French and Swiss countryside towns to see close to Italy?

I love Chamonix and you can take gondola from Aosta, Italy.Ck ahead always for weather condition & equip. In July 2010 we had a storn in Chamonix that sut all down for 2 days. The views on Mt Blanc,hiking, mtns and village are one of the best. Annecy further North is nice but only if you are going along the way. From Lake Como you can visit Lugano, another very nice town along a lake w/ lovely views. You can bus it from Menaggio easily for a day rd trip. all other top spots would be much further from Italian border.

Wonderful info..thank you very much!

In the western part of France there's Colmar-a definite must seeas well as the small villages that make up the Wine Road. We spent three days exploring this area and it was wonderful. From there we drove through Switzerland and on to Chamonix. We actually stayed in Annecy and drove to Chamonix on a day trip. In Chamonix be sure to ride the Augi de Midi . It's pricey but sôoooooooo worth it. Another interesting place in France was St. Paul de Venice and Eze. Both are small villages to browse through. Happy travels.

I would second Colmar and Lugano

In the western part of France there's Colmar Must be a typo - Colmar is in the east of France, in Alsace, just north of Switzerland and just across the Rhine from the Black Forest of Germany.

Hi Sharon, To answer you statement "Has anyone driven a rental car from country to country? Are there lots of restrictions?": Last year my husband and I rented a car at the airport Rome and spent a week in Le Marche which is an eastern region in Italy. Then, we drove to France and spent 2 weeks in L'isle sur-la-Sorgue in Provence. We returned the car to the the Marseille airport. There wasn't any problem driving our rental car from country to country. Hope this helps, Sue

'There wasn't any problem driving our rental car from country to country' The eight or nine hundred buck second-country drop-off fee would have been a problem for me. If the car had stayed in the same country for the whole time, a couple of weeks in a small car would have cost something like twenty dollars a day.

No restrictions taking you car across borders. 3 full days is just an impossible time to fit a loops such the one you are suggesting. It's either a visit to the area around Nice or Aix-en-Provence and then back to Italy via Cuneo to lake Como or else a straight drive to Aosta backtracking via Valais all the way to Ticino via one of the passes and then Lake Como - I can't conceive other good uses of this 3-day time allotment.

Driving through the Alps takes far longer than the straight-line distances on a map would suggest. I agree with the others, from the Cinque Terre through France and Switzerland to Lake Como in only 3 days, your entire time would be spent driving with little time to explore. "Has anyone driven a rental car form country to country? Are there lots of restrictions?" No, except that if you drive on the Autobahn networks in Switzerland and Austria, you need to purchase a vignette sticker for each country.

Thank you all of you for your comments. I looked up some of the different areas suggested, and realize it would not be a very good logistic choice to leave Cinque Terre, see a bit of France, loop through Switzerland and get back into Italy to stay at Lake Como all in 3 days! I do need to make some final decisions soon, so I can get going on booking rooms. New thought... leave Cinque Terre and train it to Varenna on Lake Como and enjoy that area. Next, take the train to Tarino and hop the Bernini Express to St Moritz. The train sights look incredible. I am not sure if St. Moritz is a good choice to stop in the summer and wonder...hate to keep extending and asking BUT...what about continuing on to see Liechtenstein?? I would love to hear what anyone has to say. We may end up just staying the night in St. Moritz or a nearby town and then head back to Como.
Sharon