2010 Italy – Lucerne
It was time to start making our way home starting with a 300-mile drive to Lucern in Switzerland. I was looking forward to driving through the mountains but it was raining most of the time so there wasn’t much to see. We couldn’t complain as the weather had been very good through most of our holiday and I had often been able to walk around in a short-sleeved shirt. In Lucern, we had booked a cheapish hotel which turned out to be the worst of our trip though ok for one night. Once again I had trouble parking the van as it was too high for the hotel’s garage. The receptionist told us it was no problem and sold us a permit to park on the streets for the night. Trust the Swiss to come up with such a complicated street parking system. Our permit entitled us to park in any blue zone but the zones were not marked by colours but letters. The only thing that made any sense was that some areas had “24” written on them which we assumed meant 24-hour parking. After driving around in circles for half an hour we took a chance and parked 20 metres from our hotel.
We were looking forward to a nice Swiss meal like fondue or raclette but the only restaurants that offered it were full. There were dozens of Chinese, Thai, Mexican and other restaurants but it seemed daft eating that kind of food in Switzerland so we ended up in a German restaurant, the closest we could find to Swiss. I had a German sausage and French fries which I quite enjoyed but it was the kind of food I would normally have eaten from a roadside van. Federika was more adventurous and ordered what turned out to be a disgusting white sausage floating in a bowl of hot water served with a giant pretzel. It was the worst meal of our whole trip and the most expensive. When it came to pay I asked the waitress if service was included and she replied, “Service is included but not the tip.” I forgot that in Switzerland there was usually a compulsory service charge and they also expect you to leave a tip.
2010 Italy
