Andrea Was Here

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My sister, Andrea, is majoring in Spanish and as part of her education studied abroad in Spain spring semester of this year. That meant I had a family member living in the same time zone as me for 4 months! After her program, she stopped over in Switzerland to visit with me for two weeks - fun! We enjoyed shopping, drinking coffee and trying out various Swiss pasteries together :) We also made a trip to Geneva - somewhere I hadn't been - and to Bern. Geneva was a neat city - tons of history! More museums and things to see than there will ever be time for. It was also home to John Calvin for some time and witness to his protestant teachings. So there is a lot of religious history their as well of which we barely scratched the surface! Above, Andrea is atop the (Catholic) cathedral looking out onto the city. A Protestant church is right next door and still holds weekly services in English.

The well-known Geneva landmark - Jet d'Eau.

Reverting to our childhoods.

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Ellie is Here!

Tom's sister Ellie got here a week ago and so we've been doing some site-seeing. This weekend we took a trip to Lugano, Switzerland. Even though it's just 3 hours away and in the same country, it feels totally different. For one they speak Italian and two they have palm trees! It was a good trip, but too short. We'll have to go back sometime :)

In front of Lake Lugano - we took a funicular up to the top of the mountain in the background later that day.

From the top of San Salvadore - beautiful view! (The panoramic picture above is taken from here)

The Swiss love their flower boxes. I thought this house was very pretty.

About to enjoy our delicious desserts!

On top of a really big dam. If you've seen Goldeneye, this is the dam Bond did a bungee jump off of. We could have followed in his footsteps for 275 Swiss Francs.

Easter - Swiss Style

This is looking a little back in time because I've been slack about updating recently!

Back in March, we experi- enced our first Easter in Switzer- land. We had Good Friday off and went to a service at church and then had lunch there afterwards. After that, 5 people came over to our house for an Easter egg dying party. I was all ready to do it the way I've always done it - with egg dye pellets in water and vinegar, but my Swiss friends had a different idea in mind. First, Rosalie and I went out into the yard and picked clover, grass, flowers, leaves and other interesting things found outside. We then came back inside and proceeded to place the plants in interesting designs on the (raw) eggs. After our "placing" was complete, we wrapped each egg in a six-inch section of cut up pantyhose. This was the most difficult part of the process and the other girls were much more adept than I at it. The next step was to drop or hose-enrobed eggs into boiling onion skin water. Earlier in the week I had seen a bag of onion skins for sale in the grocery store (the flaky, brownish skin on the outside of onions). I was very confused as to why anyone would buy the skins without the onions and was glad to find out why someone would! After boiling the eggs, we took them out and took their hose off and viola! we had eggs dyed a beautiful shade of brown with shapes of flowers, leaves, etc on them! We did do some pink, blue and green eggs as well (by the method I am accustom to) but I really enjoyed learning a new way of doing things and discovering this new aspect of Swiss culture.

The finished product! Isn't the chicken cute - it's made out of a cardboard egg carton and a few pieces of cut out paper.

Katie goes to Italy

A week after going to Italy with my sister, I headed back (a rough life, I know). I went to meet up with my aunt, Carin, who was there for about 2 weeks while her husband helped run a baseball camp in Rimini. Even though I boarded the wrong train, was delayed and as a result missed my connection in Milan, and rode from Milan to Florence without a reservation (meaning I played musical seats), I managed to make it to Florence with all my stuff and only an hour late - God is good! Carin was there waiting for me with her friend Jill. We immediately jumped into sight-seeing mode and saw most of the major sights in about 2 hours. I couldn't believe the detail of the architecture and how ornate all the carvings were. We saw some beautiful things and we hadn't even been inside anything yet! We then had a reservation at the Accademia Gallery which is where Michelangelo's David is. I really enjoyed seeing the different sculptures, but I admit, David couldn't help but overshadow everything else. At 17 ft tall, it towers above everything and really looks like it could come to life at any minute.

That night we headed to a Bed and Breakfast in nearby Panzano. Over the years, Carin has become friends with the owner, Giulietta, and I can see why! She was so friendly and welcoming and her place was just beautiful. One of the unique things about her place is that she offers Tuscan cooking classes, which we participated in our second night there. We made a 3 course meal including home-made ravioli and everything turned out wonderfully! The picture is of me and Giulietta rolling out our sheets of pasta, soon to become stuffed ravioli. After tasting that pasta, I might have to invest in my own pasta machine...

After an enjoyable day in the country, we headed back to Florence on Thursday for a little shopping and then traveled on to Venice. We stayed at another quaint little B&B and then spent Friday exploring Venice. We took a water bus down the Grand Canal so we saw all the gondolas, speed boats and houses literally built right on the water. We got off at Piazza San Marco and the slowly meandered our way back towards the train station. We wandered up and down numerous twisty-turvy streets and over countless bridges - everything was so enchanting. We managed to find Carin's restaurant of choice and had some delicious mushroom lasagna for lunch. I discovered that I love Murano glass (made on the Venetian island Murano), so I enjoyed going into the shops and admiring all the pretty things.

And then, alas, it was time to go home. It was a quick trip, but I really enjoyed what I saw and it was fun to see my aunt and have her as a tour guide. Her husband has been doing the baseball camp most every year for the past 10 years, so she has had quite a few opportunities to explore Italy and made an excellent guide!

Fagiolari - the bed and breakfast in Tuscany.

Our other traveling companion, Jill, stirring the leeks with which we stuffed our ravioli.

One of the many houses lining the Grand Canal in Venice. If you look closely, you can tell that the building isn't exactly level anymore.

My sister comes to visit!

My sister Lisa and her friend Jeremiah came to visit us at the beginning of March and we had a great time! We shocked them into the time zone by heading to a surprise party for a friend of ours the night they got here. We had lots of good food and it was fun to show them some Swiss culture. They did great and stayed awake until we left at about 12am! The next day we got up early and went skiing. It was Lisa's first time and by the end of the day she could do the run without falling down (much). Fortunatly, we'd found some slopes that were conducive to learning (ie not at a 45 degree angle with pro skiiers zooming past) so it worked out well.

Another highlight was taking a day trip to Thun. We explored a castle that had some beautiful views and a Toblerone museum. The basement had formerly been a pottery making studio, so there was a re-creation of what it may have looked like. Lisa (a potter herself) enjoyed this very much. Then we girls bored Jeremiah by poking around in all the fun little shops on the main street. We found a few expensive second-hand clothing stores, a Christian book store, a pottery shop (sadly the potter wasn't there), a necklace shop and an olive oil store. We topped the day off by eating traditional German fare of rosti and sausage at a nearby restaurant.

Then to finish off their visit, we all went to Cinque Terre, Italy for 3 nights. It was beautiful! It's an area on the west coast with 5 small towns right on the water. The houses are all very colorful and look very pretty set against the hills and the water. We enjoyed walking around, sampling the focaccia, and eating yummy, yummy Italian food. My overall impression of Italy was good, but it was nice to come back to the order and cleanliness of Switzerland.

It was fun having them here and I was sad to see them go. It was so nice to have a shopping buddy! Let me know when you guys want to come back!

Skiing at Les Diablerets - it was COLD!

Lisa and the old pottery making room in the Thun castle.

Being silly (the castle really does look like the one in the picture, though)

One of the Cinque Terre towns.

Visit from the Frazers

Tex, Melissa and Maggie came to visit us at the beginning of February and it was great having them here. Tex was thrilled about going skiing in the Alps, so we all packed up and went to Portes du Soleil. It was really crowded, but we managed to get a good day of skiing in anyway. Melissa was fearless even though it was her 3rd time ever, while I stuck to the bunny slope that wasn't really a bunny slope. The guys were adventurous, though, and tried out a few different slopes. Tex even got Tom on a short black slope and into some powder!

We walked downtown one day and had lunch at a delicious cafe where Maggie enchanted one of the workers. The most unusual story of the trip was their last night here. We were trying to find a good German restaurant (I wanted rosti) so we went to a place about 20 minutes away on the recommendation of a friend. It was closed, so we headed back towards Fribourg. We'd seen Hotel Edelweiss on the way and thought that would be a good place to stop - it just sounded so German and regional. However, when we sat down we started to have our doubts since the decor looked Chinese. And sure enough, when the menu came, it was a Chinese restaurant in Hotel Edelweiss. Oh well. The food was very good even though it wasn't even remotely German!

On top of one of the Portes du Soleil slopes.

Maggie got to hang out with Kacey and Cambelle while we all went skiing. Kacey loved having someone she could "teach." She showed Maggie how to go potty, how to eat and how to dress up like a princess. She then pretended she was a little girl named Maggie for about the next week.

Maggie won my heart while she was here - isn't she a cutie! We walked up to a nearby cafe one day and she enjoyed sitting on the table and playing with the spoon (after eating most of her mom and dad's piece of cake!)

Austria

We decided to take a 3-day weekend and go somewhere just because. We chose Austria because we though it would be pretty in the winter and we could take a day to ski. We drove about 5 hours and got to our hotel just a little outside of Innsbruck. It served a wonderful breakfast each morning (I could live off of the fresh bread in Europe!!) and was very quaint looking - I loved it! The next day we went to Innsbruck where we just wandered around town and admired the architecture. A big sight to see there is the Golden Roof (Goldenes Dachl - see picture above), an addition to a normal house on the main square commissioned by Maximilian I in the 15th century. We also took a funicular up a couple hundred feet and got a bird's-eye-view of the city where I indulged in a coffee and a traditional Austrian cake - chocolate, of course! The next day we drove to Salzburg - famous for Mozart and the home of the Von Trapp family. Again there was magnificent architecture as well as street musicians. We toured the Hohensalzburg fortress, had coffee at Cafe Tomaselli, saw Mozart's childhood home and spotted some of the filming locations from The Sound of Music. Our last day there, we went skiing at a place called Axamer Lizum - where Olympic skiing was help twice. This meant that the "easy slopes" weren't on the same level of easy as I've seen in the Appalachian Mountains ; I stuck to the bunny slope :) It was a good trip - though quick! I feel like we could have a full-time job exploring all the neat places that surround us and still not see all there is to see. But I'll take what I can get!

Hotel Tyrolis in Zirl, Austria

A view of Salzburg from Hohensalzburg

This quaint cafe is located right around the corner from Mozart's home and was oft visited by his wife - Constanze. The coffee and the cakes were delicious!