Last week we returned back home from my in-laws in The Netherlands. It is about 700 km away from our place in Switzerland, so we usually go by car. It doesn't make sense to go by plane even though it's only an hour flight as we would need to first go by train to the airport in Zurich and then by another train from the airport in Amsterdam to my in-laws. It is simply faster and cheaper by car.
This time on the way back home we decided to drive in the morning because we had an appointment that we didn't want to miss later that day.
Surprisingly, we were lucky with the traffic (there were no traffic jams) and we also experienced all kinds of weather. It was sunny and warm, it rained, it was crazy windy and it even snowed in the Black Forest.
Let me take you on our trip with us!
This part of the highway was built only a few years ago. It goes alongside a gigantic quarry in the back. We wondered what they are extracting from there and recently found out that they are looking for oil.
They are using the largest digging machine in the world. It's so big that we could see it clearly from the highway even though it was far away from us.
In this place there are also many new windmills. This one is already finished but you can see large parts placed on the ground as there is an unfinished windmill next to this one.
The quarry is really big. I didn't see it before because we usually travel during the night. This region is expanding its industry rapidly.
As we drove during the day this time we could also order some food at the gas station. Normally, we come here in the early morning, so the food part is closed.
There was a coffee house and we both ordered some bagels and oat cappuccino. It was quite good! And I forgot to take a photo of our food...
Once we finished our food we were ready to drive off again...
Most of the landscape on the way is flat, but we were lucky with clouds formations, so there was always something interesting to see.
I was taking tons of photos and some of them turned out to be rather good (in my opinion). They are very sharp considering that I was taking them at 130 km/h.
You can see here how windy it was...
It was sunny for 5 minutes, then it was raining for another 5 minutes and we found ourselves in this circle all the time...
In the middle of our way we started to see more and more hills...
Can you see the castle in the middle?
The clouds were getting darker and heavier...
And then the sun came out again...
We made one stop at The Mosel valley bridge as this place is beautiful. We were driving high above the Mosel valley and could enjoy the views of the most famous wine region.
There is a sightseeing platform and we could also walk under the bridge to the other side of the highway which we of course did.
It was a long way down the bridge and then up again...
But those views were worth the exercise...
It is a massive construction...
Last view of the valley before going back to the car...
Here we go!
Blue sky...
And...
Storm in the back...
Driving close to the storm...
And SNOW!
Did I mention that the weather was changing? 🙂
This was the most fascinating part. We were approaching the storm and it was clearly separated from the blue sky...
And then we had snow again...
And more sun not so far from Switzerland...
We live in the region with inactive volcanos. There are also castle ruins on some of them, such as on this one. It's a great region for hiking.
Here we are approaching the border crossing...
And the last photo of Germany before we crossed the border to Switzerland...
I must say that we had a lot of fun that day. It took us longer than usually, but it was interesting to watch the weather and have completely different environment every few minutes.
It was good for a change, but next time we will drive during the night again 🙂
Until the next time...