Riding The Swiss Alps

Jammed, jammed, jammed on time, but I said I'd get some pics up so here you go.  I apologize for rushing through these, but you'll get the idea of how amazing this was...

Zurich HD, where it all started from.  These guys didn't speak much English, so thank goodness Erin was there to speak German with them.

I'm off!  Well, after I finally found my way out of the city.  (I'd looked at maps the night before and had written down streets and turns I'd need to make to get to the Autobahn, but - as we later realized; when I left the dealership, I went out the back street, not the front.  So I was immediately lost and it took me 45 minutes of riding around, trying to decipher street signs in German, before I finally found my way out.)

The scenery EVERYWHERE is just beyond amazing!

A nice panoramic snapshot for ya.  And yes, that is a castle in the middle of the town.

I made it to Gotthard Pass!  This was THE road I was looking forward to!

Hmmm...I could take the easy way around the mountain...

Nope!  I came to ride the ancient pass, so let's get down there and to some twisting...

Not much room for error on these roads.  No actual guardrail, and some of those turn are a long way down...

A picture from the bottom of the road, of the tunnel back up at the top...

More amazing sights.  This is why it took me so long to get through these passes.  I had to keep finding places to park so that I could wander around and really take things in.

This was on the second pass of the day; the San Bernadino one.  It, too, had windy turns, but it also had clouds to ride through, and lakes to admire...

And stretches of roadway that seemed to go on forever.

This was along the Splugen Pass.  More twisties, more amazing scenery...

At the top of this pass there was an old battlement of some sort.  It overlooked the valley below and would have been a prime location for a bunch of artillery.

The Italian border!  I'm officially in Italy now...too bad I'm running out of daylight...and the clouds are really moving in...and I have no idea what's in front of me for accommodations, or how far ahead they may lie...

So, I rode about 10 feet into Italy to make it official, then did a U-turn and headed back the way I'd come.  I'd passed a hotel/restaurant back on the highway and figured I'd hit that for the night.

A few more pics of the battlement on my way by.  Inside was very cool...

A nice framed pic of the bike

The clouds were moving in and down, pretty quickly...

I made it down and to the hotel without any issues.  Had a great meal (the menu was all in German, but I lucked out and managed to decipher ravioli, and it was delicious.  As was the dark beer I had with it.)

A nice restful evening, a hearty breakfast, and I was back on the road, headed back to Zurich.

These are the bridges on the highways over there.  Look how thin the supports are!  I couldn't believe it, and there were full sized tractor/trailer rigs going over these things.

Now there's something you don't see often.  Along the side of a highway, and ancient castle looms up...

Back on the San Bernadino pass, I found an old, unused road.  Well, it's unused by mankind, but the cows use it quite often, given all the dried cow pucks all over the place.

It was along this stretch that I found the road that wasn't on any maps.  The pavement just ended.  Off to one side was a dirt path which cars and motorcycles were banned from, and a little sign for some place called Bandita Di Caccia.

What an amazing overlook...

Back at the first pass (Gotthard).  I was going to ride it again, but the wind had picked up something fierce and was really driving the clouds down into the valley with impressive speed.  That, plus I wanted to give myself extra time to find the dealership (considering how well I'd done finding my way out of the city the day before), so I just gazed at it for a while longer, took one last pic, and then turned my front tire toward Zurich.

Along the way, I pulled over to refresh my memory on the streets I'd be looking for when entering Zurich.  At the rest area, I noticed beneath an overpass, an old set of stairs leading down...so of course I had to find out where they went...

They brought me down closer to the edge of the lake I was next to, as well as a set of train tracks.  Another awesome scenery opportunity!

I'd left myself a few extra hours in case I got lost, but as luck would have it, I found my way directly to the dealership without any problem at all.  Which meant I had a few extra hours to kill before they closed.  I could always take the bike back out for a bit....nope, I wasn't going to chance getting lost again, so I parked it and shut 'er down.

There are many other pics (as you've seen on FB) but I think these are the better ones and do the best job of showing the amazing 2-day trip I was fortunate enough to experience.  If any of you have the opportunity to get over there and ride any of the old Alp passes, you gotta do it!!

Ride Hard!  Take Chances....in foreign countries!