Swiss alps from the air

I have to admit that I wasn't too fussed about seeing the Swiss alps, as we'd seen Norway, it'd scared the #*!% out of me, and frankly what could beat Norway for otherworldly otherness?  But the weather was so good......  One of Gisi's neighbours is a SwissAir captain and she agreed that the clear air was a rare phenomenon.  So we rudely disappeared overnight.  Our plane's wing tanks are long and shallow, this means that it is very hard to judge how much petrol we have in the tanks, so we made a precautionary landing in Grenchen and decided to stay for the night.

We managed to leave our camera batteries charging at Kerstin's when we left, which meant that we were left with the small and the video cameras (also without much battery life), so apologies for the quality of the images.  I really like glaciers so there are a few nice images below.  More images are on Julian's blog.

Now since according to Wikipedia the glaciers on the Swiss alps take up 1230km2, you'll have to excuse me for giving you a couple more glacier pix.....

Looks almost like a road, doesn't it???

In order to get over the alps, we had to fly pretty high, in fact there were clouds below us....

This was the highest we've ever flown: 12 300 feet (3750m), the altitude didn't really agree with Julian so luckily we only spent 30mins that high.

It was a pretty spectacular day's flying.  We stopped for a break in Lugano, only to discover that the town itself was on the other side of a mountain range only to be reached via a bus then a train, so we'll save Lugano for a future trip.

Bodensee (Lake Constance) from the air with uncle Bill

The Colossus of.... Lake Constance???

You may have heard me talk about my Uncle Bill.  He's 78 and met my Aunt Gisi when he was 70, after both of them had lost their partners.  Neither of them was looking for a new partner, he was happy travelling and she was happy at home in Konstanz: now they're living happily ever after travelling the world and splitting their time between Melbourne and Switzerland.  They're also thinking of taking a bicycle tour along the Danube (a support bus takes your luggage for you).  Zwei haben sich gefunden.  I hope that I'm as happy and active as them when I'm their age.

The three of us underway

Uncle Bill has had a hip replacement and is currently staving off a second.  As you know our plane is not massive, but a little thing like that isn't going to stop an adventurer like him.  So we went for a tour of the lake.

The Rhine canal

And going inland, pretty isn't it?

Lindau in Austria is on the Eastern corner of Lake Constance and being a pretty little island with a middle-ages city centre attached by a strip of road to the mainland it is a real tourist attraction.

Overview of the island and its harbours

view from the direction of the mainand

one of the towers, look at all the tourists in mid September!

Gisi's house, very top centre, it is incredibly difficult to identify a house from above, no matter how well you know it.

Konstanz waterfront, with tourist boat.

Church in the centre of Konstanz

On the way back to Bill & Gisi's, we went to Gottlieben, where Gisi lived for many years and just so charming and beautiful that it is absolutely packed with tourists in the season.

beautiful half timbered inn

And a gratuitous shot of the Friedrichshafen blimp flying past as we get ready for takeoff

Off to Konstanz

Burg Hohenzollern from the air - we just happened to fly past it and decided to orbit to have a closer look.  We also discovered a beautiful little village in flight.  It turned out to be Heidelberg.  Oh well, you can't always be the first to find something.

What, I hear you exclaim, you're flying right across Germany from Denmark, no stops to the Swiss border???  (Which equals about 5 hours flight in a small plane)

Julian had caught my cold and was still feeling a bit miserable at the tail end of it, so he couldn't fly without the comfort of his sleeping bag!

The reason for such madness, was that my uncle and aunt who live in Konstanz half the year were already about to start back to Australia and we really wanted to catch them before they left.

And we did stop, in Frankfurt Egelsbach, to meet the lovely plastic pilot and family.

Florence is the most amazing kid, not interested in dolls, but loves machines and really wants to fly.  She didn't really want to take no for an answer about flying away with our plane, and managed to find a 20cm2 space in the back seat for her mum to sit :-)  Such a cute kid.

By the time we arrived in Konstanz it was definitely mozzie-o-clock.  We've been really lucky in not having any mosquitos on our trip, despite the direst of warnings from the Swedes about Siljansnaes.  Here we were swarmed, and I felt very bad about my aunt Gisi's bare legs as she watched us unload and tie down the plane.  Luckily we're getting pretty quick at the entire unloading process, so we were underway in no time.

Konstanz, as you can see it's pretty much one town joined by a bridge the bit on the right belonging to Germany, but with parts further right being Swiss, which makes for lots of border crossings.