Switzerland

So, in the last post, I said I would never actually "live" in Texas. Hmm, how four months can change things. I have done the unthinkable...I have bought a house in Texas:

House picture

Yup, my very own, four bedroom, huge walk in closet, kitchen you can do cartwheels in, backyard with palm trees and a hot tub, house. I close on Monday, but basically we are all done, and I am about to write a very large check. And I am SO excited!

In other news, I have just recently returned from the best international trip yet, all the way to Switzerland to visit Cara, and then on to London to see the fam. It was a great trip, and I will try my best to illustrate some of the highlights below:

I arrived on a Saturday night and Cara immediately whisked me off to the local family bar, where we proceeded to drink a large amount of wine and eat some delicious french bread and fresh sliced meat. I met the cousins and the cutest french 3 year old ever, who could not figure out why I couldn't speak French to her. She said I talked like Dora.

Sunday we spent the day in Geneva, seeing the UN and the Red Cross museum (a must see for all those girl scout moms out there!). We walked around by Lake Geneva and read the bible (ie, the tour book on Switzerland), and then hung out in Cara's house with a bottle of red wine and some chicken for dinner. Life was good. Geneva picture highlights:


Monday morning we picked up the rental car (stick shift driving for the first time in a LONG time for me) and took off for Gruyeres. Luckily, they drive on the correct side of the road in Switzerland, so other than some curvy mountain roads, some sketchy roundabouts and some questionable road signs, we did pretty well. We made to Gruyeres in about 90 minutes, and stopped on our way in to the Cheese factory. First touristy thing of the trip: we took the tour. We learned all about making and age-ing cheese, and how what a cow eats can affect your cheese. It was lovely. We had cheese samples, which were really just appetizers for lunch: Cheese fondue. Just little baby potatoes, bread, and cheese. We were carb loading to a max. We spent the afternoon exploring the Gruyeres Chalet and taking in the amazing views. We drove up to another town, Chalet de Oux, which a) neither of could pronounce, and b) did not have a chalet. We were disappointed, but only momentarily as we soon found a cafe to have out MAPB (mid afternoon pastry break, pictures at the end). Refueled, we drove back through Gruyeres, through Bulle, and out to Friesburg (Freedbird I called it). We drove into Friesburg, decided we were not even getting out of the car in this city, and drvoe back. Sort of like driving into the shopping area of Oakland. Slightly sketchy, lots of people, and nothing to see. We spent the evening eating in Bulle, and then back to Gruyeres for the night.

Day 3 we drove up to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. This is where Switzerland became more like Germany, less like France. Bern is German speaking. Neither of us speak German, and let's face it, I am barely holding on with the English language at this point. We checked into our hotel around 10am after a short ride in the Sixt car rental car back into the city center with out German speaking car representative, who taught us how to say Thank you. We checked out the local outdoor market (my favorite thing to do in any city) and saw all the local cheese and vegetable. We wandered down to the bear pits in Bern (no pictures, since the bears were too cold to come out). The city has the bear as its mascot, and they keep live ones in this pit all year round. We met this random American woman from Arizona who now lives in Bern who invited us along on her tour. So, Cara, me, three British people and Henriette our tourguide, headed of to learn all about the history of the beautiful city. Henriette was pretty good, although she didn't walk backwards as all good tourguides should. We learned all about the old buildings and the churches and the city history, and then took off on our own when they stopped for lunch. We then decided to eat on our own, and had to find the picture menus in order to know what each thing was. Stupid Americans. We spent the afternoon checking out Einstein's old house, where he lived when he began the theory of relativity (still can't explain it, after 4 years of studying it). We then did what every good tourist does on day three of a trip. We napped. Actually, I napped, cara watched BBC or something on TV for a while. We headed out later in the evening to get some dinner and see the night life. As the German boy at the front desk told us, it was Tuesday and it was Bern, so there was nothing going on. He was right. We ate, and returned the hotel to warm up and relax for the evening. Yup, and I fell asleep early again. Jet lag is not pretty. Bern pictures are below:


Day 4 we took the train to Lucerne, which was the typical beautiful European city. It was right on the lake, and had an old town portion with cobblestones and street vendors and cute shops and such. We ate on the water for lunch, and then took a boat ride on the lake, which went across to several other Swiss towns. The boat ride was beautiful and it allowed us to see several sights and mountain views not otherwise accessible. We eventually had to go inside because the outdoors was just too cold, but we enjoyed the views through the windows just as much as from the cold outdoors. That evening Cara set us the goal of not going to bed before 10pm. We decided to have a fancy dinner with steak an accidental order of half a bottle of wine instead of just a glass. You might notice a slight progression in the pictures below. After our fancy dinner we had fancy dessert at the fondue restaurant. That's right folks, despite chocolate fondue not being as big of a thing as we might think it is in Switzerland, we sought it out, found it, and enjoyed it. And it was well worth it. We sort of rolled our way back to the hotel after failing to find the jazz cafe we were looking for (we didn't look too hard after we found the fondue). We were staying at this old jail house, which was hilarious. I think I have a picture of our door which I will include below.

Day 5 we took the 3 hour train back to Geneva and spent the afternoon shopping. We had our very special Valentine's dinner with one of Cara's teacher friends, and then packed for our impending trip to London. We were up late and up again early the next morning to get to the airport for our flight to Lutton airport just outside of London. London, of course, was its own adventure, which will have to wait for a second blog, since this one has become such a pain in the butt with loading pictures. My advice, go to my picassa page and check out all my pictures (did you notice I didn't load any? Yea, that is because they kept freezing my blog up). So, my pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/debhutchings/DebInSwitzerland

Enjoy!