Day 198: Northern Switzerland to Italy

Last day proper in Switzerland, and what a busy one it was! Checked out from the caravan fairly early and hit the road, heading firstly northwest alongside the German border. Our first stop was the small town of Stein-am-Rhein, a pretty little town straddling the Rhine river still inside Switzerland. It's well-known for having a main pedestrian street with intricately painted houses and businesses, so we parked up and went for a wander.

It was still quite early (around 10am) so we basically had the place to ourselves - apparently it gets quite crowded later in the day! Took a few cool photos of the buildings, then hopped back in the car as we had several more stops to make.

Next up was Reinfall, where the Rhine River goes thundering over a waterfall. It's not particularly high, but it's fairly wide, and during the summer (ie now), the volume of water is absolutely incredible. It was a huge torrent cascading down, making an enormous thundering noise and throwing spray high up into the air. Very impressive, though Schnitzel was quite scared. It was also drizzling here in addition to the waterfall spray, so he wasn't happy about getting wet either!

Spent about 45 minutes here checking it out, then back in the car again to keep driving, now westwards to Zurich. It's the largest city in Switzerland with about a million people in the metro area, and one of the most expensive as well. We didn't really have anything in particular to see, only a park with a lookout that I'd heard good things about. Unfortunately the park was quite a bit smaller than I thought, and ultimately not that nice.

We walked the riverfront for a little while, and although the old town is pretty it's quite small and didn't feel super authentic. So off we went, having paid nearly 5 francs for the privilege of parking for less than an hour!

Had to start really hustling, as it was 12:30pm, we needed lunch, and we had to return the car by 2pm in Basel, get across to the other station and make our train to Italy by 3pm. So it was a McDonalds lunch for the first in yonks (22 francs for a medium meal and one extra burger), then off down the freeway.

Made it to Basel just on 2pm, and thankfully had no issues dropping off the car. There was a chip in the windscreen we hadn't noticed during the condition report that I was worried about (we hadn't caused it, and I'm certain it was already there), but the worker didn't even look at the car, just asked if there were any problems!

Off we hurried to the tram stop, where we waited five minutes for the tram back across town to the French train station, where we arrived with about 15 minutes to spare. Three different stops, and having driven across basically the entire north of Switzerland, not a bad effort for half a day!

The train pulled out of the station about 10 minutes late, since obviously Italian trains don't run with Swiss precision! The scenery got more and more rugged as we went south, before plunging into what I discovered later was the longest and deepest rail tunnel in the world - about 2500 metres below the alps, it runs for over 60 kilometres! The train was moving at about 130kph, and we were in there for nearly 20 minutes. Crazy.

Popped out on the other side still in Switzerland, but having crossed the alps almost entirely. Afterwards it meandered through a few valleys and alongside lakes, eventually arriving in Como about 7:30pm, four hours after leaving Basel. Thankfully our hotel was right near the station, so we walked over and dropped our stuff. Caught up a bit on internet stuff since we'd had fairly poor connectivity at the hut for the past two nights, then headed out into town for dinner.

Ended up at a terrace restaurant where Shandos had some pasta and I had a pizza. Total bill was 25 euros including a couple of drinks, such a welcome change after Switzerland! We can afford to eat out again. Had a nice wander around the town and then headed back to the hotel feeling very tired.Read more