May 14th - 25th 2015, W111 Meeting, Umbria (Italy) and Seefeld (Austria) ...
Like last year, we attended the W111 Cabriolet Meeting, this time at the German-Swiss border. From there we took the drive via the Lago Maggiore to Umbria, where we met our friends Carlos and Claudia from Argentina. On the way back, we had a four-day stop in Seefeld, Austria, where we had already been for our skiing week this year ...
That's the place where we arrived and parked the cars ... as usual impressive seeing all those cars together. It was just at the German-Swiss border, close to the Lake Constance.
Unfortunately on the first day it was cold and raining permanently like last year. We took a tour with an organised bus ... first stop were the Rhein-Falls at Schaffhausen, Switzerland ...
... Next we took a boat on the Rhein towards the city of "Stein am Rhein" ... here the two of us sitting "dryly" on the boat ...
... Stein am Rhein turned out to be a beautiful little city, unfortunately due to the rain not stopping we hid quickly in one of the cafes ...
... where Cynthia followed her "hobby", writing heaps of postcards to all the friends ... Our holidays are normally relatively cheap, but the postage for Cynthia's postcards makes it an expensive experience ;-)
Finally we had to leave coffeeshop No. 1 and we headed with our umbrella to pub No. 2 ... having a wine and a beer.
This night a dinner was booked at a "border" restaurant, which literally meant, that this restaurant is partly on German and partly on Swiss ground ... here Cynthia having one foot in each country ...
Next day with slightly better weather (at least it didn't rain) we started with the tour ... nineteen cars in a row through Switzerland ...
Here our first stop at the Napoleon Museum ... parking reserved ...
... continuing through the landscape, up and down ...
Beautiful panorama in Switzerland on the way to the "Säntis", a mountain in the area
We took the cable car up to the mountain, where we could take this picture of all cars lined up ...
Then driving another 100kms and having a typical local dinner with great food, meat and cheese and local wine ...
Here the two of us after dinner enjoying a glass of wine ...Umbria / Tuscany (Italy)
On Sunday morning we headed towards Italy. On the way to the Lago Maggiore we drove through Switzerland and had a stop at the lake "Zug" for a coffee ... Switzerland is expensive at times, but due to the extreme exchange rate at the moment, the two coffees were 12,50 Euro!
Another deviation to get to the Lago Maggiore, we decided to take the Gotthard pass route ... roof down, pretty cold (around 5 degrees)... but worth the drive!
driving through tunnels ...
... well just enjoy the picture, taken on the way down from the Gotthard pass ...
Finally arriving at the Lago Maggiore to sunshine and warm weather! This was the view from our fantastic little hotel "Villa Margherita" in Oggebbio
So after the long drive, we sat on the terrace, had an Erdinger, 25 degrees, a slight breeze ... what more do you want?
After a lovely dinner and a good night we drove 530kms to Umbertide to visit our friends Carlos and Claudia. Their friend Zelika was there too and you can see us having drinks and nibblies at their house.
Next day the weather was fantastic, we put the roof down and drove to Montone, a really beautiful medieval city!
There we had some drinks in a local cafe before we headed back to their house to pick up Carlos.
This is our car in front of their house ... we really enjoyed the weather ... knowing from the weather report what was to come in Seefeld / Austria ;-)
After lunch all five of us jumped in the car and we drove to Anghiari, another bigger medieval town there. Really impressive and in fantastic condition ...
As it was off-season, we could park the car right in the middle of town ...
... and started walking through the little alleys ...
Next day we visited the town of Gubbio, world heritage ... here the Piazza Grande ...
Another view with Umbria in the background ... just amazing that all those buildings have survived ...
That's actually a hotel with a beautiful garden ...
That - last - night, we were invited to a wonderful seafood dinner in Montone.Seefeld, Tyrol, Austria
We drove 640kms from Umbria to Seefeld, Austria, to arrive in the cold rain. We basically had three relaxing days of doing nothing in the hotel, as the weather was just awful.
Anyway, by accident, Thomas' aunt Margot and her family had a weekend just 10kms away, so we popped over one night to have drinks with them ... that was about what we can tell you from 4 days of rain ;-)