Switzerland

What will I remember most about Switzerland? The fact that everything is insanely expensive.

As the trip has worn on and our ability to share small places for long periods of time has increased I’ve been anointed the Kinsel cruise director.  I’m not sure if Sara meant it to be complimentary but, I’m taking it that way!

So… The cruise director would like to inform you that Switzerland was nice but… I’m glad we’re gone.  I’m not sure we could have afforded another day even in chur where we stayed to “avoid” Zurich.  Oh well.

For perspective we are outside at a “regular” restaurant on the street in chur – spaghetti, personal sized 2 topping pizza, and a salad with water, tea and 1 beer was 89$!

We rode an 2 trains, including an amazing train through the alps (another unesco world heritage site) between Torino Italy and Chur Switzerland.  We hiked up the side of a hill for a scenic view of Chur, and messed around downtown where the roads are so old they are too small for cars.  Oh and we saw so many amazing lakes&rivers, crazy to think they still have snow on the ground and glaciers on the mountains in *almost *July!

The only problem with the amazing train “beninia express” was we somehow wound up with a traincar full of geriatric Germans… Who knew how loud “older” ppl could be jabbering in German! Us and our seat mate were the only ones in the traincar that spoke English (and she spoke only a bit)

Oooh… Apparently buckwheat is their staple crop in the alps.  At first I thought what we were seeing was people harvesting hay (it looks the same as coastal Bermuda when cut) but eventually we figured out its buckwheat.  Some of the farmers don’t have tractors so they are out gathering it into rows using 4′ wide rakes. Impressive really that they roll it up like we do hay then cover it in plastic.

To leave Switzerland in the dust we took a bus from chur to Munich and another bus (double decker) from Munich to Prague!  Wow those seats lean back a long way, great for you, bad for the person behind you.  Somehow my crazy travel planning antics haven’t completely overwhelmed the girls.  I mean, between 12 hour busses and not having rooms reserved for us more than one day in advance.. You’d think they’d have fired me by now!  (I wish)

The girls having lunch while waiting on a train in Tirano.  Tirano was a quaint little town

Train ride views (I have a ton of GoPro video to go through from this leg of the trip)

A beer I had on the train that is from the highest local brewery in Europe, I thought the bottle was neat too

Train views again

If you can’t tell, the views from the train were amazing! The windows were full height and in back there was a window that opened for better picture taking

The clock tower in chur (every tower had a clock unlike elsewhere where it’s one or 2 max in a town… Nobody has an excuse to be late!

Sara and I enjoying the hostle stairs for some odd reason

We found a nice rose garden

We logged 12 miles in Switzerland

Auf Wiedersehen