Tour of Switzerland

I'm not putting the date because I don't remember it. In any case this was not my only time in Switzerland. The Tour was made in December in a VW Polo and is an integral part of a larger journey including southern and central Germany. I arrive in Switzerland from the Basel border, visiting the city as my first contact with Swiss architecture at the Market Square. In the evening a transfer to Zurich, which, although not the capital, is the most important city in the country. The old town develops along the Limmat, a canal that runs straight towards the lake. Here are the best shops but also ancient buildings and the Cathedral. At the end of the canal, a fine view from the lakeside. After overnighting near Lucerne, the following morning we visit this city nestled on the lake of the same name.

The Swiss quickly rebuilt the city's most important monument, a wooden bridge decorated inside with historic paintings that had caught fire a few years earlier. Near the lakeside there is a museum about means of transport, visible even from outside through the glass. From here the Swiss Alps begin, at Interlaken, a town overlooking two lakes; a detour along a mountain road up to Lauterbrunnen. From the local station you reach Wengen, a well-known ski resort connected only by the train that climbs up the mountain. Retracing the road back, before returning to Interlaken we take the detour to another ski resort, Grindelwald, where we are caught in a snowstorm that will make it difficult for us to get back on the main road. With difficulty we return to Interlaken, from where, following the lakeside, we reach the road to Bern.

The capital of the Swiss Confederation welcomes us wrapped in a soft blanket of snow that sets off its buildings, its characteristic polychrome statues and its fountains. In the homeland of watchmakers we do not miss seeing the famous clock tower. We sleep on the road to Fribourg, where we stop the following morning. This is a historic city set on a hill; it looks like a train whose locomotive is the cathedral. After poking around the streets of Fribourg we head to Lake Geneva to make brief stops at the famous resort towns of Vevey and Montreux. To the south we return to the alpine area; at Visp a road runs through a narrow valley as far as Täsch, from where you reach the famous ski resort of Zermatt only by train, a privileged viewpoint for the Matterhorn, but it is cloudy and it is not possible to see it.

The next day we retrace the road to Visp and, crossing Brig, we visited a few villages of Walser ethnicity with wooden stilt houses. From Brig I also took the road that climbs up to the Simplon Pass and from there I descended into Italy. Before this Tour I had been to Switzerland several times, in transit or staying, and had seen: Winterthur (two visits, staying with friends), the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen (twice, once with a boat trip to the little island that forms them), St Gallen, Lugano, Chiasso, Bellinzona and Geneva, where I had strolled along the lakeside.