June 2011 (Part Two):Switzerland is for Lovers

I'll save you all the mushy details and simply tell you that this was what we did for our 13th anniversary. We flew into Geneva. A word of advice: if you fly into Geneva to visit Switzerland, be sure to rent your car on the Swiss side of the airport and not the French side. It makes for a real nightmare getting out of the airport and even worse when the time comes to return the car. So our first stop was Chateaux Chillon on lake Geneva. I'm pretty sure Brandon chose this because it was on the cover of the Rick Steves Switzerland book.

Next we were on to Randa. It's a tiny little village. We stayed here for easier access to Zermatt without the High price of being in Zermatt. Our hotel was very quaint with a very tasty Italian restaurant. We wandered around a little and snapped these pics.

So, from Randa we drove to Tasch to get on the train to Zermatt. There are no cars in Zermatt. Our big goal for the day was, of course, to see the Matterhorn. It was pretty overcast.

Goal : Fail    That big white space is where the Matterhorn is supposed to be.

Next we were on our way to the Lauterbrunnen Valley. The drive involved driving our car onto another train, but this one wasn't quite as nice as the chunnel train. I imagine this is what it would be like to ride on the back of a auto transport truck. There were just some chains on the sides and it was pitch black in the tunnel that took us through the mountain. But it cut the drive time by more than half, and soon we had driven through Interlaken and up to the Valley. We stayed in the village of Lauterbrunnen.

Lots of waterfalls

Still a little overcast.

This is the restaurant where we ate almost every night. It was just a great setting and they had all of the Swiss specialties on the menu. We wanted to try them all, so we just kept going back.

Driving past Interlaken to get to Lucerne.

Lucerne

Back to the valley to see some more waterfalls. This one falls down through the mountain instead of over the face. It's really amazing how loud the roar is.

So the sun finally came out on our last day. We decided to go check out some of the higher altitude surrounding villages. It was quite beautiful. The sun didn't last, though, and later that day it started snowing on some of those peaks. Snow in June! I wanted to go see so badly, but the price to get up there was astronomical.

On our way back to the airport we decided to stop in Bern. Gotta knock out as much as we can, right?

The ogre eating some babies. Makes Shrek seem a little less friendly, huh?

And that was our trip. I tried to keep it short. I realize it's a lot like having you all over to see my slides, so I appreciate you hanging in there. I'm up against a major deadline, so I'm going to try to do better to finish up. Once we get to the US, it will get easier and decidedly more ordinary.