We are no longer in Switzerland, but it lingers like a constant ray of sunshine in our collective memories, albeit we had very little sun while we were there. 


Luzerne

Our tour started in Luzerne, a gorgeous, walkable city oozing charm. We walked the remainder of the ancient city wall, ate the most outrageously expensive fondue, saw some amazing Picasso's, Klee's at the Sammlung Rosengart, and spent the better part of the day exploring truly one of the best kid oriented museums we've ever been to, the Verkehrshaus Transportation museum. Loved every minute of Luzerne, but didn't stay long due to rain. 


Grindelwald

If we had any foresight, we would have stayed here for weeks. The name of the town exudes all the allure of the area. This is the home of the holy grail of Jungfraujoch: the Eiger, the Munch and the Jungfrau mountain peaks. Now for an armchair mountaineer who back in the day had dreams of climbing serious mountains, there is no better place than to have a campsite at the base of these 3 magnificent mountains. 
We went to the "Top of Europe" via rail and they call this the place "between heaven and earth" and it couldn't be more true. We walked thru the Ice Palace carved into the glacier, Vince ate some snow, we saw the amazing mark ice has made on this earth and the movement of the monstrous Aletsch Glacier still carving its way down the mountain. 
The hills in Switzerland truly undulate and appear to be covered in this uniform green velvet and are dotted with the most beautiful chalets we've ever seen. There are gondolas everywhere to move people around for various activities such as hiking, paragliding, biking and luging! Yes, we did a summer luge that was such fun. 
After all this excitement in the pure mountain air it was hard to take ourselves away, but that is what we did and we moved on to other fun pursuits in Switzerland. 

I've lost count of how many times we've been in Germany now, but we are yet to tire of this beautiful and vibrant country. This time our aim was to follow the "Fairy Tale Road" and visit various towns where the Grimm brothers set their tales. We didn't last long on this "high on marketing, low on delivery" section. We took matters into our own hands and found a real castle to sleep in. The castle wasn't much to write about, but the surrounding forest was downright ethereal. 
We took a hike just above the castle and were transported to medieval times.  The path was rimmed with moss covered boulders and lined with a huge canopy of trees and the mist hung in the air. As a means to motivate Vince, Adele weaved a most wonderful tale of Marlin the Knight and there were clues throughout the forest. It was magical. 

From castles to cars, we visited the amazing Mercedes Benz museum--highly recommend. 


We are not done with Germany, we will be back in a few days to visit the Porsche museum and our dear friends, Jana, Mira and Stephan who lived down the street from us on Clifftop Way for a year, and then to drop off the HOW. 

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I've posted anything. I don't feel so bad as I know Steve is posting daily blow by blow on Dad's Perspective. 


Norway was spectacular! I had no opinons going in and perhaps that open mindedness was a blessing as I was able to truly enjoy every part of this beautiful country. My last post said it all in that words have no place in this land of awesome beauty, hence more pics to drool over. I will say we also loved the cities: Bergen and Oslo, especially Oslo. We were there on a beautiful, rare, sunny day and were completely enchanted by it's sophistication and accessibility. We walked all over and enjoyed the parks and museums, see Dad's Perspective for specifics. 

The guidebook warns us that there are no superlatives great enough to describe Norway’s stunning scenery and they couldn’t be more accurate. We haven’t even gotten to the famous fjords and our eyes and brains cannot take in all of this beauty.

The people are warm and friendly, the wifi (my new gauge for a country) free and each campsite more gorgeous than the next.

BTW, it's freezing here!

 

Don’t know if having been to the greatest cities in the world, New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, etc. has jaded us towards the beauty of smaller ones, or more likely we’re just not able to enjoy them to their fullest with kids, but we’re done for awhile and yearn for the countryside.  We were in Copenhagen for 2 days and don’t have much to say about it. The last day we were hoping for a revival of the wonderful family friendly parks in Paris and London when we set off for Tivoli Gardens only to find it a mix of Times Square and some really bad mid-western amusement park--though we did have a surprising good meal on a Pirate Ship.


Denmark is beautiful in a rural sort of way. We loved the open face sandwiches (smoresbord) and had one of our best castle experiences at Egescov, but we were ready to move on—badly.


Happy to be back in the HOW!!


I got a special thrill out of walking in the rain with my bucket of dirty dishes. You know how I like to keep busy, none of this living the life of a courtier (yes, I’m reading another book about romance, war and torture in France in the 17th century) so it may come as no surprise that despite my protestations, I missed the HOW.

Even though there was “deadly” black mold growing throughout the refrigerator and the whole place smelled of rotten eggs and oddly bacon (perhaps the ole Dane working on the engine made a snack?), we were all VERY happy to be back in our home away from home.


The breakdown was a great excuse to reenergize. We hung out, sought out decent Mexican food and failed miserably (as Bette reminded me, when in Rome…), did laundry, and generally took full advantage of free wifi.