Last weekend we had our first visitors from outside of our immediate family unit. Cass’s sister and her boyfriend came and spent 3 days sightseeing. We saw a little bit of everything and had a great time. The day they left, Cass and I got our Covid booster shots and I’m still feeling the effects (though not nearly as bad as the previous shots!). I’m trying to get this post up, so hopefully I won’t leave anything important out.

They arrived on Friday afternoon, so we tried to keep them awake to help the jet lag. We walked through a lot of the Altstadt and saw the Christmas lights. We took them to eat at Zeughauskeller, which is the tourist thing to do. It’s always busy on weekends, and with the opening of the Weinachtsmarkts, we had to share a table with 2 other women. They were in Zürich for training, as their company got a big account with a high end ski clothing company. One of the women spoke Russian, and Hank just casually started into a conversation with her in Russian. They were nice enough to take a photo of the 4 us, and now I have to go steal it off of FB and add it here.

Day 2 was a pre-planned trip to see the Alps and the snow. We took them to Engelberg so we could take the gondolas up to the top of Mount Titlis. When we got up to where the Trubsee is located, we discovered that the lake is entirely frozen and/or covered in snow. Nothing to see there. The second and third gondolas are where the ski slopes are located, and they had the snow blowers going all over them. There were a good amount of skiers, but you could tell that this was very early in the season. We did the walk through the Glacier cave, and then the braver 3 (not me!) did the cliff walk outside. We decided against having ski lodge food, so we headed back down to Engelberg to find a place to eat. Surprise! Everything is closed for vacation until early December, so we ultimately had to take the train to Luzern to have a meal.

Funny story: we walked by this Christmas decoration that spells out Engelberg, and there were people there taking pictures We stopped and took a few pics of it, then we asked if they would take our photo. The lady who did it totally cut out the whole point of the photo - the Engelberg sign. Bitte!

We walked around the old part of Luzern while it was still light outside, but we were really hungry. We saw the building with all the weird stuff painted on the front, so we decided to see if the restaurant was open. It was, so that’s where we decided to eat. Turns out, this is the oldest house (1602) in Luzern, and the mural on the front is from Fasnacht, which is the Swiss version of Carnival. The decor on the inside is sort of an upscale version of the mural on the outside. Brother Fritschi (of Restaurant Fritschi) is a legendary figure of Carnival who is said to have served wine to the poor. We also got a personal tour of the upstairs dining room (the door to the left of the blue umbrella) from our server.

We walked around the Altstadt for a bit, and crossed the 300 yr old bridge. While we were waiting to catch the train back to Zürich, we ran across an ice skating rink right by the lake at the train station.

All right, that’s part 1! Stay tuned for part 2!