On our way to Switzerland

We left early in the morning around 5.30 am. Half an hour later than planned.we wanted to be outside of The Netherlands before rushhour traffic got going. 

We actually managed that and the driving in Germany was smooth. A few road work constructions, but not so bad that it would cause a huge delay. We stopped once to get gas and went on. 

We thought there would be a boarder check and that it could take quit a while, but we could drive right through... I was really hoping to get a stamp in my passport... Ah well...

So... Now we are in Switzerland. The driving was ok. Until we reached the Gotthard Tunnel.

Ofcourse we always hear about the long wait before this tunnel during high season in Summer and Winter... Wejust thought it was just because there is a lot of traffic during those times, but there is more to it...

First there are 2 sets of traffic lights to regulate the amount of cars in the tunnel... Then you merge from 2 lanes to 1. The tunnel is almost 17 km (little more than 10 miles) long with only 2 lanes for two way traffic. 

We only had to wait 45 minutes to be able to go through the tunnel... I can understand why in the high seasons the wait can be as long as 6 hours.

Once we got throught the tunnel everything went smooth and around 3 pm we arrived at the hotel. It is still low season so there were plenty of rooms to choose from. I had looked this hotel up in our "left and right from the highway" book, which has hotels listed close to the highway for a one night stay while travelling on the next day. Our goal was to reach the Italian boarder so I looked up the hotels near in that area and it so happens that there is a nice lake there... This hotel was right on that lake. It had a wonderful view so we gave it a try. 

We were helped by the manager. He showed us several rooms and where the pool and restaurant were... We decided not to take the larger room, but a standard one. It was actually a very interesting room. The bathroom was not closed off with a door and it only had walls of 1,5 m high... The rest was glass. So you could watch someone showering... Not much privacy, but it looked nice. We had an amazing view from our room though...

After we checked in, we got some of our stuff out of the car and headed for our room 203. 

We changed and went immediately for the pool. They had pool towels there and loungechairs. We put up an umbrella, but I guess there was too much wind, since it fell over. All these men came running toward us... Was kind of funny. We tried it again with a smaller umbrella, but that didn't work either... So no umbrella that day. The view from the pool area was very nice of the lake and mountains in the background. They had tropical plants and palmtrees everywhere. It was all very well kept. Everything was clean it was well worth the high price hahahaha... 

After we had rested a bit of the long drive, we went to the restaurant around 7 pm for dinner. I had a very nice ceasar salad with chicken and a chickenbreast with lemon sauce. Erwin had just an entrecote. It came with spinnach and rice or fries. 

We had some tea and espresso afterwards... That took a long time to get. And around 9.30 pm we went back to our room. Continued to relaxe a bit and went to bed around 11.

Tommorow we are headed for Italy. It should only take us 3,5 hours to get there. Then we can really start our vacation.