Final Trip Update

Back home in the good ol' US of A and it was nice to sleep in my own bed last night. The last week flew by as I think I was mentally preparing to go home. Unfortunately we both got a little under the weather this past week so I spent one day of Zermatt stuck in bed (luckily I had an unobstructed view of the Matterhorn from this spot so it could have been worse).

After Zermatt we headed off to Lugano, and although it is in Switzerland it immediately feels more like Italy. The architecture and language are different-everything is in Italian and the people look and act Italian (for those of you who have been there, you know what I mean). We weren't very impressed with Lugano even after walking a bit around the city and taking a boat ride on the lake, so the next day we headed off to spend some time in Italy. The hour long bus ride to Menaggio was stressful to say the least. The bus was fighting to drive on skinny, one lane roads with other drivers. Whenever a large RV or another truck came down the road it was every man for himself. The driver layed on the horn on numerous blind curves so the other cars would (hopefully) stop so we could get by. There was no sleeping on this journey- our heart was pounding every step of the way!

We really liked the city of Varenna-very quaint and the waterfront is picturesque where we ate. We also went to Bellagio and spent a few hours walking around and seeing the mansions perched on the hill. We got back to Lugano in the late afternoon and hibernated in the hotel for a bit since it was quite warm this time of year.

Next we were off to Zurich, our final stop. The city was pretty with a decent old town on both sides of the river. It reminded me a lot of Luzern or Salzburg in that respect. We didn't spend much time here because the cold caught up with Jon here and he needed to rest in order to survive the 24 hour long travel day to get home.

Overall we absolutely loved the trip. We would definitely recommend the entire Berner Oberland region and especially the Lauterbrunnen valley. We also thoroughly enjoyed Hallstatt in the Austrian lakes. I will post some pictures in the next few days.