Wednesday 23/12/09
Hayley, Kirk, Jayne,
Julie and I headed for Gatwick airport with our fingers crossed that our train
would actually get to the airport due to the snow and cancelations the two days
prior. On arrival at the airport
we crossed our fingers again in hope our plane would take off, as there had
been about 250 flight cancellations two days before again because of the
snow. Our plane was delayed by 1.5
hrs but we were on our way to Switzerland (stocked with champagne from Duty
Free) by about 9pm. We rolled into Geneva airport at 11pm and got onto a train
and cruised into the city to our hotel for the night.
Thursday 24/12/09
We got up early and
hoed into our Swiss breakfast, cheese, croissants, cereals and allsorts. These
breakfast were standard throughout each of hotels in Switzerland. We then hit
the city by foot and made our way to lake Geneva to have a look at the jet
d’eau. We went for a walk around the city and headed into the old town for a
look around. There were heaps of nice shops with really expensive stuff in them
and lots of chocolate shops. We didn’t have long in Geneva, we needed to be at
the airport at 1300 to pick up a rental car from the airport. So we headed back
to the hotel and grabbed our bags and made our way back to the airport. On our
way there Hayley and Julie picked up some macaroons which Julie and I discovered
a great love for by the end of our trip. We picked up the car, which
coincidently was upgraded to a Mercedes E350 that had only 250 kms on the
clock, swwweeeeet!. We made our way east to Montreux where we were going to
visit the Chateau De Chillon -a castle from the 12th century. It was quite
amazing. By this time we were starving and headed to a restaurant just out of
Montreux on the shore of lake
Geneva. After our late lunch we headed for Grindlewald. It was dark for most of
the journey and we weren’t seeing much snow on our approach to Grindlewald (we
did notice though the change in language from French to German on the road
signs). About 20km out we noticed that the snow was getting heavier on the
ground and by the time we got Grindlewald it was everywhere, wahoo its gunna be
a white Christmas. We checked into our hotel, polished off 3 bottles of champagne
and then went out for tea. We tried our first cheese fondue (which Julie
ordered with a French “merci” at the end rather than a German “danke schon”)
and Kirk and I got into a couple of wiessbiers. After this we made the most of
the snow and had a snow fight.
Friday Christmas
We got up and opened
the curtains to see what the view was like and it was awesome! There was snow
and mountains all around- it was amazing. We grabbed a bottle of champagne and went
to breakfast at the hotel (again bread, cereals, cheese). After breakfast we
noticed it was snowing outside so Julie went and built a snowman while I built a pyramid. We went back up to
Hayley and Kirks room to play the present game and have some more champagne.
Julie cleaned up the present game again scoring about 8 presents. We then
headed off for our pre-booked Christmas lunch. We had lobster soup, schnitzel,
rosti and ice cream. Yum! While we had lunch it started snowing which was cool
for us all on Christmas day. We walked around Grindlewald for a bit while it
was still snowing, which of course inevitably ended in another snowball fight.
By this time it was dark and I
wanted to build an igloo. We started building it thinking it would be impossible
to get a roof on it but with Kirk’s persistence the igloo was ready for a
hobbit Eskimo to move in after an hour and a half. Tuckered out we went to a
pub and had a mulled wine then headed indoors and ploughed our way through a
whole lot of beer and wine.
Saturday 26/12/09
We had heard about a train
and cable ride to the top of 2 of the surrounding mountains in the area. The
lonely plant recommended we head up to the Jungfraujoch, but we had a recommendation
from good friends and some locals that the Schilthorn had better panoramic
views. After a hard decision Julie and I decided to head to the Schilthorn,
while Kirk, Hayley and Jayne went to the Jungfraujoch. Julie and I made our way
to the Schilthorn (3000m summit in the Bernese alps) and at the top a revolving
restaurant, the Piza Gloria. We caught a train from Grindlewald to
Lauterbrunnen, then a cable car up to Grutshalp. From here we walked to a
little village in the mountains called Murren. This place was amazing, powder snow
everywhere and the view was stunning. We watched a serious game of curling and
some children ice-skating too. From
Murren we caught another cable car to Stechelburg (which we though from Murren
was the Piza Gloria). In Stechelburg we found that we could now see the Piza
Gloria/Schilthorn. The cable car ride between these two place was wicked, just
a cable from one end to another across a steep valley. It was freezing up at
the schilthorn (-4 degrees) but the views were as far as the eye could see. We
looked over some large mountains, Eiger, Jungfrau- we could even see Mt Blanc,
and views of Interlakken. We had lunch in the revolving resturant. I don’t know
what I had but it was the one of the nicest things I have eaten, so nice Julie
hoed into half of it! It was some
sort of cheese dumpling with bacon and pear dish-delish! The Schilthorn was one of the definite
highlights of the trip. After 2 hrs we started the journey back to Grindlewald
and meet back up with Kirk, Hayley and Jayne and made our way off to Lucerne.
On arrival at Lucerne we check in to the hotel, went out for tea and then hit
the hay, we were bushed.
Sunday 27/12/09
We got up early and
went for walk around Lucerne. First we stumbled across the chapel bridge
(Kappelbrucke)which I had seen before in pictures. We had a look at the lion
monument (a massive injured lion carved into a cliff side) and a fortress . We
cruised down to the lake and took in some more sight seeing, but we were quite
rushed as we had to head to Zurich to drop the car off. We headed off to Zurich
and took a detour through Zug (which coincidently is where Paul Steele coach’s
squash). Zug and Lucerne were both very picturesque and nice to visit. We then
made our way to Zurich airport to drop off the Merc. After a little confusion
about where to drop the car off and how to get to our hotel we made it. We were
all hungry so we went to a Swiss restaurant for lunch. This is where Julie and
I had our first Raclette. It was so tasty, we had veal, veal sausages, chicken,
beef, assortment of veges, a sack of potatoes and of course a whole lot of
Gruyere cheese. We cooked the meat on the top of the little cooker and melted
the cheese on tray inside the cooker. It was delicious. I was stuffed but as
usual Julie wanted more so she carved up an apple strudel. We then went for
walk around Zurich and took in some more sights. It was very pretty at night
but Zurich was little disappointing. It was well after dark and quite cold
(raining) so we cruised back to the hotel and polished off the last of the
Champagne and had a drink of bourbon for Alan (being 28th December
in NZ time). We were all quite zapped and were ready to hit the hay.
Monday 28/12/09
Julie and I woke up
quite excited as we were heading to Paris at 1300. We had our traditional Swiss
breakfast and then went into town and finished off our sight seeing tour from
the night before. We made our way to the Lindt factory which was a bit of a
mission only to find out it was closed until the new year. We made our way back to the hotel so
Julie and I could pick up our backpacks and head off toward Zurich HB to catch
our train. We detoured past a chocolate store a popped in and stocked up on
about £12 of chocolate for the journey. We said our goodbyes to Kirk, Hayley
and Jayne and headed on our way to Paris.
