Great Adventure: Friday: Luzern

Friday morning we checked out of our fabulous house.  It was time to say goodbye to Switzerland.  So sad.

Dan went for a long run- made longer by a minorly wrong turn and the consequential recalculation of how to get from where he was, to where he wanted to be.  He also stopped by the corner bakery and got this for breakfast.  He said it was yummy.

Then we packed up and drove off.  We headed to Italy, with a little stop in Luzern, Switzerland before we left the country for good.

Driving in Switzerland was always a lot of fun.  Random castles on hills and gorgeous buildings, farms and countryside everywhere. It was breathtaking.

We spent a bit over an hour wandering Luzern.  I think someone had a particular destination in mind, but I was happy to just mosey and look.  And I enjoyed it.  We came upon some carts that seemed to be left from a Carnival celebration.  One of them was covered with political cartoons, and I found it interesting that most of them were harpoons at US politics.

This was my favorite!

I liked this school zone sign as well.

And this is a beautiful street we walked up.  Only to realize it wasn't the way we wanted to go, so we walked back down it. 

This is a historical bridge.  It had old-old paintings on it and we walked across it and checked them out.  Not the sort of paintings I had expected.  Not "museum" paintings at all.

Probably the most modern looking buildings in Switzerland. I love the mountains rising in the background.

Then it was more driving.  Not horribly long.  I think our total car time was 6 hours, plus the 45 minutes we spent lost, trying to figure out how the holy heck to get inside the Vicenza base!  But there was neat scenery.  Neater had it been in focus, I suppose.

We drove through this incredibly long tunnel.  I think it was 17km long.  It went on FOREVER!

 And when we finally popped out the other side, we were in Italy, and there was lots of snow!

A lot of snow!  And it was so pretty, all frosted on the trees.

We had a quick rest stop and there was this map, which was not helpful at all.  Then we finished the drive to Vicenza and discovered it is virtually impossible to find the front gate to the base.  It took us 45 minutes.  We drove all the way around the base.  We stopped twice to ask for directions.  We thought we found it once, but they said no, it was gate 4 and we could not go on through gate 4, we had to go to gate 1.  We still couldn't find it.  It was incredibly annoying!  Obviously we did eventually stumble upon it, but sheesh!

I tell you, I am really glad only the men-folk are on the rental car agreement!  I would NOT like to drive here!  It is a royal pain to find anything.  The stupid GPS is schizophrenic and incredibly faulty.  So one person drives and the other navigates and compares notes with the rotten gps.  And eventually, we get where we need to go.  But it has been a bit hair raising and frustrating!

Great Adventure: Thursday: Temple & Interlaken

 Thursday we got up and out the door by 7:30 and drove the 45 minutes to the Bern Temple.  It had dusted snow the night before and was so pretty!

 See, just a bit of snow. And you can barely see the Temple behind the tree there.

 Ah, a better shot of me and Mom and the Temple.

 I'm quite proud of this selfie!

We made the 9am session no problem.  Sue and Steve met us there and it was lovely to be there with them.  The session was in German and I had to wear headphones to hear it in English.  Fun stuff!

Then we headed back to our hotel for lunch and to change clothes.  We drove out to Spiez and then onto Interlaken. 

A beautiful church in Spiez.  The cemetery was so cool!  The headstones were all kind of the same shape, but very different.  Some were pretty awesome.

 We meandered around, looking for a particular castle.  We found this nifty tree along the way!

And the view...!  Oh, the view!  So gorgeous!  I am madly in love with Switzerland!

We did find the castle, but everything was closed till April.  No worries, we continued our meandering and strolled around, soaking up the gorgeousness of it all.

Have I told you how incredibly beautiful it all is?

Yes, I had to take lots of scenery pictures.  None of them really do justice to how it truly is.  

 We wanted to drive to a certain town.  I'm not sure where the gps thought it was taking us, but we never got where we intended to go.  I had a massive headache and ended up napping most of the drive.  That was both a good and bad thing.  The drive was quite picturesque, and definitely NOT on main roads.  They were pretty much one way roads and kept getting narrower and narrower. 

See, fun roads.  By sleeping, I didn't stress out over it!

But I missed some fun stuff like this little tunnel.

While we did not end up where we had planned, it was a lot of fun to see the countryside and see it for reals- not from the freeway.  It was so pretty!  We made it home around 4:30 and had time to relax.  Sue and Steve cam over for dinner again.  That was fabulous, because Sue treated us to another traditional Swiss meal!

Here we are, enjoying wust, red cabbage, reshti (yummy potatoes with onions), and salad.  I know, you wish you had an awesome Aunt Sue too!

Great Adventure: Wednesday : Chocolate & Cheese Factories, Bern

We stayed Tuesday night in a delightful top floor of a converted farmhouse.  It is old, charming and unique. We stayed on the third floor, which had a little 4th floor attic room.  Since it was the only room with a bigger bed, that's where Me and Dan slept.  We let the older folks have the single beds. Heh heh heh.

This was my morning view out of the window on one side!

This was the view out the other window.  I love the Alps!

I had native granola for breakfast and it was yummy.

I went out for a run and it was COLD!  I ran around the block a few times so I wouldn't get lost.  However, it was uphill, then downhill and that uphill was a killer!  So I got brave and ran straight and ended up here.  It was a lovely run, but between the altitude and that big hill, I got a workout.  

We went out to visit the Chocolate factory.  We thought we should be on main roads, but the GPS apparently is set for "Scenic" because it took us all over these little windy roads!  Look at this! It was definitely more interesting and fun going that route.

We drove through the prettiest scenery.  Switzerland is so amazingly beautiful!

 Here we are, all excited to go see the Chocolate Factory. 

Check it out!  Nestle originally began here!

At the end of the tour, you could sample pretty much any of the chocolates made at the factory.  They just had them on trays and you could gobble down whatever you wanted and however much you could cram in your pie hole.

And I stuffed a LOT of chocolate in my pie hole.

See, they just had trays of the stuff.  Lots and lots of trays.

Like this tray.  Some of them told you what was on it, some, not so much.  This was a guessing one.

And after you got all you could eat, you got to the shopping part.  Look at this wall of chocolate bars!  Yummy!

I was so jet-lagged.  We are 7 hours ahead of home and I was so zonked.  I sacked out on the way to the cheese factory.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I zonked out every time we got in the car.

We got to learn how they make this! It was interesting, but a lot smaller (The facility, not the cheese!  The cheeses were 75 pounds!) than I had expected.  They also weren't running everything when we were there.  So there was less to see.

They sure made a ton of cheese.  Perhaps next time I will go to a factory that makes cheese I like.  This was a rather stinky cheese.

They did give us a sample.  Actually 3 samples.  You could taste a slice that had aged 6 months, one that aged 8 months and one that aged 10 months. I thought I'd be smart and start with the oldest one.  Ick! It was potent! the 6 month was pretty good, especially with bread, but I would not get anything older!

After the cheese factory, we went back to Bern and met up with aunt Sue and Uncle Steve.  They gave us the grand tour of Bern.  It was neat!  Nicer had it not started raining halfway through, but still a great experience.

Me, my mom, Aunt Sue and Dan.

We got to ride the bus!  We rented a car this trip, so this was the only bus/tram ride we got to take.

They have some pretty churches.  The churches are supported and kept up by tax payer money and the government.  It is interesting.

Dan is photobombing my selfie!

And check out this toilet! If you are a girl (or need to sit down) you pull the seat down.

And here are some more things, just for funsies:

 The houses here are so pretty!

We drove by this castle on a hill.  And then, that song was stuck in my head.

Check this out!  This is what we're driving!  It is super fun, except for all the annoying beeping whenever you get within 5 feet of anything. And we did not know that this car stops when you stop.  So we kept stopping at lights and the car would turn off.  As you would expect, we were a bit grumpy about this situation. Having to restart the car every time we stopped was quite frustrating.  Imagine our chagrin when we discovered the car is suppose to do this and all you have to do is take your foot off the brake and hit the accelerator and the car comes back to life.

 This was a fun statue.  I'm not sure who the guy there is, but I loved the back here.  The little bear is playing with the guy's helmet.

We found a Rameumpton!  Well, we found a "Speaker Fountain" where you can climb up on top of the fountain and speak.  There were even some benches for your audience to sit and listen.