Sue, a family friend of Buds, had very kindly offered us her apartment for a few days which we were extremely grateful for. Although most of our time was spent relaxing, catching up with family and friends and eating (chocolates and cheese), we still managed to see a lot of the area as well as some awesome sunsets. It was here that we realized how much more time we had when not staying in a tent. Suddenly making coffee became a 5 minute task instead of 15. We had 4 plates to cook food on as well as an oven instead of 1 plate with an inconsistent heat flow. The biggest luxury of all was the washing machine and dryer whch we took full advantage of. Our sleep pattern also went a bit out the window as we were not woken up by the sunrise every morning and therefore slept in late and we had lights to keep us up well after sunset. It was a nice change to not have to do everything by headlamp…
We spent most of our time getting around town on bicycle. The area is very bicycle friendly, with cycle paths all over, ‘help yourself’ bicycle tools and air and no need to use bike locks when parking. There are lanes all over dedicated only to cyclists, with own road signs and traffic lights. We even saw a street sweeping van cleaning the cycle paths. Despite the Alps in the south, the area was pretty flat which made cycling easy and fun. We spent one day cycling to Zurich, which was a lot further than we thought (55 km round trip), and visited the Lindt factory shop (chocolate so good!!). It was a very pretty ride along the river and we got to eat some incredible chocolate. We also cycled along the Lorze Ravine to the ‘Hollgroten Caves’ in Zug. The caves were discovered 150 years ago while tufa quarrying for the railways and are only dated to be around 6000 years old. It was incredible to walk through the different chambers in the caves and to see the illuminated underground lakes, stalagmites, stalactites and tree roots covered in calcite.
As I mentioned, we spent a lot of our time eating some of Switzerland’s favorite foods. Our first day was spent walking through a Swiss Bio farmers market, where we were able to taste a lot of their interesting produce and take in the Swiss-German culture. Fruit trees grow wild all over the place and we helped ourselves to one or two while exploring the Zug old town. As Switzerland is famous for its cheese fondue as well as being extremely expensive, we decided to treat ourselves to a ‘make your own’ cheese fondue and Rosti (grated potato and cheese dish). I’m not sure if I followed the Swiss directions on the box correctly, but both meals were delicious.
Unfortunately, we had to say our farewells to Zug and made our way along the long and winding road towards Italy. The pass which we drove was picturesque, windy and we stopped at the top of the Gotthard Pass , at 2106 m, to take in the views. We were stopped at the Italian border (probably looked suspicious as we were excited) and after speaking a mixture of French, Spanish and Italian we entered Italia.
We are most grateful to Sue for the spectacular accommodation and letting us take over your home. Switzerland was fantastic and I’m sure we will be back in the future (with snowboards instead of bicycles).
Next Stop – Monza for the Italian Grand Prix