Yesterday, my dad and Peggy offered to watch the kids for the whole day so that Markus and I could go away. Naturally we seized this chance and were off on the 7:30am train to Appenzell (home of great cheese) and to the Alps beyond. We had a wonderful day and went to several places that were just beautiful but would be really difficult with two small kids along. I am including some pictures to accompany the story of our outing.
We started out with the train toward Appenzell, which is east of Zurich about 2 hours away. We wandered around the quaint town of Appenzell for a hour, gathering things to lunch on at the bakery and glancing at the tourist shops. This is a place that must get loads of tourists in the summertime...all of the shops sell Swiss paraphernalia (you won't wonder that I am not buying any souvenirs here from among the stuffed animal st. Bernard dogs, red t-shirts with white crosses and all sorts of cutesy figurines! Plus the going price for a post card here is $1.20 with an additional $1.80 in stamps!) and the streets are lined by outdoor cafes. Not so many tourists there at this time, however, even though the weather was great.
We then continued on the small railroad up the hill until we got to Wasseraun. There is a gondola that carries you up another 2,000 feet to near the top of the Ebenalp mountain. This gondola was quite a ride, much of it at a steep angle against the shear rock face (those of you that know I hate heights will be surprised to hear that I actually could look out and down and wasn't scared at all!) The gondola left us at 5,300 feet, with great views to much higher mountains all around. We hiked there for several hours, on one side looking up to snowy peaks (Mt. Santis) and on the other side looking into a beautiful valley full of cows whose bells we could hear even at the top of the mountain. I eat Appenzell cheese most days for lunch and it was fun to up close to those cows :) Of course, the final song from Sound of Music (climb every mountain) got playing in my head as we hiked along the ridge looking down into the green valleys...
Along the hike we lunched near a small guesthouse built into a crevice of rock under the peak, and then traveled through a cave to get back to the side of the mountain where we could catch the gondola back down. Then we hiked along the valley floor past several villages and through lots of cow fields to a train stop. This "wandering" in Switzerland is crazy: there are little yellow signs that guide you, but there is almost no train, just some beaten down grass through fields and along the streams. Part of the trail joins up with people's driveways, and you often walk right past their front door, through the side yard and out into the fields again. No one seems to mind, not even the cows. The fields are generally divided by electric fences with makeshift gates for wanderers to cross. We seem to have come at peak dandelion season and they are as thick as grass in the fields. Just beautiful! The cows are moving up to the higher levels as the weather gets warmer (bells distinguish the different herds) and I had flashbacks to reading Heidi as a child.
After rejoining the train we travelled to the southern tip of Lake Zurich (Rapperswil) and looked around. Then took a local train up the lake and back to the city. We still had time on our clock and decided to have dinner in Zurich before resuming our parental duties, so we went to a hip restaurant called Tibits. It is in a posh part of town and serves an eclectic assortment of food to an upscale clientele. This is the Sweet Tomatoes for the rich and adventurous: probably 35 mixed salads and hot dishes, all vegetarian on the buffet. Stuff that you don't see elsewhere here, like curried corn salad, thai style tofu salad, onion rings, jalapeno poppers, samosas, tabbouli with peppermint, curried fennel and apple salad, etc. Yum! We loaded our plates up moderately, and shared a mango lassi. The total was $50 for two, but given our limited time to eat out, worth it! Not a child friendly bite in the place. :)
Of course, the kids had a wonderful time with their grandparents and were finishing off their hamburger dinner with ice cream when we got home. They had been out with our map of playgrounds and had discovered not only a new great playground, but a new (to us) cogwheel railroad in the city. So everyone had a great day. Sadly, the grandparents left today, but as the weather has shifted again to rain they have probably gotten the best Zurich has to offer.
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