Grandma & Grandpa's Swiss Visit

In June, Tobi's parents came to visit for ten days - their first trip to Europe. We tried to show them the best Switzerland has to offer! Below are some highlights of their trip! 

Grandma Sharol & the kids on the mountain train to Rigi

Grandma Sharol & Grandma Larry look like they belong in Switzerland!

The kids enjoyed the scenery.

On our hike through Gattikon

We took Sharol & Larry out on the town one night - ferrying to Zurich.

Walking around Old Town at night - Grossmunster behind them.

We took them to the kids' favorite - Lenzburg Castle.

One day we ditched the boys and had a girls' day in France.

We took another mountain train up to the Reichenbach Falls.

Caroline & Tobi at the falls

Sharol & Tobi walking to Buchenegg on their last night in Zurich.

Cheers!

Tiffany

Lugano e Como

We had a three day weekend in May and so we decided to go a little south to Ticino, which is the southern Italian-bordering, Italian-speaking, region of Switzerland. However, we got a hotel recommendation from a fellow expat and it turns out that our hotel is actually in Italy, just over the border. Lake Lugano is partly in each country and really, who can pass up any chance to go to Italy?

View of Lake Lugano from our hotel balcony.

As the date got nearer, we amassed quite a group of us headed to the Parco San Marco resort. In the end, five American families - all expat friends - made the trek together. We had five couples and between us, seventeen children. That's right! Seventeen. Someone later said to me, "Boy, I'll bet that hotel was happy to see you come . . . and happy to see you leave." Amen!

The resort was beautiful. There were several buildings of rooms (including family rooms: ours was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, with a full kitchen), three restaurants, three pools (including the kids' "Fun Pool" with water slides), a spa, and a Kids' Club with many kids' activities throughout the day (archery was the boys' favorite).

The kids playing in Bellinzona

We headed to Lugano right after school on Friday, stopping in Bellinzona for dinner. We made our way around Lake Lugano just as it was getting dark, on tiny winding roads with one-lane bridges and tunnels that only made me grip the steering wheel in terror for 90% of the journey.

Patrick, Sam, Grant, and Alex having fun at the aptly named Fun Pool.

On Saturday we spent most of the day at the hotel pools and beach. Since all five of our families are good friends, our kids have played a lot together in the last year, so it was fun having so many playmates on holiday with us. The kids loved the Fun Pool and the parents loved that there was a restaurant at the pool, to order lunch and keep it simple. We spent the afternoon at the beach, complete with trampolines and sandboxes. Some of the wives slipped away to enjoy spa services!

Charlie and his best buddy Natalie enjoyed the pool.

Grant loved riding his scooter on the resort's skate park.

The Kids Club was great and very instrumental in really making this feel like a vacation. For those of us with kids, there is a healthy difference between taking a trip with your kids and vacationing with your kids. Vacationing with kids requires little breaks from the kids. Hello Kids Club! The kids were promptly dropped off at the kids club at 5:30 in the evening where they enjoyed the bounce house, foos-ball, Wii Dance Party, etc. and a buffet dinner, with a movie shown afterward. The five couples were able to have two group dinners at the two resort restaurants, and that made it feel like a real treat!

Tobi climbed up to the top.

On Sunday Tobi got up and out early and did an extraordinary hike by himself to the top of the mountain behind the hotel. On his five hour (!!!) hike, he encountered several deer, an old abandoned church, something that may or may not have been part of the wild cat family, and a geocache at the tippy-tippy top that hadn't been found in over a year (he's very proud of this fact). I, on the other hand, did another kind of geocaching called Ladies Shopping Trip in Como. As soon as he got back from his hike, I promptly handed over responsibility for three kids to him and took off with the ladies for an afternoon. 

Lake Como, with Bellagio in the distance.

Laura, Me, Beth, and Annalisa (and baby Tagg!) on the ferry to Bellagio.

The town was very pretty and charming.

We drove about thirty minutes to the town of Griante, on Lake Como, and took the ferry across the lake to the touristy town of Bellagio. Bellagio was a cute little town with steep little narrow walking streets with cute shops and restaurants. We shopped a bit and had a nice lunch and shopped some more (jewelry, Limoncello, and ties for the husbands, Oh my!). We took the ferry back across the lake and drove back in time for me to partake in the hotel spa with a massage before dinner.

The kids at Swissminiatur with a miniature Matterhorn behind them.

Our own little Swiss Miss

We had to go back to Zurich on Monday, so after breakfast we decided to stop in Lugano at a little park called Swissminiatur. It's basically a tiny model Switzerland that you can walk through. It wasn't a huge attraction, but the children enjoyed it and they especially enjoyed pointing out the places we had been. After a lunch in Lugano with an amazing view of the lake, we headed back home.

For some reason, there was also a miniature Duomo di Milano at the park,
which is odd because it's not Swiss. But it was so large, the kids could fit inside it so I took their picture.
We saw the real Duomo in our first two weeks of living in Europe.

Our last lunch in Lugano was the perfect ending.

On that Friday night when we first got to Bellinzona and found a trattoria for dinner, I had a moment of sheer happiness that brought tears to my eyes. There is nothing that feels the way the beginning of a vacation feels, is there? Everyone was excited to be off for a few days. We were all hungry and happy to have found a nice place for dinner. We were sitting outside with a fountain nearby. The waiter had just brought us our wine, which never hurts! We were ordering our dinners in a mix of German-English-Italian that made everyone giggly. And I just had this moment of pure gratitude. Grateful for this experience, for our children. For our memories. People often say to me, "It's too bad your kids are so young; they probably won't remember much of this." Perhaps that is true. Especially for Caroline. But I will remember it and I will tell them stories. Stories like how Grant knows how to order pizza mit scharf salame und ananas, ohne sauce in German. Stories like how Charlie, our little six year old from Chicago, Illinois, has just about the funniest and best German accent of any expat I've heard. Stories like how Caroline just insisted to me last week that we're from Switzerland, not America. There are moments like these that pass us by so quickly, we often forget to ponder them. Sitting in that piazza in Bellinzona, watching my kids play around the fountain with the mountains of Ticino surrounding us, I felt it. We are very lucky, indeed.

Ciao!

Tiffany

Up next: France

The Black Forest

Last month we had two long weekends in a row (Ascension and Whit Monday) and we can't let a long weekend go by without discovering a new place! Unfortunately, Tobi was traveling to the U.S. that week, so I knew we wouldn't be able to take a flight or a long road trip. We decided to explore Germany's Black Forest, a mere 2-3 hours north of Zurich. 


We picked Tobi up at the Zurich airport on Thursday morning, where he'd just landed on a flight from Chicago, and headed north. Our first stop was the oldest silver mine in Germany, the Schauinsland silver mine and caves. I had meant for us to park at the bottom of the mountain and take the gondola up to the top to the silver mine. But my navigation skills being not so great, we ended up climbing the mountain in the Volvo and parking right next to the mine. The boys were happy because we parked right in a parking lot with snow all around us. Snow in May was a fun treat and an impromptu snowball fight ensued.

Snow in May on top of the mountain!

We had lunch at the little restaurant near the gondola and I tasted my first Black Forest cake. That's right - I'd never felt the urge to try Black Forest Cake, but when in Rome . . . anyway, I think I could have been drunk off that cake if Tobi had not shared it with me. Wow - have some cake with your booze.

After lunch we toured the mine. We had to don hard hats (and yes, I was freaked out by the idea of sharing helmets with other tourists) to enter the mine. The boys enjoyed that and being in the cave, but the tour itself was a bust as it was entirely in German. I pretended to understand the tour guide and laugh in the appropriate places.

Hi ho Hi ho, It's off to work they go.

After the tour, we headed further north to a teeny village (seriously, 10 houses and a lumber yard and our hotel) in the Black Forest, called Freiamt. We stayed at a very lovely hotel, the Hotel Ludinmühle. We did what the Europeans term the "half board" option, which means we opted for breakfast and dinner in the hotel. Which was obviously the smart thing to do since there wasn't another village around for miles and miles. We spent the afternoon of the first day at the hotel pools. The hotel had a beautiful indoor and outdoor pools, which were heated. That was perfect because the temperatures were mild, if a bit chilly. The food at this hotel was spectacular, especially the breakfasts. Grant and Charlie have decided European hotels have the best breakfasts - I think they will remember the breakfasts the most.

On Friday we drove about twenty minutes from our hotel to the ruins of Hochburg Castle, a thousand-year-old castle in the Upper Rhine Valley. Ruins are probably a favorite of our kids. It's a good place for them to run around without me worrying that they're going to destroy anything, like in a maintained castle with furnishings! The boys inevitably play knights and invent battles with pretend swords (or sticks). This particular castle was pretty much deserted. We parked at the bottom of a hill near a farm and walked up at our own pace, the kids running ahead and pretending to keep watch of the enemy.

The kids loved the ruins at Hochburg Castle.

We spent a couple of hours at the castle and then we headed a little further north to spend the afternoon at the Black Forest Open Air Museum, also known as the Vogtsbauernhof. The museum had houses of buildings from various eras throughout history, with the oldest house being a farmhouse from 1612. There were cows, horses, sheep, and goats. The children especially loved the "natural" playground with the polished rock-slide. We enjoyed ice cream and bought cuckoo-clock whistles from a shop that carves them there. From there we headed back to our hotel for some pool time before dinner.

House from 1612; kids from 2002.

Caroline loved the cows!

The polished rock slide was super fast - Daddy was needed!

Each kid picked their cuckoo clock whistle.

On Saturday morning, Grant woke up with what we're pretty sure was food poisoning. We're not sure what he ate that made him sick (Grant tries the interesting items on a buffet that the rest of us wouldn't dare) but he was sick for about 8 hours. Tobi took Charlie out and they went hiking and geocaching in the forest, while Grant, Caroline, and I stayed in the hotel watching Brady Bunch episodes on the laptop. By afternoon Grant was feeling much better and we all went out for lunch at a little restaurant in the middle of the forest with the best goulash I've ever tasted. We again spent the late afternoon in the pool.

The pool was their favorite part!

On Sunday we got up and had our last amazing breakfast at the hotel before heading back to Switzerland. Our journey took us through Schaffhausen, which is home to the Rhine Falls, Europe's largest waterfall. We stopped there and took not one, but two, boat tours. Tobi decided we hadn't had enough adventure that weekend so he got us the regular boat tour and then the "adventure" boat tour that takes you to the rock in the middle of the falls. It lets you off, where you climb a very tiny and very steep staircase crowded with other people, to the top, so you can feel like you're in the falls. Let's just say it took a while for my legs not to feel like jelly (I'm a scaredy-cat!).

The Rhine Falls. See those people up on that rock? Yeah. We did that.

The boys at the Rhine Falls

Three best lil travelers we could hope for!

We left the falls and headed home after a nice long weekend away. Germany is a large country, and I'm pretty sure each region has a lot more to offer than we'll ever see. I'm glad we got to see beauty of the Black Forest.

Cheers!

Tiffany

Up next: Italy

Happy is England

Tower Bridge (prettiest bridge in London, in my opinion)

In April we did a house swap with our friends who used to live in Evanston, who now live in a beautiful spot in England. We met up with the Saltzmans last July in Munich, where we sorta threw out a "hey wouldn't it be great to house swap?" but who knew if it would ever come to fruition. Well, lucky for us, it did!

We spent seven nights at their lovely home in Ascot. Our kids deemed it the best vacation ever, simply because of the new supply of toys, massive televisions and the trampoline and playset in the backyard that we had "all to ourselves!"

As many of you know, I'm an Anglophile through and through. My British expat friends tell me I have a highly romanticized vision of what England is. Perhaps so, but I think we all need a place like that in the world. Yes, I don't know the pains of living there. I only know the charm of visiting. And that's OK with me. I need that place in the world that only holds fond memories and warm and fuzzy feelings. I also doubly appreciated it on this trip because it was music to my ears to hear English spoken everywhere, to be able to read ALL the signs in the shops and on the roads. It was heaven to my expat brain.

Tobi and I went to London a few years ago, sans children, so I felt like I'd really done London. We were both thrilled to see other things. The kids were up for whatever, though Charlie said his "must do" was the London Eye and Grant's must was the Tower. We went into London for one day trip, and did both of those, but our day in London turned out to be the coldest and rainiest of the entire week. This can only be good news, as it means we must return to London for a long weekend (see what I did there??).

The kids in the London Eye (Big Ben to the left, across the Thames)

The kids really enjoyed the Tower of London

Grant, going to Hogwarts, from Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station

Of course, in Tobi's ever-ambitious quest to rack up the countries visited, we drove to Wales to tour a castle. British friends called Chepstow "fake Wales" because it is just over the border. Pish tosh! I saw a Welcome to Wales sign and I saw several signs in Welsh, so IT COUNTS. The kids enjoyed that day because of the 900+ castles in Wales, we toured one that is pretty much entirely ruins (ie, nothing for the kids to accidentally break and nearly no other tourists in sight). On our way back, we drove through Bath (Baaaahhhhth) and stopped at Stonehenge. Stonehenge was incredible to see in person and was a real treat for the whole family.

Chepstow Castle in Wales

Stonehenge

Lego London at Legoland Windsor

We spent one day at Legoland Windsor. How could we not? It was a mere ten minutes from our friends' home! Grant has decided we must tour all the Legolands of Europe. Thank goodness there are only three and we've already been to two (Denmark, here we come!).

Waiting for the Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle

We spent a day in Windsor, which was a nice day for me. I got to shop at British favorites like Marks & Spencer, Cath Kidston, and Boots. We had a fantastic lunch at Gourmet Burger Kitchen and also watched the changing of the guard at Windsor Castle.

Life: MADE

We spent Easter Sunday at Highclere Castle. As I was planning the trip, I kept wondering how I could convince my husband and three small children that it would be fun to go to a 400-year old castle where the BBC period drama Downton Abbey is filmed. Luckily, a few days before Easter, I checked their site and learned of their Easter egg hunt. BINGO! 

Happy Easter at Downton Abbey

Sunday morning we set off for Hampshire with a loaded picnic basket and dreams of Lord Grantham Easter chocolate in our eyes. We got to the castle at eleven, about an hour before the hunt. There were a LOT of people there. But the queue (oh how the British can queue; it is a sight to behold) moved quickly and the kids got their riddle sheets and off we went. The Easter Egg hunt wasn't so much of an egg hunt as a hunt for riddle clues. Once you had all of your answers, you turned them in in exchange for a giant Cadbury chocolate egg. Everyone was happy, the grounds were gorgeous, and I had almost fulfilled my fantasy of living in a British period drama. We picnic'd with other families on the grounds and after lunch Grant and I took the tour of the castle itself. 

The show of Downton Abbey doesn't truck in props. They use the furnishings of the house. One of the tour guides said that the film crew is lovely to work with but that they sometimes need reminders on how to pick up and move antique furniture. There are placards around the house to alert you to certain things associated with the show, such as "Lord Grantham's desk" or "Lady Edith's room" or "Kemal Pamuk's room." They've definitely traded on the Downton Abbey fame, but who can blame them? Houses of that stature can fall to ruin if the family makes no money to restore and retain them.

All in all, our trip to England was one of our favorite trips. We had decent weather for the most part (I, for one, am happy to have cloudy, chilly weather in England - that's part of its charm!), we had good food (fish & chips, and Indian twice!), we met lovely people with lovely manners and we got to feel like we were at home because we really were in someone's lovely home.

I was so sad to leave and had tears in my eyes as we boarded the plane back to Zurich. But I know that we'll definitely be back again!

Cheerio!

Tiffany

Up next: Germany's Black Forest, and Lugano

Paris Part Deux

Lucky me! At the end of March I was able to swing a second trip to Paris in six months. My mom was vacationing in Paris for a week with my Aunt Judy and then separately, my friend Sarah was coming to Paris for a vacation. Tobi generously agreed to work from home so I could take the TGV to Paris for three nights.

I arrived in Paris on Friday afternoon and took a taxi to the apartment in the Latin Quarter, where my mom was staying. I’d briefly walked through the Latin Quarter on my trip in September, when I did my self-guided Hemingway tour. Coincidently, the apartment my mom was renting was directly across the street from Hemingway’s first apartment.

On Friday evening, my mother and aunt and I went to the Palace Garnier to see a ballet performance. The Garnier is the old opera house in Paris. It was beautiful on the inside, with gilt and marble everywhere. There was even a hall fashioned after the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

Marc Chagall painted the ceiling in 1964.

His dreamlike painting depicts scenes from operas by 14 composers.

Versailles was the destination on Saturday. We took a train from the city out to the historic chateau. It is amazingly beautiful with gorgeous gardens and ballrooms and courtyards. But one can understand why the opulence did not sit well with the revolutionaries.

On Sunday morning, I left the boisterous Latin Quarter for the more sedate St. Germaine area to meet my friend Sarah. Sarah and her husband were celebrating their ten year wedding anniversary with a trip to Paris, and Sarah was lovely enough to come one day earlier than her husband so we could hang out together for a day. She was also a jet-setting rock star, as she got off the plane from St. Louis at 9:30 in the morning and didn’t take a nap the entire day!

After we got settled in her rented apartment in the cutest neighbhorhood, we set out for lunch at an outdoor cafe. After lunch we decided to walk down to the Musee d’Orsay to view the impressionists. I haven’t been to many museums in Paris, but I highly recommend the Orsay. The museum itself is gorgeous, housed in a train station built in 1898. The museum is not overly huge and can be done easily in an afternoon. The Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, and Monet paintings were exquisite to see up close. I would also recommend the audio tour, as I think you get so much more out of a museum with the additional information.

Sarah and I enjoying the scenery (and ice cream) of the Ile St. Louis

From the Orsay, we walked back up to the Ile St. Louis and stood in line for the famous Berthillon ice cream. If you go to Paris in the summer, it’s a must (and yes, it was only March, but we were blessed with exceptionally warm weather). The best flavor is the salted buttered caramel, in my opinion. We walked around the island with our ice cream, crossed over to the Ile de la Cite to view Notre Dame, and eventually made our way back to Sarah’s apartment. We had a lovely dinner at a little brasserie by her place and after a Nutella crepe for dessert, Sarah finally crashed!

On Monday morning Sarah’s husband arrived, but he decided a nap was his best bet, so Sarah and I walked through the Tuileries to the Musee d’Orangerie, a museum that houses some of Monet’s larger water lily paintings. Another beautiful museum that was actually quite small. I actually prefer the smaller museums – they don’t seem too daunting. Monet’s water lilly paintings take your breath away when you see them. Architecture buffs would love the rooms built specifically to showcase his larger works.

After a quick lunch with Sarah and her husband, I was off to the train station to head back to Zurich. I am blessed to live so close to a place my friends all want to visit. If you’re ever heading to Paris, let me know! Perhaps I could meet you there. ;)

Cheers!

Tiffany

Next up: England

Ski Week

I have been very lax in my blogging lately! Sorry!

Back in February we took part in our very first expat ritual of going away for ski week. We went to Serfaus, Austria in the Tyrol region with two families from our school, the Dublins and the Jeppsons. Thanks to our friend Annalisa’s diligent research, we stayed at a lovely family hotel in Serfaus called the Hotel Furgler. A "family hotel" is a brilliant European idea that American ski resorts should adopt! It’s basically an all-inclusive hotel with kid-friendly features like included all-day childcare, a pool with water slides, a children's play gym with video games, a child’s buffet dinner with unlimited juice bar, ski passes, and wonderful five course dinners for the adults each night. The three families, with nine children between us, enjoyed the hotel very much.

The boys in Serfaus, before hitting the slopes!

Grant and Tobi had been skiing all winter, so Grant was ready for ski school. He and Patrick and Sophie skied off every morning to meet their instructors and never looked back. Charlie hadn’t skied for about 2 years, but he did great. He took 4 days worth of lessons and he felt more comfortable on skis by the end of the week. Caroline stayed in the hotel daycare with Vivi and Annie and had little outings like going to a farm to see horses and pigs.

Charlie hadn't skied since he was 3, but he did a great job at ski school.

The instructor would shout, "Charlie make-a the pizza!"

Every evening our après-ski routine consisted of snacks and swimming in the hotel’s very nice pool (indoor and outdoor!) and waterslides. After swimming, we would head to dinner. Since everyone at the hotel was there for the whole week, we had the same seating every night. They put our three families together and the kids had lots of fun eating from the buffet, having ice cream from the ice cream bar and then playing on iPods until the adults were done with dinner.

Tobi enjoyed skiing alone but he mostly liked skiing with Grant.

Caroline didn't ski but she still had fun in the snow.

Ski vacations are hard work and we were usually all in bed each night by 9pm. The kids were troupers, though, and they did great.

Tobi and Charley tried to keep up with Grant and Patrick.

On the way home from Serfaus, we drove through the eastern part of Switzerland, through St. Moritz and Davos. What an amazing scenic drive. The mountains in that part of Switzerland were astounding. We might need to go back someday to that region.

Views of St. Moritz (from the car) were stunning.

Cheers!

Tiffany