Thanksgiving and Other Things

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Katie, Heath, Greg and I are in Visalia, California (near Fresno) for our annual Thanksgiving visit with Greg's family. As usual, Mom and Dad have surpassed themselves in assembling our feast: we've gorged ourselves on turkey, ham, candied yams, pumpkin pie and other goodies.  Pinnochle rules.

I'm going to take the post-feast snooze fest to catch up on my blogging. 

In October, I convinced Greg to take a train to Interlaken so we could visit Ballenberg the next day. Interlaken is a beautiful little town between two lakes and is the jumping off point for the big three mountain peaks: Jungfrau, Eiger and Monch. Of course, we couldn't actually see any of these peaks as it was cold, foggy and raining while we were there. We stayed at a lovely little B and B outside town overlooking the lake. It was supposed to be a fifteen minute walk from town but I kept stopping to take photos so it was more like an hour.  When we got there, we discovered that the B and B didn't serve dinner and the only place in town that did was already closed for the winter. No problem. We caught the bus back into town and had a lovely dinner at a Swiss restaurant recommended by our hostess.  My cheese fondue was great!

http://www.interlaken.ch/index.php?L=3

The next day, we took a train and then bus to Ballenberg which is a big park filled with old buildings from all over Switzerland.  We tromped around up and down hills.

http://www.ballenberg.ch/en/Welcome

Going home, we took a different train and the scenery was drop dead gorgeous - the kind you think of when you think of Switzerland.

Last week, I went on an excursion with the Women's Club of Zurich. We took the train to Hergiswil.  There's a really interesting glass factory there with a kind of scary glass maze. The best part was we got to blow our own glass balls and I have pictures to prove it! (Of course, all we had to do was blow into the rod - the artisan did the rest.) 

http://www.artazza.com/glasi.php

It was wonderful having a few days in Florida with Katie and Heath and our dog Abby before we flew out here. Tomorrow, we need to get up at the crack of dawn to drive back to Fresno. Our flight doesn't get in until 9 PM and then we have a noon flight the next day back to Zurich, arriving the next morning. Whatever happened to "Beam me up, Scotty"?