VIGNOGN — Six weeks ago, we had no idea we’d be taking this trip, period. Four weeks ago, we knew only that our non-existent itinerary would need to come together on the fly, and on the fly it has been. London became the point of departure solely because our Boston-to-Barcelona flight happened to connect through Heathrow. We picked Edinburgh and Inverness based on a combination of BritRail train pass accessibility and weather forecast. We chose Copenhagen and Berlin because they had the cheapest flights out of the prior location. Tuscany was a more purposeful choice because, well, who doesn’t want to spend a week in Tuscany? But midway through our week there, the enduring question arose again: where to next?
After selecting based on transportation and weather and destination, this time we chose based on accommodations. We searched Kid & Coe, the AirBnB-equivalent for families (they list properties equipped with ever-important things like plastic dinnerware and toys and bunk beds), and found a spot that looked amazing in Themiddleoffreakingnowhere, Switzerland. The owner told us he’d give us two nights free if we booked five, and Google Maps told us we could drive there in under 7 hours, so voila, the next destination was on the books.
We loaded up the good ol’ rental car and hit the road first thing Saturday morning. I’d just read about The Floating Piers, a really cool temporary art installation at Lake Iseo in Northern Italy, so we decided we’d make that our waypoint. As it happened, half of Italy had the same idea; it was too crowded, so children and the disabled were not allowed to walk the piers when we got there. No piers for us – but Iseo was a fabulous little town (go there) and the perfect place for afternoon pizza- and gelato-eating.
Around 3:00PM, we set off for Switzerland. Google Maps gave us three route options, two of which were fairly direct and went through Milan, and one of which hugged the eastern side of Lake Como and then seemed to shoot straight up through the mountains. The latter added about 40 extra minutes but seemed to have the most scenic potential, so we took it. (Naïve Navigator Kate thinks to herself, “Oh, a highway through the Alps! How quaint. Let’s.”)
Welp, the “scenic route” had neither a shortage of scenic-ness, nor a shortage of petrifying hairpin turns on distressingly narrow roads. It did, however, have a shortage of guardrails between the roads and the cliffs they overlooked. Had I simply zoomed into the route, the zig-zagginess would’ve become abundantly clear. Or had I Googled the route and seen its description on www.dangerousroads.org, I may have thought twice. But nope, I didn’t. So up over the 6900 foot mountain pass we went.
I spent 2 hours becoming intimately acquainted with the handle of my door as I clutched it for dear life. We had to pull over once because Owen almost had his inaugural bout of carsickness. But the views were the most breathtaking (in every possible sense of that word) I’ve ever seen in my life. Because I know the ending of that particular story (we lived!), I don’t regret doing it. But next time, I might take some Xanax first.
As my blood pressure returned to a more acceptable level, we drove to Chur, the biggest town nearby (about 45 minutes from where the house is in Vignogn), to load up on groceries. As we anticipated, the grocery stores are closed on Sundays here. As we did not anticipate, the grocery stores close at 6:00PM on Saturday night — and of course we pulled in at 6:30PM. We found a gas station convenience store that had passable food and bought as many normal-looking staples as we could find (e.g., peanut butter, jelly, Nutella, cereal, wine) and we’ve basically spent the day rationing food. We’ve gone through an entire box of Special K (sharing each other’s leftover milk) and several PB&J sandwiches. As the bread and most of the milk is now gone, Aaron just made a Hail Mary trip to another gas station 10 miles away to see if we can get something for dinner. The good news is that the kids think cereal and PB&Js are the pinnacle of gourmet eating, so I’m quite sure we’ll survive till the stores open Monday.
