August 28-29, 2024
August 28-29, 2024
We are up early to finish packing. Both Aimee and I are thinking that four weeks was too short a time between trips. Oh Well. The same driver shuttles us to the Phoenix Airport. Humorously for the second time she misses the Airport detour sign, and hits construction traffic. Aimee is annoyed but we are way early, so no problem. I spend the time reading the newspaper, while Aimee knits. Shockingly our flight to Chicago takes off on-time. That is a first for us in a long time.
After a layover at O’Hare, we are crossing the Atlantic again landing in Zurich airport. Our approach takes us down the Rhine River right over Switzerland's largest nuclear power plant. It supplies one sixth of the country's power. Unlike their neighbors to the North who shut down all their nuclear power in a fit of green folly, the Swiss are practical and get half their electricity from nuclear and the other half from hydro.
We are not staying in Zurich. It is just our European gateway. We are headed for the Dolomite mountains of northeastern Italy. There is no direct way to get there. The downside of two on-time flights is that we had to wait two hours for our rental car. Aimee had a German pretzel to tide her over.
Once we had wheels we crossed Switzerland to the Lake Constance border in heavy traffic. Annoyingly there were few posted speed limit signs. We crossed the Rhine River into Austria and stopped to purchase a highway sticker for the country.
The drive through the mountain valleys of the Austrian Tyrol region was beautiful. It reminded us of the Canadian Rockies drive from Banff to Jasper. Unfortunately the highway was slow-going with two dozen tunnels, lots of road construction and two road detours. Despite the scenery, we struggled to stay awake.
We stopped for the night just west of Innsbruck. Our hotel room has a view of an Alpine cliff that resembles Yosemite's El Capitan monolith. We celebrated our anniversary at a local restaurant dining al fresco with a nice Garlic Cream soup and tasty rib meal.
We are up early to finish packing. Both Aimee and I are thinking that four weeks was too short a time between trips. Oh Well. The same driver shuttles us to the Phoenix Airport. Humorously for the second time she misses the Airport detour sign, and hits construction traffic. Aimee is annoyed but we are way early, so no problem. I spend the time reading the newspaper, while Aimee knits. Shockingly our flight to Chicago takes off on-time. That is a first for us in a long time.
We are not staying in Zurich. It is just our European gateway. We are headed for the Dolomite mountains of northeastern Italy. There is no direct way to get there. The downside of two on-time flights is that we had to wait two hours for our rental car. Aimee had a German pretzel to tide her over.
Once we had wheels we crossed Switzerland to the Lake Constance border in heavy traffic. Annoyingly there were few posted speed limit signs. We crossed the Rhine River into Austria and stopped to purchase a highway sticker for the country.
We stopped for the night just west of Innsbruck. Our hotel room has a view of an Alpine cliff that resembles Yosemite's El Capitan monolith. We celebrated our anniversary at a local restaurant dining al fresco with a nice Garlic Cream soup and tasty rib meal.
posted by Mike and Aimee at 11:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home