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Written by Roo
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Friday, 25 September 2009 02:00 |
I believe vacation starts when you forget what day it is. Well, last entry I missed a day - Thursday, Sept 17, when we went to Pisa. We saw the tower and went up it. Took lots of pictures from on top. Took pictures from below. Then we went to Lugano on the way to Porlezza.
Sunday, Sept 20. We left Lautebrunnen by train to go up to the top (or rather near the top) of Jungfrau, really a station sitting in a high-nestled valley between Jungfrau and Monch.  Jungfrau means Maiden, Monch means Monk, which is protecting the Maiden from the ominous Eiger, or Ogre. The North face of Eiger was first climbed in 1950-something; the railway to the station where we went was completed in the early 1900's. We got to go outside and see Jungfrau and Eiger with our own eyes - it was a balmy 2 degrees below zero Centigrade out there (roughly freezing, give or take).
We also saw an ice museum featuring ice carvings, all housed within a cavernous glacier.
We ate at the top of the world - the fries were actually pretty good, and breaded chicken, and cake and stuff. Oh, altitude sickness barely touched me - if I turned my head quick I felt a little touch of dizzy. However, Kerri was lightheaded and felt close to passing out a couple times while climbing stairs. We were after all at an altitude of 11,333 feet, give or take. That's just about the altitude a small aircraft has to be at to fly over Denver. (Gramma Pat's husband was a small-engine pilot - she was telling us of the time they had to fly over Denver and she was the one fine with the altitude and *he* was the one starting to get affected by it.)
We spent a lot more time than planned on top of the mountain, so we had to skip seeing Bern, where my great-grandfather grew up, Luzern with the Picasso museum and old bridges, and a few more things we were going to see in Lautebrunnen before heading back down to Lugano.
We (or rather Kerri) drove across Switzerland and returned the car in Lugano, my mom picked us up and we once again took the harrowing road to Porlezza. I counted 45 places in the guardrails and stonework edging where there were obvious signs of damage from a run-in with momentum.
 The next day, we took the ferry across Lake Como to see Varenna, glacing across the water at the resort town of Bellagio. Kerri and I wandered the streets and ended up having lunch - I had prosciutto pizza, she had grilled cheese... as in a slab of Casere(?) cheese that had been fried to a crisp on two sides. Then we had gelato on the way back - cinnamon (real cinnamon!) and melon, respectively.
Back to Porlezza, did laundry, called it a relaxing day.
Next day we packed it up and drove to Venice, stopping in Milan on the way. Milan - the fashion capital of the world.. I was wearing khaki pants with a white tee-shirt and grey tennis shoes. We would have had McDonalds for lunch to complete the image, but there was a line. We stopped in Milan to see the Last Supper - they lost our reservations. Oh well. We were *near* the Last Supper - we can see it better in books, anyway.
Onward to Venice, where we are enjoying our last moments of two days, three nights, before hopping a plane to London and seeing Love's Labors Lost at the Globe Theater, then sleeping and hopping a plane back home. Home!
Oh, but back to Venice - for those that haven't been, Venice is pretty much one giant winding strip mall surrounded by water. There are mask stores, glass work stores, panini and dessert shops, the occational other knick-knackery places, bars, ATMs, lather, rinse, repeat.
We did find some intricately designed masks and neat-enough-to-take-home glasswork, and of course partooks in some delicacies like cheesecake that was not made from philadelphia cream cheese for once.
The variety of people is also something to note for crowd-watchers. I found it amusing to note that the French communicate with the Italian more often in english than anything else. Well, must wrap this up and send it while I still have some time on this one hour of interwebs access we have. Ciao!
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Written by Roo
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Friday, 18 September 2009 19:01 |
As I sit here in Lautebrunnen waiting for the laundry to wash, I have a moment to reflect upon the last few blog entries that haven't been written yet...
In backwards chronological order, because it's easier to remember that way:
This morning, Kerri and I got up bright and early, or early at least, in order to cross the street from the Staubbach Hotel in Lautebrunnen in order to sign up at the start of a volksmarch. This led us to a gondola ride up the valley wall to a station midway up. There we saw the signs for the volksmarch up further along the mountain. Our initial impression was that this would eventually turn down the hill and we'd return to town in order to earn the smaller 12 kilometer distance award, in place of the 20 k distance. (At the start we were reassured with two arrows pointing the same way for 10k/20k).
Up along goat trails, up and further up, we get to the clouds and hang a left, start descending, up a little more, hey look a valley. Descend to the bottom of the valley after almost two hours of walking and we see a house - the first checkpoint.
Repeat (oh look, cows, and with traditional bells on too), an arrow pointing one way for 20k (no 10k arrow) assumed the opposite direction. Kept walking, another hour and some, are we there yet? Another checkpoint. Now a lot of downhill. A lot. A LOT. And some more. Then we can start to see the town way down below us. Which we walk to. ... We started at 8:39am, and got back to town at 1:26pm, and apparently went 12k. Vertically.
After that, we settled down and had some lunch before paragliding.
And now I'm doing laundry.
Yesterday we set out pretty early from our digs in Porlezza in order to take the scary road back to Lugano and pick up the rental car that Kerri and I will take through Switzerland, while Mom and Gramma Pat stay in Porlezza for the weekend. After a little last minute recalibration on finding our way to the rental place, we managed to secure our new ride. We say our toodles and took off.
Right away I started playing with the in-dash screen and navigation system. I discovered its ability to track our location and soon to program a destination. Kerri headed for the autoroute while I tinkered with scale settings and topo-maps, in time to see mountains looming in the nav and in front of us.
We cruised it up to Lichtenschtein, to the capital city of Vaduz. There we did a 5k volksmarch through the city streets and up the hills a little ways. It was pretty, and we got to see the royal castle up close even. We sampled some of the local fine cuisine consisting of heart-shaped crispy cripix-looking salty snacks and a 2 liter of Fanta.
From there we drove (or rather Kerri drove and I rode) up to Basel to see the Van Gogh exhibit. It was great, lots of paintings. Or rather, that's what I'd say if we got there in time. The city streets in downtown Basel have peculiar intersections, where each way is preceded with a series of yellow lines like a crosswalk that apparently mean "there are no rules here". I watched an intersection for ten minutes (while waiting to get tickets for an exhibit that was closing in ten minutes) and the only three rules that I could discern were:
1. Pedestrians and bicyclists are God - all traffic stops for them whenever they jump out into traffic, which seemed to happen often;
2. Traffic turning right at an intersection had the right of way - they can always pop through the intersection without stopping for anything but pedestrians and possibly trams that are stopped in the street;
3. There were no other rules - no matter if a tram or a bike is in the way, you move forward to establish that you're turning left in front of any other car - I actually saw three left-turning cars get in a gridlock saved only by the grace that the lead car was waiting for high-priority right-turning traffic to let him in.
So we left Basel and didn't look back.
Nice easy autoroute roads gave way to darkening almost-two lane roads that lead us to Interlachen and then to Lautebrunnen, where we stay in place for two nights.
(Tue 9/15)
Driving down France we went past Arles, the city where Van Gogh moved to in order to get better sunlight and had warmer colors from the sun. We arrived in Eze, a city perched on a hillside just above Monaco, where we would be staying for the night. But after checking in we drove down to Monaco and checked out the action from the car, as there's hardly anything one can do about leaving a car in Monaco - I don't think they actually have any parking, just cars that were abandoned in the street. We headed back to Eze and Kerri and I roamed the city, looking at the marvelous houses and churches built on the sheer face of cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The next day we packed it up and went to visit the Cinque Terra, the five towns along the shoreline of Italy, that - prior to the addition of a rail line - could only be accessed by boat. We saw more perched-on-hillside cities and walked along one route between two cities called the Via del Amore. We got quite wet, on account of the fact that it had been non-stop rain for the past two days, since a little before we got to Arles.
post script - we had an awesome dinner in Manarola where we shared ravioli al ragu and pasta with pesto. The waiter was very nice, prodding Kerri a little with "Why you don't talk much, euh?" For dessert we had lemon gelatto and Confutti, a strawberry shortcake kind of treat. The waiter gave us two small glasses of a sweet local wine, his compliments. It was just the right amount, a touch more alcoholly for me, but it was a nice counterpoint to the rain and did indeed lift our spirits.
(Mon 9/14)
Today we went to explore the mountains of southern France. We headed to Mont Ventoux, a striking mountain that we could see from our place in Mazan. The most amazing thing about it was the hundreds of locals we encountered that were participating in a form of self-flagellation involving bicycling up the narrow lane-and-a-half wide twisting road 15 kilometers to a change in elevation of about 1600 meters (which is coincidentally one mile). All this for the honor and privilege of either meeting up with a companion at the top and driving down or zooming down the other side of the Mont.
But the view was nice.
Then we went "next door" to the Dentelles de Montmirail, the Teeth of Montmirail, just west of Mont Ventoux. They did indeed look a bit (heh) bicuspidal, a series of foothills with little peaks jutting up from mountain ridges.
We drove through some interesting little mountain and valley towns, like Beumes-de-Venise and Vacqueyras, Sablet, Seguret, and stopped in Vaison-la-Romaine. Kerri and I explored the hillside medieval city with narrow twisty footpaths inaccesible to cars. My mom got lost when she explored the area, but was saved by the sounds of a hurdy-gurdy player near the entrance to the town which she was able to hear playing and find her way again - she gave him a euro for saving her.
Kerri spent more than a eruo on a couple books of an interesting artist featured in town named Zanella.
Laundry's done, time for dinner at the Jungfrau Hotel.
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