It’s off to Switzerland! Our day started with a typical morning of breakfast, making sure Emma had what she needed for camp, and saying goodbye to the kids and then we drove up to Denver to catch our flight to JFK and then to Zurich. We parked the car in the garage and sped through security, grabbed a second breakfast at the Centurion lounge then popped on our Delta flight. It was a rather nice flight overall with no complaints. At JFK, we went to the Centurion lounge, grabbed some more food, admired the Lego store creations of New York landmarks, then popped on our flight to Zurich. There was sleeping here and there but overall, it’s tough to sleep well when you are sitting up.
As we started our descent into Zurich, we could see lots of clouds covering pretty much all of central Europe, so we knew it would be a bit of a rainy first few days. We landed at the airport about 30 minutes early, but then had to wait a bit for our gate to open up. Once it did, we sped through immigration, customs, and hopped on the train to the main terminal, grabbed our bags and headed to the train station that is basically under the airport. It reminded us a lot of Japan because there were layers and layers to the train station. Each layer had different shops and then at the very bottom you could catch a train to pretty much anywhere in Europe. Milan? No problem. Berlin? Easy. Engelberg? Of course. So that’s where we headed off to. Mike bought the tickets on his SBB app, and we hopped on the train. It was a mixed cloudy day, but the thing that struck us most was how crazy green everything was in Switzerland. It’s just a lush, lush place. We switched trains in Lucerne, grabbed some tasty pastries there, and then continued our journey into the mountains. On the train, there was a kids compartment that had kid books and kid activities. I can’t even imagine what would happen to something like that in America, but it seems to work in Switzerland.
Engelberg is a quaint little town and the first thing we saw, that made us laugh was the Schmuggli-Bus. The second thing was a bathroom sign that said, “Men to the left, because the women are always right.” Sara liked that a lot. We checked into our Wes Anderson approved hotel (every Swiss mountain hotel looks like it fell out of a Wes Anderson movie) and then immediately laid down for a quick nap. Oh, glorious sleep! We set our alarm for a couple of hours because we had to get on a European schedule. After our nap, we went for a walk up a trail behind our hotel and then circled back because it started to rain. We found a place to eat dinner (an Italian place that was just down the street from our hotel). It was a tasty meal, but we were so delirious at this point, we could have been eating styrofoam. We wandered back to our hotel like drunken sailors and promptly fell asleep.
As we started our descent into Zurich, we could see lots of clouds covering pretty much all of central Europe, so we knew it would be a bit of a rainy first few days. We landed at the airport about 30 minutes early, but then had to wait a bit for our gate to open up. Once it did, we sped through immigration, customs, and hopped on the train to the main terminal, grabbed our bags and headed to the train station that is basically under the airport. It reminded us a lot of Japan because there were layers and layers to the train station. Each layer had different shops and then at the very bottom you could catch a train to pretty much anywhere in Europe. Milan? No problem. Berlin? Easy. Engelberg? Of course. So that’s where we headed off to. Mike bought the tickets on his SBB app, and we hopped on the train. It was a mixed cloudy day, but the thing that struck us most was how crazy green everything was in Switzerland. It’s just a lush, lush place. We switched trains in Lucerne, grabbed some tasty pastries there, and then continued our journey into the mountains. On the train, there was a kids compartment that had kid books and kid activities. I can’t even imagine what would happen to something like that in America, but it seems to work in Switzerland.
Engelberg is a quaint little town and the first thing we saw, that made us laugh was the Schmuggli-Bus. The second thing was a bathroom sign that said, “Men to the left, because the women are always right.” Sara liked that a lot. We checked into our Wes Anderson approved hotel (every Swiss mountain hotel looks like it fell out of a Wes Anderson movie) and then immediately laid down for a quick nap. Oh, glorious sleep! We set our alarm for a couple of hours because we had to get on a European schedule. After our nap, we went for a walk up a trail behind our hotel and then circled back because it started to rain. We found a place to eat dinner (an Italian place that was just down the street from our hotel). It was a tasty meal, but we were so delirious at this point, we could have been eating styrofoam. We wandered back to our hotel like drunken sailors and promptly fell asleep.
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