Imagine living in Switzerland, as I do, and you have the complete country available for a super holiday for a few days, a trip by car. Actually this photo is from the Cbamps Elysee in Paris as all my photos from Switzerland on our various trips are still photos from the years gone by, but this photo shows how it is to make a trip on the Swiss roads, especially on national holidays.

We have the Easter week-end and everyone with a car that wants to go on a trip in Switzerland packs the family and luggage in the car and goes to the favourite place for an Easter holiday, namely the area known as Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. Lugano, Locarno and all the nice sounding Italian place names you can imagine. However, as said, everyone goes so you have to get on the road early. I remember one such trip we made, driving off at 5.00 a.m. It is a usual four hour trip and you arrive on the sunny shores of the Italian Lakes during the morning. At least that would be the idea. The first traffic jam you meet is approaching the Gotthard mountain pass which you have to cross to get to the valley of Tessin. In the meanwhile they have built a motorway over the pass, which everyone is taking. There is also a tunnel going through the pass – a 20 minute drive. However forget it all, because these are times with normal traffic. The traffic jams in this direction begin already a day before the Easter holiday and they are jams. I remember sitting in the car for 2 hours with a wonderful view of the car in front and the car behind. This was 20 years ago, but things have not changed. I was reading in the newspaper and seeing it on the TV that the jams were again reaching 20 kilometers towards the Gotthard and on the other side already in Tessin, the jams continued.

So if anyone would like to spend the Easter in the sunny part of Switzerland, forget it. Stay at home and enjoy the peace because everyone else is sitting on the road hoping that it will soon pass. By the way, if you have the kids with you, hope that they do not have digestive problems in the car on the way. Yes, it happened to us, with a few other problems on the way.