Switzerland 2018: Day 2

Our first full day in Switzerland!

It rained in the night leaving a nice view in the morning.

I started the morning with a trip out for breakfast.  After a day of forcing Wren to not wander off, sit for long periods of time and a lot of rule enforcement we thought a casual breakfast in the apartment would be much more fun than going out to breakfast so I set out for food and Jeff watched the littles. 

On Tuesdays they have some sort of a farmers’ market which started right outside of our lodgings.  I took a quick trip back to the train station since there is a large grocery store that is near the station for some juice and milk and then grabbed some amazing looking berries, bread and cheese from the market for breakfast.  It was delicious! 

Market stalls

My basket of berries, beautiful and delicious!

Our lovely breakfast, YUM!

After some food and some play, Jeff snuck out to get some discount rail passes for us for the rest of the trip and to get the data activated on our phones while we are here so we could use things like google maps and be able to communicate with each other when we are doing different things.  

We had a little lunch with some more fruit and cheese from the market and then it was time to explore. 

Our first stop was walking to a large stone lion carved into the cliff side.  It was carved in 1820-21 to commemorate the Swiss Guards that were killed in 1792 during the French revolution.  It is a popular place to visit with (literal) busloads of tourists showing up at 5 minute intervals.  We it was pretty cool but we didn’t linger too long.

The lion in the cliff.

Not a very happy lion.  It looks like it's a dead lion with a broken spear through it.  Kind of sad.

Wren roaring like a lion.

Next up was a walk along the old city wall.  The wall was built in 1386 and is still mostly intact.  There are several old towers that you can climb up with crazy steep stairs. Wren had to use her hands on some of them and climb up like a ladder because the stairs were so steep and high.  She loved it!  The towers were between 28 and 44 meters high so we are talking about a lot of steps.  We were not planning on going to the top of all of the towers but she really wanted to.  I’m proud of my little hiker.  My favorite (and hers) was the old clock tower.  The clock was built in 1535.  I love old mechanical things with gears.  Watching the pendulum swing back and forth that powers the whole thing was super cool.  The clock is still working and is huge.  The views from the tops of the towers back at the town were fantastic.  It was also a much less popular thing for tourists to do so it was nice to have a little more space and quiet.

These were a couple of the towers we were able to walk up.

Wren on the stairs

Some of the gearing mechanisms in the clock.  It all was still fully functional and very cool.

The view from one of the towers.  Most of the towers had some coverings on the windows so the pictures aren't that clear.

Back up at the tower.

View from a different tower.

This was the best view.  There were no coverings on the windows and it was a little taller.

On the way back to the room we had another gelatto stop.  Wren is still learning the fine art of eating ice cream from a cone and lost her scoop but was a real trouper and did not have any drama about it.  She ate the cone and shared my ice cream and was happy as can be.  Ice cream two days in a row is an unheard of treat for her.

We took a little regroup time back at the room and headed out for fondue for dinner.  It had a dicey start.  Wren was super tired and was crying a little for reasons that I don’t really understand but after singing a Daniel Tiger song she decided to cheer up.  At the same time that she was struggling, Flynt was too.  Jeff forgot his bottle and he decided he wasn’t in the mood for the jar of carrots we brought for him.  Fortunately, we had some of those crunchy baby crackers for him and he settled down and fell asleep and we had a lovely dinner.  We had traditional cheese fondue and the cheese was amazing!  We asked Wren if she wanted dessert and she managed to stay awake enough to help eat some chocolate fondue.  Now all my little people are asleep and it’s time for me to join them!

Melty chocolaty goodness fixes most things in the world of a 3 year old.  She really enjoyed this!