Switzerland Days 1 & 2

Switzerland 2012

Day 1- First to answer the question we have gotten the most: how was the flight with three kids?!  In a nutshell...totally fine!  We had a bassinet for Beatrice, and Matias and Violet both slept for about 6 of the 8 hours.  The rest of the time was taken up with meals, watching the map on the tv screen (Matias) and a movie (Violet).  We were met at the Zurich airport by Marianne and her sister, Anita, who bravely drove us back to Berner Oberland in a wonderful 9 person van that was on loan to us.  We stayed in luxury accomodations, thanks to Marianne's father and his family who let us stay in their home while they were "up on the mountain" at their summer farmhouse.  We napped a bit, wandered around the area and headed to bed pretty early.

at O'Hare ready to leave

Beatrice in her bassinet

This is the way to fly!

Violet was pretty excited about the movie on the plane

Matias and Violet's bunk beds 

Our bedroom..Beatrice even had a crib in our room!  Note the Toblerone chocolates on the pillows!

So thankful for this van- we put a good number of miles on this baby...and Swiss roads are no joke!

 Day 2- Marianne bravely woke us up around 9 this morning so we didn't totally sleep the day away.  After a great Swiss breakfast (I will describe the breakfasts later!), we headed off to hike in the mountains.  Now, upon arriving in Darstetten, Marianne's hometown, we felt like we were really, truly up in the mountains.  We were perplexed when people kept telling us that these were not the mountains.  Only after our hike, and subsequent trips UP UP UP the windy mountain roads did we start to believe them.  When you're from the Great Plains, everything in Switzerland feels like a mountain!
We had the great pleasure of meeting Marianne's mom this day.  She was so fun to travel with, and a great surrograte grandma for the day (in German, grandma is "grossi" and Matias learned to say "Salut Grossi" to Marianne's grandma, who lived downstairs from us.)
We traveled by train up to Grindelwald, where we then hopped onto a gondola.  We watched people paragliding and zip-lining down as we made our way up the mountain.  Then we took a nice (long) hike down to a crystal clear lake.  We had carriers for both of the girls, and Matias was a real trooper.  We played a lot of imagination games (most involving Magic Treehouse books, his current love), sang marching songs and "Hole in the Bucket" quite a few times.  The lake was worth the hike- such great views.  There we had lunch and "grandma" pulled out bubbles for the kids to blow.  Big hit.  Then we hiked back, took the gondola down, took the train back and ended our day with a delicious meal of pizza at Lido da Elio's.  The kids were blown away when the waiter brought them glass wine glasses...fancy!  We fell into bed that night!

Marianne, her mother, and Beatrice

At the top Gondola station

The mountains are rather beautiful, eh?

First of two times that we happened upon a Bollywood movie being filmed.  

The gondola

Mountain man

Blowing bubbles at the lake

The lake

Marianne takes beautiful pictures- I can't take credit for this one!

Cheers to a wonderful day!