European Journal July 15, 2010

There was no danger of oversleeping this morning! Our hotel was next to an old church, and along with every hour bell chiming, at 6:00am, the bells played for a long time and a dog was howling along with it!

We had our typical breakfast, and boarded our bus at 7:30am.

We drove to downtown Lucerne after stopping to see a famous lion carved in a huge rock face. It was raining pretty hard, and we were very thankful we had packed two umbrellas!

We poked around downtown Lucerne, and even found a bookshop with a fairly large selection of English books.

While we were boarding our bus, another tour bus backed into our coach. We learned that some curse words translate to any language! Ha!

We drove to pick up the rest of our group who went on an optional boat cruise, and stopped for our driver to complete insurance forms with the driver of the bus who backed into ours. From Lucerne, we drove to Stanserhorn, Switzerland to see the beautiful Mount Stanserhorn. We took an old-time funicular up part-way, and then a modern aerial cable care to the 6.300 foot peak.

There were Brown Swiss cows with bells we could see and hear on our way up, as well as sheep, goats, and little deer-like wild animals called shamwar.

The director of the cable car told us that only young cows who don't produce milk yet are allowed to roam up the mountain. They are out night and day, and it can be dangerous for them. He said a storm came through last night and seven calves were struck and killed by lightning.

At the top of Mt. Stanserhorn, there was a small restaurant with a revolving seating area. Bryan and I had lunch here; a traditional Swiss meal in a flame-heated Aidelveis pot. It was "spatzel"- a macaroni pasta with cheese, potatoes, and toasted onions. We also had a local Swiss Lager.

Here was a nice little area for pets to get a drink of water.

After our lunch, we walked up a little farther to see the marmots, little, well actually, BIG rodents that are native to the Alpine Mountains.

They were in a large habitat on the side of the mountain. Though it was no longer raining, there were large clouds rolling through regularly that occasionally obstructed our view of the beautiful mountainside.

The air was so fresh and clean. After an hour and a half at Mt. Stanserhorn, we rode the cable car and funicular back down the mountain to our bus.

From Mt. Stanserhorn, we drove 1 1/2 hours to Interlaken, which means literally, in the middle of lakes. We had an hour of free time in this beautiful little town.

Bryan and I hadn't had Swiss Chocolate, and we had some Swiss Francs we had to spend, so we found a little chocolatier and got some truffles.

We walked a little further to a small cafe to have some "Kafee" and a cappuccino with out truffles, which were delicious!

After our stop in Interlaken, we started our two hour drive to Gruyere, home of Gruyere cheese. We stopped for some photos of the beautiful Swiss Mountainside.

Shortly after our photo stop, we had to stop for a roadside bathroom break, and one of our tour members crossed the road without watching and had his foot run over. With our coach getting backed into and someone getting run over, it was a very eventful day.

We drove along Lake Thun to the hilltop village of Gruyere.

We had an hour to walk up to Chateu Gruyere, a castle built in the 13th century, and stop in one of the shops to try some Gruyere cheese.

There were some wooden mice positioned throughout the village.

This village, as with everywhere we stopped in Switzerland, was very clean and beautiful, with lots of beautiful landscaping.

We ended up having a beautiful day, with our high temperature 29 C, and lots of sunshine in the afternoon.

After Gruyere, we had a short drive to our Novotel Hotel in Lausanne. We were all excited, because the Novotels in Europe are all very modern and nice.

It was very nice, indeed! We were like children on Christmas morning when we got to our room. It was modern, spacious, clean, and it had wash cloths! Our beds were two twin beds, but we just pushed them together.

We went to the Novotel Cafe in our hotel for dinner. We had a nice green salad, and chicken with potatoes and roasted peppers. Bryan ordered a half bottle of Swiss red wine to try. The Swiss export almost no wine, so it's likely the only time we'll get to have it, unless we come back.

We sat outside, and the weather was lovely. The hotel had a nature pool that you could swim in, but the air had cooled off, and I think little animals lived in it, so we decided against going for a little swim. I did, however, have a nice long shower in our ultra-modern bathroom with two shower heads!