We had a free morning this morning till the bus collected us to take us to our River Boat. We had big plans to go walking in the nearby park and do some more exploring of Zurich but the day was freezing cold, grey and raining so we just had a lazy morning hanging around the hotel till we caught the bus around 1pm.

This took us on a one and a half hour journey to Basel where we found our boat, the Scenic Jasper. The docking area was rather depressing being alongside a huge waste recycling area. The vista with mountains of broken wine bottles and a large crane moving great chunks of shredded metal with a grab like you see in arcade machines, was very reminiscent of a scene from a Mad Max movie.

On the plus side, our boat is shiny, new and beautiful. On the negative, however, Scenic have introduced a new system whereby your guide can talk to you through an App on your mobile phone. Our first hour on board was spent in a total shambles as the crew tried, mainly unsuccessfully, to teach the octogenarians, who seem to make up the bulk of the passengers, how to load and use the App.

Things took an even darker turn when the Cruise Director announced there would be a surprise entertainment which turned out to be a couple playing the cow bells and leading the group in the community singing of songs like Edelweiss and Roll Out the Barrel. Talk about Saturday afternoon in the nursing home. We retreated towards the bow and ordered more drinks.

However, dinner was excellent, our cabin is lovely and the staff are really nice so hopefully I will survive the next fortnight.

 

Breakfast today at the Fairmont Hotel in Montreux was in a beautiful glass room overlooking Lake Geneva.

While our room at the Fairmont was very tiny, the corridors were huge and went for miles. You could hold a ball in them.

We hopped on our bus and headed around the lake shore to the town of Vevey. This town has the headquarters of the Nestle Group who funded a culinary museum. You all know forks in the road, well here is a fork in the lake. This sculpture was made as part of the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the culinary museum back in the 1990s.

Being Switzerland, even the lake fishermen are catered for.

Here is a shot Jeanette took of me and my little mate. Charlie Chaplin lived the last 25 years of his life in Vevey and there is a museum of his work here as well as this statute.

Being the last day of our bus tour we stopped just out of Zurich for a group photo.

We had a walk around the old part of Zurich where you can find traces of the Roman settlement here.

This is a shot of an interesting device on the wall of Fraumunster Church. Apparently back in the day, if you were a lady with a tendency to be a bit on the fast side you would wear very wide skirts.   To counter this tendency, the church authorities built this Hussey testing arch. You had to be able to pass through it before you were allowed to go to church. Jeanette, being a good girl, passed with a wide margin.

Zurich is a beautiful and elegant city and you can see the wealth here all around you.

Walking down to breakfast in our hotel at Zermatt, we noticed great excitement. Members of our group rugged up to the nines were dashing out of the hotel with their cameras. The sun was shining, there was no cloud and the word was out – you could see the Matterhorn.

Jeanette and I rugged up, and camera in hand we headed hastily downtown to the viewing spots of which there are two good ones. The first and nearest to us was on the steps of the town hall. They had helpfully put a giant Alpine horn there with its end pointing towards the Matterhorn but it was not needed today as the mountain was bathed in sunshine and loomed over the town.

I stopped and shot a few shots just in case any clouds showed up then we hurried on to the best viewing spot which is on a bridge down past the church. There were a few people already there, cameras blazing away, and we joined them and got our photos then spent a while just admiring the magnificent mountain before the cold drove us back to the hotel.

We joined up with our group and headed down to the Zermatt station where we caught a train to the town of Tasch which was the closest our bus could get to Zermatt. Picking up the bus, we then headed to the town of Montreux which is a very elegant town on the shores of Lake Geneva in the French speaking part of Switzerland.

Many of the buildings in this town have been built in the Art Nouveau style of which our hotel was a striking example.

We had a walk along the shores of the lake through beautifully manicured gardens all teeming with flowering plants.

Though you could encounter some scary locals.

The ferries that service this lake are restored paddle wheelers from the 19th century. Their long narrow lines are really pretty. Here is “La  Suisse” steaming away from the dock.

Standing near them just transports you back to another age.

Later in the day we caught the ferry “ L’Italia “ down to Chateau De Chillon.

This Castle dates from the 12th century and was used by the Dukes of Savoy to tax merchants using the trade route that ran alongside the lake.

 

We awoke this morning in Zermatt with a light dusting of snow outside and the temperature at -4c. Our programme today is to catch a rack railway train up a nearby mountain. This train runs up to a settlement called Gornergrat which, apart from the station and the cable car base, consists of a single building containing a restaurant and a shop on its lower levels and a hotel on its upper floors.

The big plus about Gornergrat was that this building had a lovely outside deck where you could admire the neighbouring Matterhorn. After admiring the Matterhorn from this vantage point we would hop the cable car to the very top of this neighbouring mountain and get even more spectacular views of said Matterhorn.

That was the plan anyway. The reality was a bit different . You can see the Matterhorn from Zermatt where we were staying provided it was not covered in cloud, which it was. Here is a shot of where it should be. But who knows, up a mountain a bit, the cloud may clear. The forecast for Gornergrat for today was from -17c to a balmy maximum of – 11c . Oh and yes they were also forecasting snow.

But we had come all this way and if there was a chance to see the legendary Matterhorn we were going to take it. So we put on every bit of warm clothing we possessed and headed to the Zermatt station. Here a few tough leathery looking guys festooned  with ropes, spikes, straps, backpacks and skis were waiting for the train. I was unsure if they were planning on skiing to a climbing spot or climbing to a skiing spot.  The station also contained the obligatory bunch of Chinese tourists which you will find everywhere in Switzerland.

We all got on the train and up we went higher and higher. There were some amazing views

We went higher still till the train was travelling in a deep trench with walls of snow on either side, then we came to Gornergrat station and disembarked into the freezing cold and snow. It was so cold it hurt if you breathed deeply. Snow was falling heavily.

I got this shot of Jeanette standing in front of what I am told would be a fabulous view of the Matterhorn if it weren’t for the cloud. The cold was seeping into my bones and eating me alive.

We trudged up to Gornergrat’s only building and, grateful to be out of the freezing cold and snow, poured inside. We waited for an hour or so but the cloud did not abate. We were also very grateful when our guide decided that perhaps our next leg higher in the cable car was not a good idea given the weather.

So we headed back out into the ice and snow, made our way back down to the station.

Since we had a bit of time up our sleeves, we left the train a couple of stations above Zermatt and walked down through the forest to the town and our hotel. Our guide Peter, a lovely local who I guess was in his seventies and very fit, stopped us on our walk down and produced a collection of metal shot glasses and a flask of their local schnapps. It was so good.

Peter was telling us that this season there had been 12 climbers killed on the Matterhorn. Since the Matterhorn had been first climbed, over 600 climbers have lost their lives attempting the climb. Many are buried behind the little Catholic Church in Zermatt.

The process for climbing the Matterhorn takes two days – on the first day the climbers hike into the base of the mountain and overnight in the hostel there. Next morning very early they start their climb. It takes 4 hours to reach the summit and 4 hours to get back down. Peter says the majority of casualties are caused by climbers attempting the climb without a guide.

 

 

We woke this morning to the sight of snow gently floating down outside our room. Unfortunately it is not all that easy to photograph so you will have to take my word for it.

Our main baggage having gone on ahead on our bus, around 9:30am we walked down through the town of St Moritz to the railway station.

We made a small detour to have a closer look at the frozen lake

Then we boarded the train, “The Glacier Express”. This is a famous train which has been running since 1930.  It travels between St Moritz and Zermatt which is a town at the foot of the Matterhorn. Now I don’t think that this train actually crosses any glaciers. I certainly didn’t see any. I suspect the word “Glacier” in its title must refer to the train’s speed. It took us around 8 hours to travel the 270 kilometres of track

But it is a truly amazing ride which, according to the guide book, crosses over 291 bridges and through 91 tunnels. Now we were sitting with a Canadian couple and the husband was a teacher as well as an author of several Maths text books and we decided we would count the tunnels, which we did and we only got to 72. But we were fairly strict on our definition of what constituted a tunnel and did not count avalanche sheds.

The scenery along the route was incredibly beautiful but there were a couple of highlights for me. The first was travelling through the Rhine Gorge. This is called Switzerland’s Grand Canyon and was very striking.

The second highlight was going over the Oberalppass which was the highest point on the line at 2033 meters.  We came up out of a long tunnel which we had entered into in a forest but we exited in a sea of pure white snow and nothing else. The sun was shining and the reflected light was dazzling. It was truly breathtaking and totally  overwhelmed my camera. This photo does not even start to do it justice.

Shortly after 6pm we pulled into Zermatt. It has a  population of 6,000 permanent residents but can accommodate a further 40,000 visitors, mostly skiers and climbers, in the winter season. There are no motors cars. Access to the town is by train. The only vehicles you see are small electric vans owned by the hotels.

We are staying at the Hotel Sonne. It has been built in the traditional Swiss Chalet style and we have a very comfortable room on the 5th floor.

We have a couple of owls, a couple of reindeer and a snowman decorating our balcony.

Horribly early start this morning as we have a fair amount of country to cover to get to our destination at St Moritz. We said a sad farewell to our beautiful Bern hotel, the Belleview Palace, who had changed their magnificent flower arrangements overnight.

We did, however, have one stop off just outside the village of Keirns at a Swiss farm to meet the farming family. Grandmother, father and mother and two of their three daughters were all done up in their traditional Swiss costume.

The little one looked particularly cute and reminded us of Lilliana.

Their dairy herd is only 17 cows but they have a fair bit of mechanisation in their operation. They seemed really nice but since none of them had any English and apart from our guide we didn’t  know any Swiss German, conversation was very limited but they seemed really nice people.

We pressed on through the Swiss countryside and stopped for lunch at one of their beautiful roadside servos  Our route had had to be amended from our planned one as the unseasonably cold weather with its accompanying snow had closed two of the three available passes through the mountains to our destination so we had to go via the last one remaining open; the Julier Pass.

The road in places was very narrow and the countryside grew whiter and the trees shorter till finally there were no trees and just white snow as far as the eye could see. We had reached the top of the Julier Pass.

Here is the obligatory photo to commemorate this event.

Finially we made it into St Moritz. The town surrounded a large frozen lake where they apparently hold horse races during the winter months.

Here is the view from our room. It was very nice but the temperature was below freezing when we got there and everywhere around here they tend to set the heat settings for the rooms on maximum heat so the rooms tend to be hot and stifling. Our solution was to open the door from our room to the patio and let the freezing air in for a bit to cool it down.

 

 

 

Early start this morning as we headed for the village of Weggis on the shore of Lake Lucerne.

It was from here that we caught a cable car to commence our expedition up Mount Rigi.

At the end of the cable car ride we transferred to a rack railway to reach the top of Mount Rigi.

The views up here of snow fields stretching as far as the eye could see were truly incredible. Cameras really cannot do justice to the awesome magnificence of this scene but here is a small sample.

We then boarded our rack railway for the return journey but this time we stayed with the train to the end of its line at the edge of Lake Lucerne. Here is a shot of Jeanette on the disembarkation station talking to strange men again. She told me he was a very good listener.

From this point we boarded a boat that had been chartered for us and it took us across the lake to the city of Lucerne.

Lucerne is famous for its two covered medieval bridges that date from 14th century.

There were originally 153 painted panels in the roof of one of these bridges. In 1993 there were still 147 in existence, however, in that year a powerboat crashed into the bridge and the resulting inferno destroyed a large section of the bridge and many of the panels. 47 panels were saved but only 30 could be fully restored. These remaining 30 can still be seen on the restored bridge

Jeanette got her church visiting fix in when we checked out the Jesuit Church which had been built in the Baroque style in the 1670s.

Our final visit in Lucerne was to the Lion Monument. This giant dying lion was carved into a cliff of stone as a memorial to the 600 Swiss guards who were serving as Louis XVI’s bodyguard and were killed by the revolutionary mob. It is a very moving tribute.

Lucerne was absolutely teeming with tour groups, the majority of which appeared to be Indian but there were a few Chinese groups there as well. We were glad to escape the throngs and catch the bus to our beautiful city of Bern which apart from us seems to have totally escaped the tourist mobs. This is hard to understand as Bern is much more beautiful and has escaped the blight of major modern development.

Arriving back at our Bern hotel, the Bellevue Palace, we set out to find the nearest Laundromat which we were told was called the Wash  Bar. We had tried to find this the previous evening following verbal directions from our tour guide but failed. This time Jeanette had spoken to the hotel receptionist for directions which she had kindly drawn on a map. With a backpack full of dirty washing, we set off following the map to the spot marked but still no Wash Bar. We did find however another couple from our tour group equally lost.

We asked locals who sent us here and there with no success. Finally I fired up the map on my phone and got directions. We had to walk very quickly as the phone was just about to die but down a city block and up an alley we found a premises called the Wash Bar.

There were tables out the front with lots of smart people drinking and talking. Inside the place the tables were packed with smart young things socialising . A live band was setting up on a stage. I was starting to despair when I noticed behind a glass screen on the back wall was a double stacked row of front loading washing machines.

We went around there and sure enough there were dryers and washing machines. Each machine had a name painted on it like Harry or Greta.  There were no slots for any coins. We loaded our clothes into one machine pressed all the appropriate buttons and the wash cycle started. Jeanette snapped this shot of the oldies on the other side of the screen doing their washing.

One of the staff, a nice young fella, came over to us and explained the system. It cost 7 Swiss francs for the use of a washing machine and dryer if you did not buy a drink, but only 5 if you did. So we bought some drinks. And since washing does take a bit of time, we finished our first round of drinks and then bought another. Then the nice young fella came over with a tray of complimentary shots so we had one of those each as well. It was a very merry group that headed out into the night back to our hotel with loads of clean washing.

 

 

 

I think anybody coming to Innsbruck could not fail to like this town. I mean, when you get views like this at the end of every street you could not fail to be impressed.

We started the day with a walking tour of the very well preserved old part of town. Here is a shot of the front of Emperor Maximilian I Palace with its famous golden veranda. It is made of copper coated with two and half kilograms of gold.

 

Innsbruck having hosted three Winter Olympics, our next stop was at their Ski Jumping ramp. We went right to the top and out onto the platform where the skiers launch from. You can see the little wooden bench that they sit on just before they launch down the ramp. The sight that got me was the cemetery just beyond their landing area.

There are great views over Innsbruck from up here.

We then boarded our bus for a five hour drive to Bern.  Our route into Switzerland took us through the little principality of Lichtenstein. Nothing really of note is located there, just houses and factories. Here is a shot of an upper bit of the Rhine river which forms the border between Lichtenstein and Switzerland. It’s got a lot of growing to do before it will be able to float our river boat.

Our lunch stop was at a roadhouse on the six lane highway we were traveling. It was nothing like Australian ones. Spotlessly neat, the furnished and decorated pedestrian subway tunnel under the highway led across to a restaurant teaming with fresh salads and all manner of foods.

The town of Bern was named after a bear that the founder of the city killed here. Traditionally the  town has always kept some bears in an enclosure on the edge of the city. Napoleon took them after he captured the city but they replaced them. Originally kept in a pit which you can still see, the bears’ home now is on a large fenced off section of river bank. The one I managed to photograph looked pretty happy.

Our hotel here was originally a palace and is located right next door to the Swiss Parliament building. It is very elegant with its public rooms decorated with large displays of flowers.

This morning we headed off on a walking tour of Salzburg in the pouring rain. I had never realised how popular The Sound of Music was with the Chinese, or perhaps it is Mozart. Anyhow the impossibly narrow streets of old Salzburg were packed with masses of Chinese tourists and giant delivery trucks. Not a good combination given the total lack of situational awareness that most Chinese tourists appear to exhibit.

Now I am not a fan of The Sound of Music and have successfully blotted most of the movie from my memory banks, but for those who can remember it, apparently the above two locations featured in some scenes somewhere in the movie.

We then boarded our bus and set off up into the mountains to the little village of Seefeld where we had a horse drawn carriage tour up into the surrounding hills.

Our group was split up into three carriages and two carriage loads had a marvellous time as wrapped in fluffy lambs wool rugs and blankets we followed a mountain trail up through the forests covered in recently fallen snow to a little chalet.

Here we are at the top of the mountain.

One of the horses drawing the third carriage unfortunately had a terminal case of flatulence. Its passengers reported that when ever their carriage hit an uphill grade they would hear a sound like a  bagpipe playing off tune and shortly there after they would be   gasping for breath. They arrived at the top rather the worse for wear and were very reluctant to undertake any return journey by horse power.

We were served the most magnificent strudel then headed back to Seefeld where we boarded our buses for Innsbruck. Here is a shot of the view from our Innsbruck Hotel room.

This hotel had the most bizarre lighting set up you could image. Inside the entrance to the room, rows of tiny switches were packed closely together. You pressed one button to turn a light on, then a different button to turn that light off. The system had a significant lag between pressing the button and the light going on so you tended to press another button creating total confusion. By the bedside table, the switch situation was even worse. An attempt to turn off my bed side light turned every light in the room on, then opened the room’s curtains.

 

 

 

This morning we bid a sad farewell to Munich, a city of which Jeanette and I have grown very fond, and boarded our bus for the fairytale Castle that King Ludwig II built near the small village of Fussen. Ludwig was a prolific builder of castles and had another one on the other side of this village. Not as impressive though.

The day unfortunately was cold and raining. The process for getting into Neuschwanstien Castle is very precise. Tickets have to be collected from the ticket office in the village, one and a half hours before your scheduled entry to the Castle. The tickets have a number (in our case 471 ) and a time you can go through the gate.

We found a restaurant in the village and grabbed a bite to eat before joining the queue for a local bus to get us up the hill to the castle. After about a 10 minute wait in the freezing cold and pouring rain a suburban type commuter bus showed up and was soon packed solid with people. Our bus driver flew up the twisting narrow mountain road at breakneck speed. I was clinging desperately to a pole trying to keep my

footing

Eventually we made it to the castle . The amazing views made us forget the cold and rain. Through into a castle courtyard, we had to wait another fifteen minutes in the rain before our ticket number 471 clicked up on the screen and the turnstile would accept our tickets and let us in.

Once inside, photography is strictly prohibited. Suffice to say this is an amazing place and well worth a visit. Most of the palaces I have visited were built to an almost standard layout dictated by the need of the King to control his access to various levels of society. But Ludwig didn’t like people and this place is built just to please himself.

His passion was Wagnerian operas and this theme is reflected in many of the rooms, including the room between his bedroom and office being in the form of a rock grotto from the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera “Tannhäuser“, and one wing of the castle is constructed as a replica of a medieval Singers Hall.

We walked down the mountain and then had a four hour drive to get to Salzburg, arriving there around 7pm.