Switzerland: Basel

October 11

After getting very little sleep and having an emotional morning as a result…we all left for a day trip in Basel. We ate lunch at a little bakery and then went to the Basel zoo. It was a super cool zoo. We saw tons of seals, gorillas and monkeys, elephants, and all the other typical animals but the highlight of the zoo was seeing a huge alligator swimming in the water with tons of fish behind an aquarium type thing. The alligator got so close to us and it was pretty amazing.

After the zoo, we spent an hour just walking around Basel and were able to see the highlights of the town. Then we came back home on a family train (they are such life savers) and made dinner, took baths, and crashed…exhausted.

Switzerland: Zurich

Ocotber 10

My mom and I rode with Ty to Zurich to drop him off for his flight home, them we stayed in Zurich and took a tour of the town. It rained off and on, but it wasn’t too cold, and my mom and I had a great time. We saw a bunch of great stuff in Zurich and it is a very cool city. Then we ended our little day trip with a fabulous lunch at a little restaurant on the river. I had carrot soup and pork with a sweet prune sauce on top. It was different and so good.

When we got back to Kelly, Josh, and the boys we decided to go downtown and go grocery shopping. It was super crowded and didn’t really work with the double stroller, our crown of 6, and James and Thatcher not only pulling things off the shelves, but screaming when I put them back. My mom grabbed something fast and that was the end of our shopping trip. It ended up being a really great afternoon though because we stopped at the fountains in front of the parliament building and Josh and Thatcher went crazy. They had so much fun running through them and got completely soaked. Thatcher drew quite a crown and they played for the longest time. It was hilarious and one of the highlights of our trip so far. James also insisted on getting in on the fun. He was scared of the fountains but got completely naked and ran around in the water running off from the fountains. Quite a sight in downtown Bern on a cool fall afternoon.

Switzerland: Zolikofen and the Rosengarten

October 9

Sunday was a rough morning...after James through fit after fit, we made it to church where he was just kind of awful. We came home for a feast of pizza and naps, then we all went to visit the temple in Zolikofen. Thatcher and James both love temples (James calls it 'Jesus house') and despite there irreverence (i.e. Thatcher sliding down the short walls on his belly), we had a nice time.

After the temple we made our way to the Rose Garden (Rosengarten) in Bern. The boys had a blast on the playground and we had a nice Sunday. It ended with a long skype chat with Soeur Hlimi which was a lot of fun for me.

Switzerland: Lucerne

October 8

Even though we knew the weather was going to be nasty, we decided to spend our last real touristy day in Lucerne. It was raining and freezing the entire time...seriously freezing. We still managed to see the Lion monument (very cool), the glacier museum (just ok), the Panorama (pretty interesting), the Rosengart Collections (a pretty impressive collection of Picasso and Paul Klee and some other big names) and a few small things on Steve Rick’s walking tour (before we got caught in a downpour and raced back to the train station completely drenched). It was a beautiful from the little we got to see while running in the rain.

We got home pretty early and then spent the afternoon at my mom’s. Ty did a bunch of laundry in the bathtub and I helped mom cook a very interesting pumpkin and shrimp dinner from Guyana.

Switzerland: Zermatt

October 6

The train ride to Zermatt was beautiful (and it was so nice to not have our kids with us because it was two hours long with a layover). It looked a lot like Utah, and thanks to a friendly ticket lady learned about the fallen mountain and fighting bulls we saw along the way. Once in Zermatt we walked through the town (a very rugged-feeling mountain town) and got souvenirs for the boys (a horn for Thatcher and a St. Bernard for James). We hiked a little ways up the trail to the Matterhorn and had beautiful views the entire time. The weather was perfect: blue skies and not a cloud in sight to cover up the Matterhorn which was as awesome as we hoped it would be. I loved the stone roofs we saw on homes everywhere and the milky white water of the creek as well. After soaking in as much of the Matterhorn as we wanted we grabbed some lunch at a bakery, ate it outside, then walked around more of Zermatt. We stumbled on to a cemetary which was full of the tombstones of mountain climbers around the area. We finished our Zermatt trip with the Matterhorn museum. Our train got delayed and we missed our connecting train on the way home and ended up spending an hour in the town of Visp which was kind of fun because of how beautiful and non-touristy it was.

Switzerland: Interlaken, Lauterbrunnen, and Trummelbach Falls

October 5

The entire family joined us for a morning in Interlaken that started on the family train which allowed the boys to run around and go on slides the entire hour we were on a train. Once in Interlaken, I guided the family on Rick Steve’s walking tour.

After seeing a bit of Interlaken, we took a train to Lauterbrunnen where Ty went paragliding. He was so excited I took a picture of him on the last stretch of the ride before we got to Lauterbrunnen. I loved the town. It was a mountain town, but not as rustic as Zermatt. The scalloped siding on some of the chalets, the quaint church, the huge cliffs and waterfalls as a backdrop...it was pretty spectacular.

We had to walk through the charming town of Lauterbrunnen to get to where Ty was landing from his paragliding adventure. He loved it and it was pretty cool for us too. We first notices him coming down right above a beautiful waterfall.

After Ty was done with his adventure we went to Trumellbach falls. Josh, Ty, Thatcher, and I went to see the falls and they were amazing. There are 10 waterfalls total and half are inside the mountain. They were pretty spectacular and fun to see. We joined mom and Kelly for lunch and we got to taste our first Rivella, a Swiss soft drink. We got home in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day outside watching James play in the sand and Kelly, Josh and Thatcher play red rover with a bunch of neighborhood kids. Thatcher was hilarious and such a good sport, he was by far the smallest kid playing and the called his names more than anyone else's, they played for the longest time.