A Dash of Smith: Bellinzona and Zurich

We continued our drive from Lake Como to Lugano where the weather magically cleared. We stopped for our scenic lake pictures that we missed in Bellagio. Then we drove through the Alps stopping at the Bellinzona castles. It's a series of three castles connected by walls that span the width of the valley...hence in the day it controlled all the north south trading between Suisse to the north and northern Italy to the south. I loved it. But I like castles-especially when there is an abundance of open air.  I think the pictures say it all.

Zurich was our final destination. It has a small town feel for sure but I liked that. We stayed with our good friends and traveling companions the Viegas-Haws. The next morning Ben and I got up way too early to take the train from Zurich to Bern to attend a temple session.  When we were planning our route to get from the house to the temple I was a bit skeptical because one way we had to take a city bus to a city tram to the train which took us to Bern where we switched trains to an inner city train which took us to the temple. I looked at that and thought...transfer disaster. I figured we'd spend a lot of time waiting for the next mod of transport but the Suisse/German transportation efficiency was awe-inspiring. We were to catch the city bus at 5:22am and it pulled up at 5:22am.  I sat behind the driver and he has a display that tells him how many minutes he is behind or ahead of schedule. We boarded the tram and it left about 5 minutes later. We got to the train stain and purchased our tickets for a train departing at 6:02am...we left at 6:02am. We arrived in Bern found our transfer and waited about 2 min for it.  It was a model of efficiency. When we arrived at the stop for the temple we had been told that you get off the train and you can see the temple so you just walk in that direction and you can get there in about 5 minutes. We got off the train and it was foggy. We couldn't really see across the street. So we made an educated guess (we headed for a little shop that was open so we could ask directions) as we were walking out of the station I noticed a little old lady in front of us, in a trench coat carrying a suspicious looking bag. I pointed her out to Ben and he agreed-it was a temple bag. So we decided to follow a respectful distance behind her and sure enough she led us to the temple. It was French day at the temple so between the German we'd heard in Suisse, the Italian in Italy, and now French-I couldn't figure out what to say. It was very confusing. But we walked into the temple at 7:40 am so we could get ready for the 8 am session. everything was in French so I hope when I responded in English they could understand me. It was a great experience...well worth the early morning and the very expensive train ride. We were back in Zurich before noon.

We met up with the Laws and the VH's for brats and German bread for lunch-which was really really good then walked around the old city and looked at a few churches. Which were much better preserved than anything we saw in Italy. The differences were as stark as the differences in price tag. Yikes-you could go broke in Suisse. We also went to the Sprungli store which is a chocolate shop owned by the Lindt company but is a big step up in quality. I bought a small box of chocolates to take home to my sister and the lady insisted that they had to be eaten in 3 days. I don't think she would have sold them to me if I couldn't agree to the consumption timeline. I assured her that would not be a problem. Zurich is beautiful and I could really get used to living in a place like that. Its no wonder the VH's don't want to move home to the US.

That evening we had a great dinner at the VH's house with raclette, salad, fondue, asparagus and crepes. It was such a great trip to have 8 days to have great adult conversation even when we don't agree; we had plenty of topics to cover. But I was ready to come.  I missed my boys!