Road Trip!

Jackie and I set off on what started off as an innocuous (yeah right) trip to pick up her car and drive it back.  


Little problem:  the car was in the South of France (shame) and we were in England (someone had to do it, right?)  Somehow we (the two sisters, famous for our antics after bedtime,) masterminded the 5 day trip of a lifetime which went something like this:  London to France (Nice, Cannes, Plan de la Tour,) France to Italy (where I'd never been) spending a night there in a typical family hostel (aptly named Castello di Verduno) then Torino, Stresa and Lago Maggiore, Italy to Switzerland (I'd never been there either) and we're now here in Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn.


Tiny set back: I wasn't able to get insurance to co-pilot the car, so I was demoted to map reader and conversationalist.  Luck was in!  I'm good at both.  (Bad luck Jackie).


So here we are in Zermatt.  I've never been this high up and I'm high as a kite.  1,616 metres above sea level has me loopy as a bowl of spaghetti, so amid much laughter we took a train up the mountain this morning to see what would happen at 3,100 metres.  Bad news.  It was worse.  Much worse but it was worth it just for the ridiculous movie I made up there. 


Blazing sunshine to icy blizzards in three days driving ... what can I say?  I'm all talked out.  Jackie?  She drove well, no napping at the wheel for her yet I find she's a little hard of hearing these days, so I sometimes have to tell the stories  twice and explain the jokes.  


The only mistake the map reader made?  Made us go over the Italo-Swiss border via the pass instead of the tunnel (clever mistake, eh?)  Never mind, Jackie got a really good rendition of "The hills are alive... with the sound of music ..." at the top of the Semploni Pass.  Now you can't beat that, can you?