Switerland Wrap Up...

But first, a settle of the score. Minus 1 for Heidi. I´m keeping Conor warm on those "cold bavarian nights," thank you very much, Warner!

Now to Switzerland. While Conor entertained you with comparisons of heidi klum and our hikes, I´ll bore you with the gorey details of our travels. With our stay in interlaken we undertook the Harder Kulm hike and rewarded ourselves with Fondue, wine, bread, and Suisse Rosti (basically egge overeasy, bacon, chives, and cheese all mixed up with hash browns in a skillet...it was no three star diner, but I was in love.) After two nights in Interlaken, we headed for Lucerne. Which is in between Zurich and Interlaken and is the "in between" in location too...its got views of the sweeping Alps, big lakes, but its also a small, very cool, Suisse city with old wooden bridges criscrossing the river that flows through the center of the city, cobbled stone streets, and fantastic restaurants. On our first night there we were lucky enough to sample one of the best, the Rathaus Brewery, where we met up with another American ex-pat, Pat Capen, a friend from NYC by way of Shaun Horrigan. Pat works for J&J about 20 minutes outside Lucerne and agreed to meet us for dinner and drinks. We had a great time catching up, getting answers to some of our Suisse questions, and sampling various christmas brews from the brewery. The next day we dragged ourselves out of bed and boarded a boat that crossed Lake Lucerne for a small village of Vitznau which is at the foot of the large Rigi Kulm Mountain. The weather was pretty crummy, but we decided to give the hike a shot. So, in 3 short hours we hiked directly uphill through various small villages, by the time we got to the top it looked like we were in Siberia...blizzard contidions, whipping wind, and certainly no views to see. But thankfully we got plenty of the lake and towns below as we hiked up into the clouds. Lucky for us and our freezing butts, there was a cog railway we took back down instead of hiking again....With our serious hiking amibitions behind us, the next day we set off for Zurich to take a bit of a rest and stay in a nice hotel.

We did a little sightseeing but the real highlight of the stop was to venture to the top of Uto Kulm (by train this time!) for a special anniversary dinner overlooking all of Zurich and the lake below. That´s right...10 years, and Conor´s still got some good tricks up his sleeve, great restaurant choice, Conor! It was an awesome restaurant with great food and awesome views. Today we returned to die Deutschland for an overnight stop in Frankfurt before we head to Rothenburg tomorrow. Sadly our time is winding down very quickly....

Auf wiedersehen!