Day 8 (The Gotthard experience)

[Written by Sandra] Monday morning we got up real early to have breakfast together with Alex and Corinne before leaving Solothurn. Sander already told you about the nice 'food thingies', and believe me, it's all true! The bread in Switzerland is really lovely! And the yoghurt: really good stuff. And let's talk 'Nussgipfel', a hazelnut-paste pastry roll <yumyum>!
Going to try to make it myself (in Dutch there's a saying 'the love of a man goes through his stomach'. The best way to hold on to Sander, therefore, is making him 'Nussgipfel', I imagine ;o). But enough about the food...

About nine o'clock we left for the Gotthard tunnel, final destination: Cavigliano, in the very south of Switzerland. And naturally it rained...

Driving through the tunnel itself turned out to be a piece of cake. I had been a little bit scared to go through it, because you have to drive about 17 km on a two way road. Mind you, the left 'way' is the opposite direction! But the tunnel was wider than I thought. Besides, you're not allowed to drive faster than 80 km/hr, you have to keep 150 m distance to the cars in front of you, and there are signs telling you how far away the end of the tunnel is. That helps, believe me.
15 minutes after entering, we already left the tunnel. And behold: the sun was shining just for us! So I consider it proven that the grass actually IS greener on the other side of the tunnel.

Directly after the tunnel, the road descends for about 45 minutes; you practically can let go of your gas pedal. Fun experience! After a while we stopped for lunch on a parking side next to the highway.

Anyway, that was one of the 'grand' driving experiences in Switzerland. On the penultimate day of our trip we went back over the Süsten Pass, and there we met lots of ‘jolly’ motor cyclists, not paying attention to anyone but themselves. But I'll leave it to Sander to tell that story later.

We arrived in Cavigliano quite early in the afternoon, and the hotel appeared to be lovely; a small, but very nice room with balcony and an amazing view!

We decided to go for a swim in the river Maggia. Getting there was an adventure on itself. First, we had to climb down to the riverside. Then we had to climb/jump over big/little rocks to walk by the riverside, and finally cross the river to get to a good spot (Sander turned out to be a mountain-goat, I definitely not). It was really beautiful there! So impressive, that you can only hold your silence, and enjoy the view (and, on my account, try desperately to catch your breath again).

You can't imagine how cold the water was... since I promised Sander already in the Netherlands to go in with him, I did, but it took me at least 30 minutes to actually plunge in (and less than 10 to get out again ;o).

But the water seemed to warm up a little in the next days, or my body adjusted, because my record was sharpened to about 8 minutes for 'getting in'.

We enjoyed a vegetarian meal in the evening and made a nice little stroll in the village afterwards.

[Back to Sander’s perspective]

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