Very low key day! We wanted to do something nice for Irene to thank her for her hospitality so we all drove into Zurich to pick up a new google WiFi network. Rick spent most of the day setting it up and Irene and I knitted and visited. Nothing exciting.
We packed up because we are off to Corfu tomorrow.
Happy Mother’s Day 😘 🤗 💕
Today we went to visit two of Irene’s sisters, Manuela and Renata. We went to Manuela’s apartment in Lachen for lunch. Manuela is a very good cook so she and Rick made Indian food for lunch. It was very tasty. Manuela works for a major newspaper in Zurich so conversation with her is always interesting. Then her sister, Renata, brought dessert over and it too was delicious. Lots more conversation. We didn’t get back to Irene’s until after 8:00. Another great day!
Today was another rainy day but we had a family visit so it didn’t matter much. We went to see Peter and Anny in Bad Ragaz. Peter is Rick’s true cousin. We drove the direct route and it took us about an hour and a half.
We had a wonderful lunch of rabbit, mashed potatoes, and salad. Later in the afternoon, Anny’s son Thomas and his family came to visit. We met them last year and they are very nice people so it was nice to get caught up with them. Overall a very enjoyable visit!
We had no plans for today. Irene works from home on Fridays so she was around. This morning Rick and I assembled a composter that she had purchased while she went to her exercise class.
When she got back we went to lunch at the Sammlung Oskar Reinhardt in Winterthur. The grounds were lovely and the food was delicious. We had a leisurely afternoon. Luka, one of Irene’s sons, came by so we visited with him.
Rick made sausage and German potato salad for dinner. Not the most exciting day but very nice!
We woke up to a beautiful day but Irene had warned us that the weather would get worse throughout the day. Today is Rick’s Aunt’s (a true aunt) 60th wedding anniversary and last year Rick promised that we would be here for the celebration. The party would be over dinner in Zurich so we had the day free. We decided to make our annual visit to Appenzell which is ground zero for the Manser clan.
Here is a map showing Mettendorf and Appenzell.
Of course we didn’t take the direct route but when the scenic route, up and over the mountains on the winding roads. Here are some pictures from our ride.
We arrived in Appenzell and wandered around, looking, shopping and exploring neighborhoods. Appenzell is very traditionally Swiss and quite lovely. Here are pictures from our walk.
We had nice lunch at the Säntis Hotel. After a little more strolling, we headed to Zurich for the dinner.
We met Irma and Walter, Rick’s aunt and uncle at their apartment. Their neighbor rode with us to the restaurant. At the restaurant we met Walter’s three sons as well as his two grandchildren. We really hadn’t much exposure to that side of the family. It was a long night for me because almost all the conversation was in German. Here are some pictures from the dinner.
After dinner we returned to Irene’s, but not without getting fouled up several times because of construction on the roads and outdated GPS software.
Today we had another rainy day but that’s ok since we had such a beautiful day yesterday. We went into Winterthur to see Rick’s cousin, Sylvia. Luckily Sylvia’s sister, Yvonne and her husband, Remy, also happened to be in Winterthur. They live in Vevey, on Lake Geneva but have an apartment in Winterthur and come up to visit several times a year. We had lunch at a very nice restaurant in a 17th century castle near Sylvia’s apartment. It was fun to get caught up with Sylvia, Yvonne, and Remy. After lunch we went to visit Sylvia and Yvonne’s mother, also named Sylvia. She lives in a nursing home in Winterthur. She is a lovely lady and she seemed very happy to see us. After lunch we returned to Irene’s and relaxed. We spent the evening visiting with Irene.
We woke up to a beautiful sunny day. Here’s our apartment and the view from apartment when it’s not overcast and raining!
We checked the webcam on Titlis and it looks great so we are headed there. We are leaving our lovely little apartment in Arth so we packed up and loaded everything into the car. We followed the gps’ directions to Titlis. We drove along the lake and I thought we were going over a bridge to get to the other side but it turned out to be a ferry. So we had a coffee and waited the 45 minutes for ferry. The ferry ride was about 20 minutes, a little chilly but the views were gorgeous.
Shortly after the ferry ride we made it to the base of Titlis. Titlis, 10,623 ft, is a mountain of the Uri Alps and is famous as the site of the world’s first rotating cable car. The Titlis Cliff Walk, the highest elevation suspension bridge in Europe, opened in December 2012. We took a gondola part way up the mountain and switched to the rotating cable car. The views were breathtaking and the views at the top were even more amazing. It was a perfect day and there were not a lot of people up there. We walked across the cliff walk. Surprisingly it was not that cold or windy although the bridge shook as people moved across it. There were people skiing and the slopes should remain open through at least the end of May. We had lunch in the restaurant at the top. Here are pictures.
We didn’t want to leave but we had to drive back to Irene’s house in Mettendorf. The gps told us it would take an hour and 45 minutes but it routed us through Zurich during rush hour so the drive took more like 3 hours. Irene was not home from work when we arrived in Mettendorf but arrived shortly thereafter. We enjoyed getting caught up over a glass of wine before having dinner at home.
Finally we got a good nights sleep and we woke up and it wasn’t raining! We really wanted to go to Mt Titlis and walk across the highest suspension bridge in the world but when we checked the webcams it was all fogged in 😒. So instead we decided to go down to Lake Como in Italy. It was about a two and a half hour drive.
The road over the Gotthard pass is still closed due to snow so we went through the tunnel which is 10.5 miles long, quite an engineering feat. Here are pictures of what we went under on our ride through the tunnel.
We arrived in Como around lunch time. We walked along the lake for awhile and then found a nice sidewalk cafe for lunch. I had lasagna and Rick had risotto with fresh perch from the lake. It was really very good.
After lunch we walked a little further around the lake, watching the hydrofoil boats and sea planes. It was sunny and warm. You can really see the affect the mountains have on the weather. The clouds can’t pass over the mountains so they just get stuck in Switzerland. Here are some pictures from our day.
We returned to the car and drove back. We hit some traffic at the tunnel and then took the wrong exit near Arth, but we made it home safely.
Just when we thought the weather couldn’t get any worst, we woke up and it had snowed.
If you have any plans to come to Switzerland, I don’t recommend the spring because every year we come in April or May and it is almost always cold and raining and sometimes snowing. Oh well! Today we had a couple of brief (5 mins) periods of sun but the rest of the time it was overcast, raining and/or snowing.
Today we had planned to either go to Lucerne or to go down to the Italian section but the Gottard pass which is on the route to the Italian section is closed because of snow. So Lucerne it is. Rick had done some research and found a museum for us to go to as well as a restaurant for lunch.
After parking we walked across Lucerne’s famous chapel bridge or Kapellbrücke, which is a covered wooden footbridge, diagonally spanning the River Reuss. The bridge was originally built in 1365 as part of Lucerne’s fortifications. It is unique because it contains a number of interior paintings dating back to the 17th century, although many of them were destroyed along with a larger part of the centuries-old bridge in a 1993 fire. Subsequently restored, the Kapellbrücke is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe, as well as the world’s oldest surviving truss bridge.
Then we stopped at Starbucks to warm up. Just to give you an idea of how expensive Switzerland is, a medium coffee and hot chocolate cost us about $15.
Here are some pictures for Lucerne, which is a charming and typical Swiss city.
Then we went to the Rosengart Collection. Siegfried Rosengart and his daughter, Angela Rosengart, were art dealers and good friends with several artists including Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Paul Klee. The museum primarily contains work from these three artists. It was very interesting and we really enjoyed it.
We had lunch in a Spanish restaurant. Rick enjoyed his paella and I enjoyed tapas.
We came back to the apartment and took a nap because we are still adjusting to the time change. We weren’t really hungry for dinner so we just snacked. We were able to stay up until 10 so maybe we are getting over the jet lag.
We are still experiencing a bit of jet lag so we didn’t get started too early today. The weather this morning started off with a mix of sun and clouds but got more and more overcast and eventually it started raining. 🌧
We took the scenic route to Brunnen. It would have been a short 15 minute ride if we had taken the direct route, but our circuitous route took us about an hour through the beautiful Swiss countryside. Here’s a map showing the two towns.
We had lunch at a small restaurant beside the lake. Then we walked a quarter of a mile to the Swiss Knife Valley Museum, which wasn’t much of a museum, it was really just a Victorinox store showing a movie or two and displaying knives, past and present. We watched a couple of the videos, one about the area and one about how they make the Swiss Army knives. Interestingly there is a lot of labor in stacking and cleaning the knives and it’s all done in Switzerland, using expensive Swiss labor. Rick bought two knives, one for sailing and the other one similar to a small pocket knife he inherited from his dad. Here is a picture from the store so you can see how many Swiss Army knife models they have.
Here are some pictures of Brunnen.
We drove by Rick’s favorite kirsch manufacturer and discovered they were closed. We learned later that the company had been purchased and it would no longer be making kirsch. This area is famous for growing cherries (kirsch is made from fermented cherry stems and pits) and Rick remembered that there was another kirsch manufacturer in the area. So we looked it up and found Etter, the other major kirsch manufacturer.
The Etter showroom was open so we went there for a tasting (actually Rick tasted and I watched). We ended up with two pretty special bottles of kirsch. Turns out, not surprisingly, that the weather each year has a significant impact on the flavor. Everything came together in 2006 and it was very obvious.
Turns out Etter distills a number of different fruits, pears, plums, quince and cherries. We bought a sampler pack so we could try a little of each.
We had planned to go to the caves in Baar, http://www.hoellgrotten.ch/en_index.php, but it was getting late, so we decide to head back to the apartment.
At our “house” two guys who live here and their friend were trying launch a dinghy with a large motor. Rick went out in the rain to help them. They thanked him with a beer and he spent a little time communing with the locals.
By evening it got quite windy. We had whitecaps on the lake and it even snowed a little. Nice to be watching the action unfold from our warm little house!
