Fog and misery in the Alps

Today we travelled from Grenoble to a ski chalet we had booked in the middle of nowhere in Switzerland. It was a fair day of driving, so we set off reasonably early.

I've added just a few photos to Flickr's driving set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

There was a planned stop at the Viaduc de Cize-Bolozon. I'd wanted to go here because it was less of a 'tourist attraction' than something like the Pont du Gard, and it looked quite spectacular. Unfortunately, it started raining and didn't really stop for the entire day of driving today. The viaduct was still quite photogenic though. It's a train-car bridge connecting two towns, that had major work done on it to make it the main train route from Paris to Geneva:

Viaduc de Cize-Bolozon

After that it was pretty much plain sailing until we got to the Swiss border. Here we had planned on buying a 'vignette'. They are 40 Swiss Francs each, and give you unlimited travel on all of Switzerland's motorways for a year. It's a much better system (I think) than just having toll roads everywhere.

Once we did that, we were really able to start motoring. Rather than covering 40 or 50 kilometres per hour, which we had become accustomed to, we started doing 90 to 100 on average.

The drive up to the chalet was much more hair-raising though. The last reasonable-sized town with a train station was about 25 minutes before we got to the chalet. From there it was mostly a single-lane road that had a few points where two cars could fit through. Surviving the drive up and back each day will be a challenge.

Once we reached the chalet, we realised that there were actually a few in the area - we had envisioned it as being one chalet with nothing else around it. Not to worry though, there was a restaurant there, where we picked up the keys from before heading up to the chalet. It was about a five-minute walk up a steep gravel hill to the chalet from the restaurant, where we had to park our car because the chalet had no dedicated parking. It was deserted there, but we weren't complaining.

We hit a little bit of a snafu with the internet there (yes there is high-speed internet in a chalet in the middle of nowhere), which resulted in us turning the main power switch off and on again. Even then, my laptop couldn't connect, so I had to tether my phone's WiFi connection to the laptop then extend the connection through another WiFi network... and so it goes. So that was painful, but at least every device is connected now.

The same can't be said for power - the plugs are like Italy, just a little smaller than the standard European slot. So whenever we want to charge something we head upstairs to one of the dormitory's power points. You'll see photos of inside the chalet when I publish my trip report leaving.

We've yet to decide on a plan yet for the Swiss Alps, it will all depend on what the weather's doing on any given day. It's very foggy almost all the time up here in the mountains though, so we will have to judge accordingly! Until tomorrow.