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Day 3
- Imst (Austria) to Lugano (Switzerland)
The Ultimate Drive - well, maybe in summer!
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Friday - 14th March 2008 |
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Now what the Top Gear team didn't mention was that when
they did the route, did you notice how clear the roads
were and that the weather was perfect. What they didn't
mention was that it's not really a suitable road to take
during March due to the SNOW! |
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The Ultimate Drive is split into 2 sections and guess
what, just as we got to the start of each, yep, there
was a barrier across the road saying "Guess what, we're
going to spoil your holiday!". Oh, phish, or words to
that effect were the order of the day, but we did manage
to find a nice windy road over another pass that we were
sure was higher than these 2, but hey, such is life. We
even tried a couple of little detours to skirt round the
barrier, but nope, the roads really were snowed up. |
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On
the Stelvio pass entrance, there was note that the road
was closed, but the road looked ok, so yep, we did
attempt to go up it, right to the barrier. Shame really
as this was about 2 miles from a really windy part of
the route was it worth walking the final bit was it
stuff, too darned cold, so off to another pass.
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There was a lovely long tunnel from Austria /
Switzerland,
sort of gave up deciding as to which country we were in
very quickly and the poor mobile kept getting messages
saying 'welcome to
' to the point where it just said
"crossed another boarder
again". |
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Anyway, the tunnel lead into Italy and along a frozen
reservoir into a ski resort of some nature that nether
of us could pronounce, but we stopped and watched the
skidoos racing across the frozen water. Well, I had to
find out more and walked across the road and over the
snow for the 100 yards to the "pay me loads of Euros"
shed and found out that it was going to 30 euros for 5
mins (or something like that), so decided to give it a
miss strange how the guy was looking at me in a
fleece, t shirt and the Crocs have they never seen
anyone in comfortable driving attire. Oh, I did have
jeans on, just so that it didn't scare anyone.
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Now I've heard of the delights of lake Como etc and it's
true, but what they don't tell you is that the roads are
so narrow and tight, that it's a real pain in the
drivers seat when stuck behind some numb nut who can't
find 3rd gear. It took ages to get the final
part of the route done past Lake Como and onto Lake
Lugarno. We got to the point where we were just wished
we'd got a Land Rover with a snow plough attached and
would have ploughed the way along without any problems |
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One good point was that we got stuck 3 cars behind a
coach, but this was a rally driving coach with a driver
who had the nerves of steel and a really loud horn
(multi tone airhorn of course) and so we let the coach
plough through and we following in the wake, chuckling
along.
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Well, found the hotel, well, just drove passed it really
when Anne spotted it and so pulled over into the car
park just past the hotel and luckily some very friendly
female native passed on her parking ticket, so it
allowed us 30 mins of parking in what could only be
called the Monte Carlo of Switzerland. We are talking
really posh. Hotel was nice and luckily we'd got a room
towards the front, overlooking the lake, well, if you
hung out of the window with a mirror type view, but it
was ok. The bonus of having the front view was that we
didn't notice the train line 20 yards behind the hotel,
well, unless the window was open. Now that brings us
nicely onto the room, it had air conditioning perfect,
but with it being March, obviously they had switched it
off and so it only blew out hot air (nice if they told
us), so the room was a lovely 25 degrees. So asked at
reception and they told us that if we wanted the ac,
then simply open the window why didn't we think of
that, oh, yes, the trains going passed.
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Well, it lake front was only 100 yards from the hotel,
but that was as the crow flies, there were a few steps
to walk down before we got to bottom, well, several
hundred it seemed.
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At
the bottom and short stretch along the front, found a
lovely restaurant called the Piano Bar, great food and
we're talking really great food and part of the service
was that they were willing to put the price of the meal
onto your mortgage well seemed like it, but boy was
the scoff good. |
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Something to remember while driving in Switzerland is
the motorways you need to pay a road fund tax. Even if
you only need to travel 10 miles down one bottom stretch
of a not too populated motorway, you need to cough up
the 40 or 60 Swiss Francs. So as you know that we're
northerners, we found out that yep, there were toll
roads once in Italy (fair enough), but if we followed
the A road out of Switzerland, it only added 15 mins
onto the journey and you could then just pop onto the
Italian motorway and off we go. So we had a plan for the
morning
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Stango - approaching the Davos pass Stango - approaching the Davos pass Stango just outside Livigno
Stango - approaching the Davos pass
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