Almost time to go...

Maye I'm just getting a little lazy - funny, what's new - but it seems easier to direct you to a website than to carry on waxing lyrically about what I've been up to!!

Jungfraujoch from Friday - wow.

Yesterday was up Mt Pilatus. Wow. Have a look at:

http://www.pilatus.ch/default-n7-sE.html

It started with far too much food - again. Craig and Marcel are truly fantastic hosts.

Then a wander down to the jetty where we caught the boat to Alpnachstad, where we arrived with 10 minutes to spare but with uncharacteristic Swiss inefficiency thee was only one person selling tickets so all the trains left but they didn't tell us so herded us into a pen to wait for the next train in a half hour. They didn't tell us this, nor could we get out of the pen, nor buy any water. Not good. Then on the train up (which is the steepest clog railway in the world) they let some guy stand up at the front so block the view looking up. But it's an icredibly impressive ride up and the view from the top astounding. No snow like on Jungfraujoch but just wow.

Hung out there for a bit, wandered around and then caught the cablecar down (they put gondolas and cablecars here in places that you would've thought a mountain goat couldn't go, let alone human beings!!) to where we met Craig, Marcel, Pascal and Antoine for a barbee on the mountain side. Most very very cool. The birds on the adventure course gave a nice distraction, particularly the blackbird (an in joke - you had to be there) and the go-kart ride was just fantastic - a total hoot with very nice guys helping you in before you skeltered down the mountain (about 1.3km I think - trying not to kill yourself!!

Then it was more cablecars down the mountain until we reached the bottom, a bus back into town (Lucerne, Mt Pilatus sits above Lucerne) and a bus back into Lucerne. From there we jumped on a train, decided we weren't sure that the train went to Stansstad, jumped off the train, Nic went to the loo, I went to the Coop (to buy soap - being clean is a good thing!!) where I stood in the queue for ages and then the train back to Craig and Marcel's.

That evening (ie yesterday) Craig, Marcel and I went for a walk along Lake Lucerne, on a road cut into the hill, which was fake as it used to house a military base (the rock face looks real but it's actually fake) until we came to a very cool hotel which had a bar on the waterfront where we sat drinking beer (Craig was drinking milk serum - dodgy) and watched fireworks whilst having a fab goss.

Today it was another scrumptious brunch followed by the boys going into Lucerne, walking along the waterfront, completely bathed in sunlight with beautiful people just meandering around enjoying the day, surrounded of course by moutains and water.... We had an ice-coffee on a boat moored on the water's edge. There was an upstairs and a downstairs deck on the boat. Downstairs was the restaurant. Upstairs was the bar. We sat in the bar (open air) and I ordered a coffee with milk. Slight laugh from the waitress. Craig then spoke in German, a coffee with milk - a latté. Waitress then said sorry, couldn't do that, only in the restaurant. Go figure, so I ordered a diet coke (known as Coke Light) here. Then another waitress came over with the drinks. Craig asked her what was what. It transpires that I could have got a black coffee upstairs but not a white coffee, that had to be gotten downstairs. Apparently they couldn't take my order, get someone downstairs at the coffee machine to make the coffee and bring it upstairs. Go figure. And, remember, over here they have machines where you press a button and the coffee comes out - they don't espress it like in Wellington. So, all it meant was someone pressing a button on a machine and bringing the cup upstairs - but nope, couldn't be done. In fairness though to the bar, it was warm, it was sunny, the view was to die for and the iced-coffee really nice!!

Then a walk through the old town, a look at the lion monument (to commemorate the swiss who died and/or were guillotined in France with King Louise XVI during the revolution.

Coming back, Craig and Marcel drove me around the other way (ie completely around Lake Lucerne), through sweet little towns, past the Rigi, through the town where Willaim Tell killed the Austrian guy and then through a 9km tunnel back home. In Switzerland, when there is a moutain in the way, they either go up it in trains/gondolas or through it with tunnels. NZ is seriously an underresourced country.

A snooze, a muck about on the net, more food and my time in Switzerland is nearly over....

What a stunning country though - pick me for living here!!

ps. If anyone from the Glamazons is reading this, we've started talking about bringing a show over here and showing the Swiss what it's all about!!