We headed to Liechtenstein via Stelvio Pass, an amazing pass in Italy.

Stelvio is something like the fifth highest paved pass in Europe at 2760m.
Being a major tourist attraction, it gets very busy and as the road is not in very good condition with extremely tight corners in some places, it isn't a fun road to ride, in fact it can be quite a challenge.

Last time we went up we were later in the day and there were many many bikes, cars and cyclists. This time it wasn't so busy, but now they have buses taking the tourists to the top. We encountered a bus coming down at one of the very tight turns, this caused a bit of a traffic jam as there wasn't enough room for a car that was going up to pass the bus. So the car was trying to back down into the corner and there must have been six bikes trying to go up too.

At the top we stopped for photos and a Bratwurst sausage in a roll before heading down the other side and into Switzerland.

The Swiss side of Stelvio is a lot better road, smoother, wider and with sweeping corners. It was funny and a little embarrassing at one point, we had two cyclists sitting right behind us for quite some time and we were doing between 60 and 70kph! We would pull away from them out of the corners and then they would catch us at the next corner, I think they saw us as a challenge.

From Stelvio it was down through the mountains, over another pass or two before we were on flatter land and heading into Liechtenstein.

Just before we crossed the border into Liechtenstein though, we passed through a narrow gateway in a stone wall, passed by some buildings, including a restaurant, before passing through another narrow stone gateway. It was most odd. On the way out of Liechtenstein we passed through the same area, so stopped for a drink at the restaurant and asked what the place was. The girl didn't offer up too much history, but said it was a military area and that the walls and towers on the hills on either side dated back to Roman times. Most odd.

The first place we stopped at in Liechtenstein was a castle in an area called Balzers. The castle is called Gutenburg Castle, not to be confused with Guttenburg Castle in Germany which is open to the public. After parking the bike and walking up a long steep road we found that Gutenburg Castle was closed. We later found it is only open on Sundays and then only to the rose garden. The other castle in Liechtenstein is in Vaduz and is not open to the public at all.

From the castle we headed to a nearby campground where we were welcomed and advised that their restaurant opened in the evening for meals. As we didn't have any food with us and it was hot and getting late, we thought we would eat in the restaurant rather than ride into town to shop at a supermarket.

Good plan, apart from after setting up camp and cooling down for awhile, we headed down for dinner only to find the restaurant wasn't opening due to lack of staff and now the supermarkets would be closed. Our only option now was to suit up and ride into town to a restaurant, that was very nice, but also pricy.

The next morning we packed up, a little disappointed with our experience in this campground and rode into and through Vaduz, the capital city.
We didn't stop in the city as it didn't have anything that invited us to stop and we wanted to get as far through Switzerland and toward France as we could.

Another little issue we were having is that the Cashcard we use for traveling which allows us to load our money onto it in up to eleven different currencies doesn't have Swiss Francs or Hungarian Forint. So we load Australian Dollars and when we spend it takes from there and they charge for each transaction, or we can pull cash from an ATM and only pay one fee and then spend cash. It's a bit of a pain.

So in the end we felt that Liechtenstein was a bit of a nothing country for us. We looked at the tourists information and still there was nothing we wanted to see. It is certainly a clean country and nice to look at, but for us there was nothing to visit.