SwissMinns

Our three visitors spent their 1st week with us, in Wengen, Gruyere, Bern,  Rhein Falls, etc. We are sharing some of the places they saw on their own adventures the second week of their European holiday: Top of Europe, Jungfrau: They had one day in Paris, and made the most of it.  One afternoon in Bern with us: .

In early February, we randomly picked a new peak to climb, not too far from home.  Mortgartenberg is a peak in the canton of Schwyz, the other side of Lucerne from our house .  The peak is right on the border of Schwyz and Zug cantons.  At the peak, you get a nice view of the lake Ageri.  You can also see lake Lauerzer to south.   We met an elderly man at the peak, who had out-paced us for the entire climb.  He was in his mid-seventies, claiming not to be a serious hiker.  Just in Swiss shape, I guess.  He had some keen insights about good places to hike in Schwyz/Zug.  He gave us a history (legend) lesson for Mortgartenberg peak, famous for Schwyz hauling heavy rocks to the peak, and unloading on the pesky Austrians trying to invade from north.  Never clear to me where to park our car: From here you could see Lauerzer You don't see Ageri until you get to the peak. Here's another shot of Lauerzer, from the car on way down.  No snow down there:

On Feb17, we went to the Frey chocolate factory visitor center.  It was a very interesting, sort of museum and video tour of the chocolate making process.   The tour concluded with samples of Frey products, and a couple chocolate fountains.

Our three visitors arrived in Paris Jan15, and we stuffed them and their luggage in our little car, skis on the roof, driving back to Langenthal.  After spending some days in Wengen, we made a day-trip to Le Gruyere.   CHEESE !! We had a very interesting and entertaining tour of a cheese factory in Gruyere... what kind of cheese were they making... Gruyere, of course, and only.  Since the early 1100's.  From a glass hallway above the production area, we could see multiple batches, each at different phase in the process.  We watched long enough to see the batches emptying into the molds.  We spent about an hour watching the frantic pace of the workers readying the next steps.  Great combination of SCIENCE, art, tradition and culture.  The cheese wheels age from 5 months to 18 months.  They gave us (4) samples, aged at various months across that range:   Near the cheese factory, we walked through the medieval city of Gruyere: We had another great

Our three visitors arrived in Paris Jan15, and we picked them up at CDG , strapped their skis on the roof, and drove back to Langenthal.  After our trip to Wengen, we did a day-trip to Rhine Falls.  Rhine falls is the largest waterfall in Switzerland.   The Rhine starts in the Swiss Alps and flows into Liechtenstein, Austria and Germany.   The falls are in the very north-east part of Switzerland.   We took a lot of pictures, but these were our favorites: The Swiss are brilliant about making access way for curious tourists to see things up-close.  You can see across the falls in the picture below, there are catwalks and tunnels to get right up to the edge of the falls and even a little below the falls: We took the pictures below, standing on a cantilevered platform that the falls zip right under your feet:

Jessica, Sara and Alex in Swiss   the Wengen Trip Our (3) visitors arrived in Paris on Monday morning Jan15th, and we drove (with skis on top of the car) to Langenthal.  The next day we drove to the mountains.  Wengen is an elevated village (4100ft), accessible only by cog-wheel train. The train starts in Lauderbrunnen, which is the bottom of the valley shown in this picture below (we took this picture in December, standing in Wengen): The cog-wheel train stops in Wengen, and continues to Klein Scheidegg (6800ft). The weather was not very cooperative the (4) days were in the mountains. Low clouds, windy and snowing often.  We made the best of it.  We skied whenever the trains were running.  You could always get a train down the mountain, but often they closed the train to KleinScheidigg due to wind and snow. We rented a chalet in Wengen, which turned out to be are really nice place to stay in the mountains.  There was lots of space, 4 bedrooms, a great view of the mou