Very nice up here! More later, we may stay and extra night. Tomorrow hike to see Aletsch Glacier.

Oh yeah, 3G up here on the mountaintop!!

Driving up through the pass near Andermatt is where we hit that traffic jam, which was bad and turned out to be minor construction in a tunnel up high. The roads were good but still precipitous!

These are a view views from above Andermatt.

It kept on with great views but i didn’t iPad much because we had to make it to our next stay before the cable car lift closed.

Before leaving town we walked up the towers and city wall remnant in Luzern. The view was worth the hill and stairs inside the stone tower.

We also visited the lion monument, but didn’t take the iPad out for that one…

Stuck in traffic jam just prior to Gotthard tunnel/Andermatt pass.

Must be miles back now, about 30 minutes so far.

As jams go, it’s not a bad place to be in one.

Strolled around Luzern (you don’t just walk here) and across both old bridges, including the Chapel bridge. This has a large and cool stone tower in the middle. Sadly the entrance to the tower has been turned into a not cool souvenir shop…

But the bridge is still quite the attraction, with lots of cameras clicking. At each rafter there is a triangular painting dating from 1600s showing event in Swiss history.

Next we had dinner at a waterside pizzeria, complete with arguing Italians/Italian-Swiss in the open pizza kitchen. Below is the SFr 12.50 ($16) salad (not the main dish). Food is expensive here, but we had Nutella and bread for lunch, so its ok.

Final random thought, the Swiss toilets don’t have tanks, the water just runs from a water pipe. Seems like a good system.

After visiting the Stiftsbibliothek in St. Gallen (books and manuscripts some as older than 1000 years!) we drove backroads all the way to Luzern. We’ve just arrived but so far it is a pretty busy city with a really nice river, lake, mountains, and medieval wall.

The view from the Tourist Hotel:

This morning we rode the cable car to the top of Ebenalp, cost 19 chf / person for 800 meters of lift. It was quite high in the air as it mounted a sheer cliff for the first stretch.

Then hiked back down to the start, about 4 hours with lunch at one of the mountain hotels at Seealpsee (lake). Saw the old mountain church / shrine, and passed by tiny cliff-hugging Gasthaus Aescher, and the kaserei (cheese making/selling) around the lake. On the way down saw another herd of dairy cows coming down from the mountains!

It’s 5am and I’ve been laying awake since 3:30, so I’ve gone downstairs to the terrace. Good thing I brought my room key (real turn key) because the exit doors were deadbolted and could get out without a key. The keys are fancy, with grooves and notches cut into the side of the key.

Anyway, its probably in the low 40s (F) and clear skies, and I’m listening to the stream running along the road and tracks in the valley below the hotel. It smells like cut grass and cows, which makes perfect sense as we’ve seen a lot of both in this valley so far. Ebenalp is the star Mountain at the end of this culdesac valley, and it looked pretty impressive when we drove to the end of the road yesterday. That’s just another mile or so away from the Hotel Alpenblick in Schwende.

So onto the journey. The long flight to Frankfurt was fine, though I feared otherwise when we got on the plane and it was half full of GIs (young ones) who were all air bridging to Germany and onwards probably. They pretty much occupied the entire middle seat section of the plane for about 20 rows plus some on either side. It was like being on a high school bus at first they were all carrying on, etc. I thought this is going to be hell, but they actually quieted down and it wasnt that bad.

Too bad pretty much no one could sleep past the first little nap or so. As the hours went by more and more people just gave up, so it was like dominoes. Didn’t help there was a group of German ladies who never tried to sleep and just carried on laughing, etc a few rows up. So it was no keep pretty much for me.

Then in Frankfurt we had near disaster as we almost missed our flight. We weren’t given a boarding pass for the connection into Zurich when we checked into Dallas. I didn’t think much of it, figuring we’d just go to the gate and they would print one for us upon arrival. Unfortunately I didn’t count on a few things:

Frankfurt airport is a confusing crowded mess, with terrible signage.
They make you go through customs, passport control, and security again, hard to do without a boarding pass.
When we finally got to the Lufthansa service counter, the agent printed two copies of my boarding pass and none for Holly. Fun.

So initially we just tried going to A terminal on the train, and there were two stops one for ABC and the last for just A. So we tried the latter and there was a mob trying to get through customs. So back on the train and to the middle stop, and wandering around trying to figure out the signs, which were misleading a couple times, and through massive throngs of people. We made it to the service counter just becoming aware it was getting late and go two boarding passes.

Made it back to the security check quite a ways away and realized the mistake with the names. Security said “you shall not pass” and so we panicked and spotted a first class service desk where a very nice woman scrambled to help. She said it was too late and the computer would not let her check us in, so she took us straight to the front of security and tried to convince them to let us through with no luck. She was pretty miffed at that, so she ran back to her computer and printed off our reservation or something unintelligible and then we got through. Wish I could thank her again.

Oh yeah somewhere in there we made it through passport control even with the missing pass… It’s all a blur now.

We ran to the gate and they were waiting for us, as the nice agent had first called them to inform.

So we made it and all was well. We got to Zurich where they surprisingly didn’t check passports, not sure must be an EU thing. Then we got to Hertz who were very nice, but didn’t have our reservation. Long story short, I had made it for the wrong date, using out departure instead of arrival date. Thankfully despite turning other people away who were looking for cars, they gave us one anyway. I guess our rate was good enough for them or they were just nice I think.

They gave us a pretty big crossover type called Ford Kuga… diesel manual. Maybe nobody else wanted it, it’s pretty big.

My fingers are frozen now, and it’s getting light so that’s all for now. Bells striking 6 down below.

After a long journey with some adventure, we arrived to a gorgeous rural valley. We were greeted right away by a traditional procession of cows down into the valley after summer, with the herders dressed in traditional costume. We had hoped to see this as it only happens once a year around this time.

These photos are taken from the iPad – we were not up to going into Zurich to find the Apple store.

Stay tuned for more about our first day.