Italian Lakes and the Alps

We set off for Italy in our A3. We stopped off en route to Switzerland in Charleville Mezieres France for dinner overlooking a lovely square in the city and then spent a night in a hotel nearby. After arriving in Switzerland, we stayed a few nights in the mountains and hiked to Mont Rouge on a glorious day.

We decided to take the Passo Della Novena to the Italian lakes. We've done all the passes except this one, so we thought we'd join the bikers on this pass and see what it was like. We weren't disappointed.

As can be seen here, it was quite busy! but the weather was fantastic and the view glorious.

We arrived at our villa after about 4 and a half hours from Sion. We had this huge villa right on Lake Lugano at Laverna Ponte Tresa to ourselves, with own pool and tennis court. What a lovely place.

We had a walk to explore the area and later had dinner in a restaurant on the lakeshore a stone's throw from the villa. We'd share the villa with our younger son and his partner after we picked them up from Milan airport the following day.

This is the view (rather misty) of Lake Lugano and the city from the furnicular railway up to Monte Bre.

Connobio on Lake Maggiore. We took the water taxi from Luino to return to one of our favourite places on the Italian Lakes.

We drove to Lake Como and drove up the west side, exploring towns and villages along the way, including Lenno, where we did a bit of the Greenway walk, which runs along the coast about 10km between Colonno and Cadenabbia.

 We broke the 4 and a half hour journey up from the Italian lakes to the chalet up with a trip on the cable car from Fiesch up to the Aletch glacier. A quick hike up to the summit of the Eggishorn and lunch and a hot chocolate and we were set for the final 2 hours to the chalet. We walked all over the Aletch area last year but I'd still spend some more time up there. I'd like to go over the hangbridge and stay at Belalp (which was featured on Countryfile whilst we were away!).

We'd been to Zermatt and seen the Matterhorn from various viewpoints before but we decided to take the railway one way to Gornergrat and walk down to find the lake where you can catch the Matterhorn reflected in it - that is if you are lucky with the weather and there is no wind to ripple the surface. Well, we found it and we were lucky! I am on the rock but hubby cut the tip of he Mattorn off in the pic!! The hike should have been like 4 hours but we took the wrong path (suggested by boys!) and it ended up being almost 6 hours - and would have been 7 hours had a kindly Swiss luggage cart driver from Zermatt not offered us a lift back into Zermatt, taking off the last hour. After this hike, the thermal spa at Ovronnaz sure was very welcome the following day.

The Matterhorn is truly a majestic mountain and I'll never tire of walking miles and miles to see it from different places and in different settings.

Overlooking Lake Leman (Geneva) at Montreux en route to dropping our son and partner at Geneva airport.














We did loads more, just a few highlights here. As I type this we're just about to retire before an early start for the two day drive home. Three weeks goes so fast!!