.

Dan went for a long run- made longer by a minorly wrong turn and the consequential recalculation of how to get from where he was, to where he wanted to be.  He also stopped by the corner bakery and got this for breakfast.  He said it was yummy.

Then we packed up and drove off.  We headed to Italy, with a little stop in Luzern, Switzerland before we left the country for good.

Driving in Switzerland was always a lot of fun.  Random castles on hills and gorgeous buildings, farms and countryside everywhere. It was breathtaking.

We spent a bit over an hour wandering Luzern.  I think someone had a particular destination in mind, but I was happy to just mosey and look.  And I enjoyed it.  We came upon some carts that seemed to be left from a Carnival celebration.  One of them was covered with political cartoons, and I found it interesting that most of them were harpoons at US politics.

This was my favorite!

I liked this school zone sign as well.

And this is a beautiful street we walked up.  Only to realize it wasn't the way we wanted to go, so we walked back down it. 

This is a historical bridge.  It had old-old paintings on it and we walked across it and checked them out.  Not the sort of paintings I had expected.  Not "museum" paintings at all.

Probably the most modern looking buildings in Switzerland. I love the mountains rising in the background.

Then it was more driving.  Not horribly long.  I think our total car time was 6 hours, plus the 45 minutes we spent lost, trying to figure out how the holy heck to get inside the Vicenza base!  But there was neat scenery.  Neater had it been in focus, I suppose.

We drove through this incredibly long tunnel.  I think it was 17km long.  It went on FOREVER!

 And when we finally popped out the other side, we were in Italy, and there was lots of snow!

A lot of snow!  And it was so pretty, all frosted on the trees.

We had a quick rest stop and there was this map, which was not helpful at all.  Then we finished the drive to Vicenza and discovered it is virtually impossible to find the front gate to the base.  It took us 45 minutes.  We drove all the way around the base.  We stopped twice to ask for directions.  We thought we found it once, but they said no, it was gate 4 and we could not go on through gate 4, we had to go to gate 1.  We still couldn't find it.  It was incredibly annoying!  Obviously we did eventually stumble upon it, but sheesh!

I tell you, I am really glad only the men-folk are on the rental car agreement!  I would NOT like to drive here!  It is a royal pain to find anything.  The stupid GPS is schizophrenic and incredibly faulty.  So one person drives and the other navigates and compares notes with the rotten gps.  And eventually, we get where we need to go.  But it has been a bit hair raising and frustrating!