Thursday, Day 6 in Switzerland

Ah, the majesty of the Jungfraujoch... the top of Europe. Glorious views of three countries. An overlook of the largest Glacier in the Alps. So much snowy sunshine. And a zillion Asian tourists.

On Thursday in Switzerland, we woke up early in our Lauterbrunnen hotel room to catch the "Good Morning Train" to the Jungfraujoch. It was dark as we walked across town to the train station. The sun came up while we took the long rail journey up into the mountains from the valley. There was a pack of awful Australian people on our train that were very loud and talked too much. But they didn't ruin the trip. We saw tiny ibex grazing near a pond. When we arrived at our destination, the first thing we did was find coffee. Then we enjoyed the incredible views.

Top of Aletsch Glacier, largest in the Alps.

View from the Sphinx Observatory.

You could walk around in the snow. Notice there's not a cloud in the sky--a perfect day for this.

This was no cheap outing. It cost us 140 francs ($150 USD) each to get to the Jungfraujoch, but it was an experience I knew we needed to have if we were visiting Switzerland. This was a VERY touristy place. This was the only experience we found overly touristy during our vacation. But I'm still glad we did it.

During the train ride back into the valley, the sun was out and we were able to fully enjoy the scenery. Incredible.

The Jungfrau and the Monch I think?

So amazing.

We stopped on the way down in a town called Murren, located on the route to Lauterbrunnen. We wanted to check the place out and get some lunch. Murren is a thoroughly touristy place as well, with lots of condo chalet buildings, ski lifts, and sporting goods stores. We were there off-season, so many restaurants and stores were closed. We did find a nice shop for souvenirs. It was called "The Swiss Made Shop." We stopped by the tourist office to ask for a restaurant recommendation. The person on duty suggested we try picnicking in a churchyard that offered outstanding views of the valley. We stopped by a Migros to pick up sandwiches and walked up to the church for our picnic.

Picnic view of Lauterbrunnen Valley in Murren.

The guy in the tourist office was right. The view from this churchyard was phenomenal. My picture couldn't capture it. But maybe you get the idea. Alps with a green valley full of chalets and waterfalls. Unbelievable. I kept thinking, I'm having a picnic here? Really?

By this time, it had warmed up to 68 degrees after it had been 30 or so in the early morning hours. I had on big snow boots and many layers of clothing. I was anxious to get out of my wintery gear, and so we headed down to Lauterbrunnen where our rental car waited. We had a long drive back to Champoussin, and it was getting to be late. We waved goodbye to the Bernese Oberland and headed east, exhausted but happy. Before we left, I got this shot in Lauterbrunnen which helps provide some perspective when paired with the image above.

View in Lauterbrunnen.

Wednesday, Day 5 in Switzerland

It is convenient that my last post was about Colonial Williamsburg, because this post will be about the Swiss version of an "open air museum." On Wednesday in Switzerland, we drove two hours to Museum Ballenberg and spent the day admiring traditional Swiss architecture, culture, and farm animals. I was really, really hungry after the long drive, and we started our museum tour at one of the restaurants, where we ate outside at a long picnic table. The food was, surprisingly, REALLY delicious. And not too expensive. We shared a salad and had "mountain macaroni," a pasta dish with cream, cheese, potatoes, and dried onions on top, served with apple sauce. You can see that we've moved into the German-speaking part of Switzerland by the food alone.

Each area of the park represents a different canton of Switzerland. Houses and farms from different economic classes are present in each area, but they are all so beautiful. The buildings feel very true. They're wonderfully furnished with period items. Here's a gorgeous example of a sunny dining room--fresh, natural, and healthy looking, like the rest of Switzerland. This is what I strive for my home to feel like.

 Behind each gorgeous building was an incredible mountain backdrop with common Swiss flowers in the garden foreground. There were so many marvelous photo opportunities.

There were animals all over the museum, especially rabbits. There were also many goats and chickens, looking happy in green pastures. Of course there were cows wearing bells as well. Animals at Museum Ballenberg get to live the good life.

This was one of my favorite outings in Switzerland. The museum has a very authentic feel, not too touristy or forceful. It was well worth the drive, and I'm very glad we were able to visit German-speaking Switzerland, even if I felt uncomfortable not knowing the language. 

Two warnings about Museum Ballenberg. First, watch your head. People were short back in the day, I guess. I bonked my head real good on my way out of a farm house, and I was lightheaded somewhat for the rest of the day. Secondly, do not buy meat products in Ballenberg and plan to bring them back to the U.S. Is it common knowledge that they will throw away your perfectly good smoked Swiss meats in customs? I had no idea. $60 worth of high-quality sausage, destroyed by the U.S. government. I am still mad at the FDA.

Things closed down at 5, and I was sad that we didn't have more time to explore Ballenberg. But I was exhausted and I had a bump on my head. So it was really nice to get to our hotel room in Lauterbrunnen. We stayed in Hotel Staubbach, a beautiful little place in an extraordinary setting. We had an incredible valley view:

But we knew we had to rise early on Day 6 to get to the top of the Jungfraujoch, so we hardly were able to enjoy the comfort of the room or the splendor of our balcony view. We had dinner nearby (tasty cheesy rosti!), showered, and conked out. That hotel room was simple and tidy, with a very comfortable bed and a shower that could be used American-style. It was like heaven compared to the dated, dark apartment where we stayed in Champoussin. How we hated going back to the unsupportive murphy bed in our Champoussin chalet.

Tuesday, Day 4 in Switzerland

Will I ever finish blogging about Switzerland? I'm forgetting all the details I wanted to record. But things have been pretty busy these past few weeks. I've also been in a most uninterested mood, not good for writing. Right now, I've got a chicken roasting in the oven, a glass of Shiraz, I'm on my third load of laundry, the dishes are done, and I realized... I have time to blog.

Every day in Switzerland is beautiful. I'm not lying. Writing this makes me miss it. Tuesday was one of the more beautiful and also more stressful days of the vacation. We drove a couple hours to the Grande Dixence Dam, an out-of-the-way place that is more likely to attract local hikers than international tourists. This is a beautiful spot for lovely views set on a man-made lake against a glorious Alpine background. We rode a cable car to the top of the dam and decided to walk back down. Walking back down turned out to be a lot more work than we were expecting, and it didn't leave much time to explore the city of Sion, which was something I was excited to do. So we felt kind of rushed and exhausted, but it was still an incredible experience.

Grande Dixence Dam--bigger than it looks.

A view of Lake des Dix

The trail ran through tunnels in the rocks. The glacial
runoff makes for water of a most beautiful color.

When we finally got to Sion at 5 pm, we made our way straight to Valere castle, an ancient fortified church, which I read in Fodor's was open until 6. Fodors is full of lies! When we got to the castle, after climbing up a big hill through a lot of confusing alleys, the doors were locked up and the site was closed. But the views on the way up were beautiful, and we got to see the ruins of Tourbillon Castle.

Tourbillon Castle ruins

A little chapel next to Valere

A typical view of Sion from a spot near the top of the hill Valere sits upon.

Sion is a really lovely city that doesn't seem to get enough attention in the region. It feels almost Mediterranean, settled on the Rhone River with vineyards all around. We drank coffee and tea on a patio of a nice little cafe where our waitress complimented my "pretty accent" (I'm certain she was just being kind). People watching in Switzerland was so marvelous. We watched people go about their usual after-work weekday routines while we drank our coffee, people riding bicycles with their groceries and kids playing soccer in alleyways. I very much wish we could have spent more time Sion.

Monday, Day 3 in Switzerland

I had a pretty specific agenda for the Swiss adventure. We were sidetracked by Martigny and the Combat des Reines, but on Monday we got back on track with a trip to Chillon Castle, as planned. We got up, had our morning croissants with espresso, and headed toward Montreux in our Nissan Micra.

Morning cafe and croissants in the Swiss sunshine--a real pleasure.

We ate at a touristy cafe directly across from the Castle, called Cafe de Chillon or something similar. The food was surprisingly good, but yes, expensive. Boyfriend, not usually the one to worry about money, didn't want to order one of the specialites de la maison. I said, come on, we're on vacation. Get the steak if you want. I don't remember what he got, actually, but I had duck breast with fig sauce, sauteed seasonal vegetables, and spatzle (I am inspired to make spatzle now). We also drank a Swiss soda called Rivella which is actually made from dairy whey, though you'd never guess so. 

Chillon Castle is really something else. You can imagine what the hubbub of the place must have been like. It's bigger on the inside than you think it will be. There were actually dungeons, and you can just imagine how miserable they were. There were a lot of descriptive signs and smaller exhibits, as in every museum. I mean, I never felt like I was anywhere other than in a museum. But it was pretty damn neat. There were about a dozen beautiful little courtyards. They were my favorite thing.

Chillon from outside.

A dungeon/storage space.

Beautiful views of the shores of Lake Geneva from inside the castle.

More beautiful views.

The Judgement Room.

One of the many courtyards.

We were still very tired on Monday. We went home and ate prepared refrigerated meals that we bought at a grocery store called Coop. I had delicious gnochi. Boyfriend had some kind of chicken and spatzle meal. They were delicious. All food, even the food that isn't supposed to be that good, the stuff you find in grocery store fridges and on gas station shelves, is delicious in Switzerland. I don't know how they're all so fit. Lots of outdoorsy stuff, I guess. So after our microwaved meals were eaten, we fells asleep while watching international television. And that was Monday.

Sunday, Day 2 in Switzerland

I was supposed to write this yesterday, but I went to Station 2 and had a couple beers and a veggie burger for dinner, and thus I lost all motivation to do anything. While I digested that enormous greasy meal, I did watch The King's Speech. It WAS a good movie! I wonder if the book it's based on is any good.

Anyway, the topic of this post is DAY 2 IN SWITZERLAND.

Based on something the owner of the resort told us, we decided to drive to a nearby city called Martigny to see the Combat des Reines. This is a festival involving cows that fight in an ancient Roman amphitheater to display their dominance. The winner gets a sort of parade and a very big bell to wear around her neck. It's not like Spanish bull fight or anything. It's what the cows would do naturally in their pastures. So this sounded like a fun time and we wanted to check it out.

Well we got to Martigny and found a public parking lot. There was a map in the lot, and so we stared at it for a while but didn't understand where anything was. After a few minutes, all these people had gathered in a big group in a parking lot. A little train that was not a train but more like tractor pulling some rolling cars for passengers, pulled into the parking lot, and the crowd of people loaded into the cars. I said, "let's get on the train!" Boyfriend was hesitant, but he followed me.

I figured the train was going to take us to the Combats des Reines, right? Well, we rolled through a beautiful medieval city center and up a mountain. It was a little scary because the turns were very tight and we were riding on little trailers behind a tractor. But it was fun. And when the train stopped, we were at a medieval fortress on top of a mountain. The train tractor driver told me that he'd be back to pick everyone up, so we got out to explore the castle.

When we got inside the castle, there was huge crowd of people and some of them were coming out from inside the castle with plates of food. We were hungry at this point, and I was down with eating some of the food, but we really did not understand what was happening in this place. There was a sign that said the plate of food was 25 francs (that's like $22). People were eating cheese, bread, pickles, grapes, roasted chestnuts, and they were drinking wine. Boyfriend wanted to leave, and I couldn't really argue for why to stay other than it seemed like fun to me, so we left and waited for the train to come back. This all sounds like a waste of time, and mostly is was, but riding on the little tractor train was kind of fun, we got to see the medieval city center, and the views from the top of the mountain were pretty impressive.

View from the top of the mountain in Martigny.

We rode the train back down the mountain and stared at the map again for a while and walked in the direction where the believed the Combats des Reines to be. We arrived at a big gate in front of a space with all these buildings and food stands, and it looked like a festival was happening inside. Again, we didn't understand what was going on. It cost some money to go in. I don't remember how much, 12 francs maybe. So we paid the money at the gate and we went in. Inside, we bought some roasted chestnuts (chestnuts are a big deal here apparently), and we ate them. They were good. Then we wandered around the buildings and tents and realized that this was not where we wanted to be. They were selling things, like flooring, kitchen appliances, telephone service, wine, and an endless number of products that we did not want. We left, grumpy that we had paid money to get in. We were also hungry and thirsty which made the grumpy factor even worse.

Well, we wandered around for quite a while before we found the amphitheater and the Combat des Reines. I asked several people where to go but their directions were not very good (I won't blame my weak French language skills). When we got to the amphitheater, it was crowded. We tried to go in and we were told we had to buy a ticket. It was 20 francs per person to watch the cows fight. Hungry and tired, we decided not to pay that much to see the Combats des Reines. This is a decision I regret now, because I really wanted to see what was going on in there... but we felt too exhausted to handle any more confusion. By this time, it was 4 pm, all the cafes had closed, and we decided to head toward home.

Before we left though, I did get to see some of the cows waiting to go into the amphitheater. They are some pretty impressive beasts. Remember, these are female!

Cows waiting for the Combat des Reines

She looks like a winner to me.

We made up for a stressful day in Martigny when we got back to Champoussin. We drank a lot and ate a lot of fondue and then fell asleep at 8:30. Fondue is like heaven in your mouth.

Next time: Chillon Castle.

I'm back! Saturday in Switzerland

I have returned from the Big Swiss Adventure! We got back on Saturday night. I had a lovely time. Nothing substantial went wrong. All events happened relatively smoothly. It was a wonderful vacation. I feel like I ate several pounds of cheese last week, because I did. I made a kale, bean, and turkey sausage soup last night with the hopes that I'd feel less gross after eating something so full of fiber. I think it worked but my schedule is still off and I fell asleep at 8:30 last night. I'm sure I'll be back to normal by the end of the week.

I didn't blog from Switzerland because I have a huge laptop and it was too much trouble to lug it along with me. So now I'll write down the details I most want to remember. And I have some pictures too, of course.

On the Saturday of our arrival, we were very tired and grumpy after a horrendously uncomfortable 7-hour plane ride from D.C. to Geneva. We left at 5 pm (our time) and arrived at 8 am (their time). So it felt like 3 am or so as we obtained our rental car and set off onto the Swiss roadways. This was initially quite scary. Boyfriend did all the driving and found the first day of adjusting to European highways a little stressful. But we were thrilled to be off the airplane, even in our exhaustion. We drove from the airport toward our resort in Valais, along beautiful Lake Geneva. It was a foggy morning, and the humidity felt good after being in the plane. The hillsides were covered in vineyards, and I got to enjoy the amazing views as Boyfriend adjusted to kilometers and traffic circles.

We stopped in Lausanne around lunchtime to eat and see the sights. Driving and parking felt very stressful in Lausanne, but we got a parking spot and we wandered through the city's center. It was market day. People were selling fruits and pastries in little stands. There were giant figs that impressed me very much. We had trouble getting francs from the ATM. My card wouldn't work at all (we still don't know why, because it worked two days later). Boyfriend was able to get 200 francs and so we went to have lunch at Manora Restaurant, which I had read about before our trip. It took us a good while before we found Manora because it is in a crazy huge department store called Manor. Manor was I think 7 stories tall and included a grocery store and departments for furniture, home goods, women's clothing, men's clothing, shoes, children's things... and on the top floor, there was Manora Restaurant, a self-service place crowded with Swiss people on market day. Boyfriend found it to be a bit overwhelming, but we found him a chicken salad sandwich that made him very happy. It was the best chicken salad sandwich I'd ever tasted. I had eggplant pizza and salad and fruit for dessert. We ate it on the restaurant's patio and watched little birds beg for food. A Swiss boy with a toy sword also made faces at us while we ate.

  

After lunch, we visited a church, which I thought was the Cathedral de Notre-Dame, but I later discovered that it was not. Well, it was a nice church anyway...

 

Then we were back on the road and driving toward our "resort" in Champoussin. We got lost once and accidentally went up a mountain, which was beautiful. We also stopped at a Coop grocery store to pick up some cheese, bread, eggs, and microwavable meals. I had refused to spend $75 on a GPS for a week, but luckily our little rental car came with navigation. It was a necessity. 

We finally arrived in Champoussin at 5:00-ish, and we were mighty happy to find ourselves near a bed. The apartment we stayed in was in a ski resort that we booked through RCI. I would not recommend it or stay there again, but we spent such a short amount of time in our apartment, it didn't much matter. And we did have a beautiful view from our little chalet apartment. 

On Saturday evening, we ate bread and cheese for dinner and explored our TV channels (mostly in French in German). Then we fell asleep at 7:30. Next time... SUNDAY! And a story about the city of Martigny.

Je vais en Suisse!

In case you don't understand French, the title of this blog translates to, "I'm going to Switzerland!"

I think that's what it means, anyway. I'm a little rusty.

But it's true! I booked the trip yesterday. My parents had a week at a timeshare resort that was going to expire in January. They weren't going to use it, so they donated it to me. Can you believe the generosity? Well, I had the choice of hundreds of resorts around the world, and after hours of searching for the right place, I decided on a tiny resort town called Champoussin in the canton of Valais. I am pretty freakin' excited.

The trip isn't until October, so it's going to be a long wait. Boyfriend and I are arriving on October 1st and leaving on the 8th. October is sort of a weird time of year to go to Switzerland, apparently, because people mostly like to enjoy summer hiking or winter skiing. But, since it's already summer and since the trip must be used by January and since I have zero interest in skiing, we'll be going in autumn. There won't be many tourists, and it will be cool but not freezing. I hope there will be lots of sight-seeing, cheese eating, wine drinking, and relaxing.

I think that Switzerland sounded so good because we're in the middle of an outrageous heatwave here in Richmond. Mexico or the Bahamas sound kind of unbearable when it's 100 degrees. I think I'll still like the idea in October, too.

So, I'm going to spend the next two months vigorously planning our trip, boning up on French language and European geography, and fantasizing about what staying in this little town for a week might be like. Exciting, right?