Fresh off the plane, we took a walk around Zurich. Our first stop: pretzels! Look at those giant pretzels!
The old town of Zurich had beautiful churches. This church had famous Marc Chagall windows.
The river that leads to Lake Zurich.
The second day we took the train to Lucerne. We took a boat to a cog wheel train to a gondola to a bus back to Lucerne-- it was heaven for Nate!
The area around the lake was beautiful.
The cog wheel train.
Now that's a steep slope!! Good thing the cog was working...
There were lots of tunnels like this on the 20 minute ride up Mt. Pilatus.
Made it! The clouds came and went but we had some decent views.
It was neat to hear these folks playing alpine horns. The sound really did echo off the mountains.
When there was finally a break in the clouds, the view was beautiful.
The gondala down the other side of Mt. Pilatus. These things were incredible-- I hope a good engineer worked on them!
Half way down the mountain we stopped for a run on the alpine slide.
This time Molly said Wendi went fast enough (unlike in New Zealand...)!
They have a T-bar type of thing to get you back up the hill.
And on to another gondola to get to the base of the mountain.
Back in the town of Lucerne.
We were glad Molly didn't just walk right off the bridge, she was so engrossed with the map!
Swiss army knives were everywhere.
An interesting “glacial park” that shows the effects of the last ice age.
We found a little Heinzelmenchen in the hill!
The park had all these neat mirrors that the kids enjoyed!
Now that's weird!!!
This was a cool house of mirrors. It was really hard to tell what was real!
More fun mirror tricks...
Steve being artsy-- it is a neat effect!
We walked along the old town wall for some great views of Lucerne.
One of the famous bridges in town.
These medieval bridges have paintings in the rafters.
The Chapel Bridge, Lucerne's other famous bridge.
And it was really pretty at night.
Back to Zurich. While Wendi was at Silvia Santini's PhD defense at ETH Zurich, Steve and the kids walked around Zurich and went out to the hills around Zurich.
Climbing the hill just outside of Zurich.
View of Zurich and Lake Zurich.
The hill had a Planetary Walk that showed all the planets and the sun and the moon to scale. Here are the Earth and the Moon.
And the sun...
Jupiter. They didn't have the energy to walk all the way to Pluto, which was another 5 km away!
Zurich (and really all of Switzerland) was incredibly expensive. But the rooms we had were great! In Zurich we had 2 rooms and a living room, a bathroom and a hallway.
Next stop: Interlaken. From the balconly of our hostel room, we had a view of the Jungfrau, it was aweome!
The kids love staying at hostels because they usually have bunk beds :-)
We though Max would like to see this!
The houses were so nice.
We took another cog wheel train up to the Schynige Platte. Incredible views along the way-- this is one of the lakes on which Interlaken sits.
And the other lake. You can easily see why the town is named Interlaken!
It had snowed the night before, so we got to see nice snow-capped peaks.
We took a hike to the summit. It would have been a fairly easy hike except for the snow, which made things quite slippery. But Molly helped Wendi so she didn't fall :-)
We made it!
There were three famous peaks visible from Schynige Platte: the Jungfrau, the Eiger and the Monch.
These kids can find slides anywhere!
Enjoying some well-earned hot chocolate after the cold walk (especially for the kids who didn't have boots!).
The Jungfrau is the middle peak.
Steve liked the name of this train stop...
The next day we took several trains up to Jungfraujoch, Europe's highest train station at the base of the Jungfrau.
Incredible glaciers could be seen along the way.
At the top there is an ice palace. It reminded us of the ice bar in Auckland with Aunt Joni!
It was COLD up there! Something like -17C, and with no hats or gloves, we could only stay outside for a few minutes.
The Jungfraujoch peak with an observatory.
It's amazing that they could build all this stuff way up here.
Does Nate look a little strange??? We think he had a touch of altitude sickness.
Steve took a walk along this path-- Wendi and the kids stayed behind, it was just too cold!
We liked this Japanese couple that were taking pictures out in the frigid weather :-)
This helicopter landed right on the path.
The observation station is up top and way down at the bottom is where you leave the mountain to go on a hike.
After the Jungfrau, we stopped by these glacial waterfalls.
Next we went to Zermatt, one of our favorites. This was our first view of the famous Matterhorn.
We took three gondolas up to Klein Matterhorn. These would have been hair-raising rides had we looked down-- how do they build these things???
The gondola took us right up to this peak.
What a view we had from the top, which was 3800m high.
The Matterhorn, it looks so close, luckily Steve didn't make us try to climb it!
The Matterhorn certainly is a nice-looking peak.
It was a beautiful day and not too cold up here (only -12C :-)).
Lots of skiiers, even thought there wasn't much snow so only the relatively easy slopes were open.
View of Zermatt, down in the valley.
We took a hike outside of Zermatt, with the Matterhorn as a backdrop.
Zermatt was a great town. There are no cars allowed, so it was a nice place to walk around.
6 days into the trip and we finally get to a chocolate shop!
The next day we took yet another cog wheel train up to Gornergrat.
The Matterhorn, we must've taken 20 pictures of this photogenic mountain!
There were tons of glaciers near Gornergrat.
One of the famous Swiss St. Bernards.
How we travelled around. Backpacking will be easier once the kids can carry their own weight!
Montreaux on Lake Geneva.
Chateau de Chillon, an old castle in Montreaux.
Molly sporting her pet St. Bernard she picked up as a souveneir in Zermatt and never let out of her sight!
Old fashioned potties in the castle :-)
Lausanne: we liked these paddle boats that had their own slides!
We went to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, which was interesting to see.
Nice try, Steve!
Our final stop: Geneva.
There were tons of boats. Steve wanted to go for a couple hour sail before dinner but the rest of us vetoed this idea-- too windy, too cold, too tired out :-)
We were disappointed that the Jet d'Eau was not working, but at least we found the flower clock.
St. Peter's Cathedral
The Old Town of Geneva was really nice. We liked how there were tunnels right under homes.
On our final night we tried fondue-- cheese and meat. It was delicious.
The kids just liked dipping for us!
Nate was especially excited to see the Jet d'Eau back on as we walked back to our apartment-- a nice way to end a wonderful vacation.
