Day 3 - Geneva to Milan

Day 3 began in Geneva city centre with Team Funkycoconut leaving the at about 11am. Todays plan was to drive in the French Alps around the Olympic town of Albertville and Val D'isere and taking a mountain road into Italy and then the autostrada to Milan.

See the route we took via this link.

We configured our navigation device to head for Chamonix but the weather turned for the worse and we abandoned Chamonix and headed straight for Albertville. We wanted to avoid expensive french toll roads so we passed through villages of La Clusas and Flumet. As im writing this ive discovered I drove the Col des Aravis :-)

Just outside of the ski resort of Val D'isere we stopped by Lac du Chevril. We took some pictures and then continued on to Val D'isere. When we arrived in the resort, we found the place deserted apart from a few locals. Obviously June is out of season but it was very quiet. We didnt stop and continued to to the foot of the Col de l'Iseran. Unfortunately it wasn't until we rached he foot of the mountain road that we found the local authorities had closed the road over the Col de l'Iseran due to roadworks and from what I could see, lingering snow at the top. We had to turn back and find
another route to Milan.

We got back to the village of Seez and the navigation device rerouted us via the Col du Petit St. Bernard. We followed the road to the top and the village of La Rossiere. Again once again the road had been closed by the authorities. We did however notice sum locals ignoring the barriers and driving through. We took a chance and followed. We reached the French/Italian border to find that the French authorities had snowplowed the road but the Italians had not bothered, and Italy was blocked by an 8ft snow wall. Again we turned around and decended to Seez again to find another route to Italy.

As the time was now approaching 6pm and Milan still several hundred kilometers away, we decided to just get to Milan and to the hotel we had booked. We chanced upon a sign pointing to the village of Pussy. We didn't visit, just took a photo. Arriving in the town of Modane we then took the 13km (8 mile) Fréjus road tunnel to Bardonecchia in Italy.

Once in Italy we made all haste in getting to Milan and the Hotel Soperga. We arrived in Milan at the hotel about 11pm.