Vals part 2

Part 2:
R and I woke up early despite the time change. (Switzerland doesn't start "summer time" or end it when the US does.) We went down to the pools immediately and it was wonderful. For quite a while we had R's favorite pool entirely to ourselves. And I was the only one sitting in the lounge chairs in front of the window wall. The day before it was impossible to get a seat.  After a while, though, it was time to go to breakfast.

Breakfast was like breakfast we've had everywhere: bread, fruit, cheese, meat, drinks, yogurt. But it was also very different. The first thing we saw when we walked in were teacups already holding filters and a choice of teas next to teapots full of water. The bread selection was huge and included excellent croissants. We filled a napkin lined silver basket and then checked out the huge variety of jams and honeys. We took some forest honey - it turned out to be pine forest honey and really did taste like pine. The butter was molded into flower shapes. The orange juice was freshly squeezed. The cereal milk was in a silver urn. Everything about breakfast was high quality and beautifully presented. It's funny how a sugar cube is so much nicer than a pack of sugar, but it is, and everything about the breakfast which could be similarly improved was. The buffet was instantly refilled, and our empty plates were taken away immediately. It felt like brunch. Usually with this kind of breakfast I just feel like I am fueling up.

We lingered over breakfast and then went upstairs to pack. After checkout we had an hour and a half before the next bus out of town. We considered going to the hotel craft shop but we accidentally walked by it and decided to keep going. With everyone checking out at the same time and just one bus we figured it would be smart to walk to the next stop up. There was still plenty of time to spare, so we wandered around Vals.

Therme Vals

A couple of years ago R somehow decided that the best way to celebrate her thirteenth birthday would be with a trip to a spa. We thought it would be the spa in Hershey, PA, which has chocolate treatments. Since we are here we went to Therme Vals.

We began the day at the farmer's market in Oerlikon to get some snacks for the long train ride. I love the Oerlikon market on Saturday! It has more of everything, but best of all it has the bakery which sells florentiners (flat circles with nut toffee on one side and chocolate on the other.)  And this must be the best time of year to go. There were flowers everywhere.

 It's surprisingly hard to get rhubarb at home. No problem here!

R was fascinated by these roses which she said "looked too real."

 R picked up a pastry from the florentiner stand.

She wants to grow romanesco, and now purple cauliflower, too.

It was a long ride down, which is why we decided to stay overnight, and the last part on the bus was pretty scary. We were crossing one lane bridges and making hairpin turns on roads with no shoulder. Chunks of guard rail were ominously missing. But the last part of the train ride was awesome because we got excellent views of Ruinaulta, the Swiss Grand Canyon. We didn't take pictures through the train windows, but this is what we saw. I linked the picture from http://schiersdelight.wordpress.com/tag/hiking/ I hope that is okay, since I suspect my readership is in the single or low double digits and I am giving full credit. I've bookmarked the blog to look over later. The author takes beautiful pictures which really evoke how Switzerland feels, not just how it looks. 

The Best Thing in the Universe

The best thing in the universe

A & R took R's birthday trip today (I'm sure they'll blog about it later) so S, T, L and I decided to take a trip to Insel Mainau, an island just over the Swiss-German border by Konstanz. After a couple hour train ride and a short bus ride we arrived at the entrance. A long walk down a tree and flower lined boulevard and then across a bridge brought us onto the island.

One of the first things we found was an amazing playground.  According to T:

It was the best thing in the universe.  You had to pull a rope to go across to an island. You had to have two people to pull since it was pretty hard to pull by yourself.

L & I tried it but I was a little too heavy for it and nearly capsized the thing so after that we stuck to bridges, tunnels, ladders, rope ladders and especially slides.

One of several neat tunnels

She didn't fall in (but they have a drier there just in case)

This slide she could reach on her own

Rope ladders are great

"Again Daddy!"

Nice View Too

Spaghetti Forest

The whole playground is built around a small lagoon with rope pull rafts and push pole rafts, bridges of varying difficulty (L found one she could cross without falling through fortunately), fun climbing structures and of course swings, ladders and slides. They also had some things we'd never seen before like a "Spaghetti Forest" which the kids loved to get lost in and various rooms that played with light (all dark aside from a few beams of light) and sound (echo chambers). 

The Dragon Cave with p.s. from T

Today was the girls' half day of school, so we met R at Stadelhofen station and went to look for

the dragon's cave. 

It was a very nice walk, mostly along the river. This is the start of the trail. We've had some rain, so everything is very green, The kids were taking tons of pictures. Sometimes I can't tell who took what, but there are some giveaways. Usually pictures of the ground or of people smiling are taken by T. S always sees things that no one else notices. Also, she frames things so well I never want to crop her photos.

Pictures by T and S

We know we're on the trail because there are suspicious water fountains.

Horse party

This is S writing! On Sunday I went to my friends C 's birthday party. She was having her party at a horse farm where she has a horse. First we got to groom the horses. I got to groom the biggest horse, named Picasso. The horse  that C rode was named Nivana. After we finished grooming the horses we took them out to a small riding area covered with broken up tires and rubber so that if you would fall off it wouldn't hurt. We took turns riding the horses. Everyone wanted to ride one of my favorite horses, Picasso, because he was galloping. When he was cantering I was holding on with only one hand because the instructor wanted to see how well we could hold on. I was bouncing up and down like he was a bucking bronco.

It started to snow so we thought it was a good time to go eat cake. While we were eating cake every kind of weather imaginable happened. There was snow, rain, gusty wind, sleet, and hail. The cake was very very chocolatey.

Later we went on a nice ride through the forest. It was a bit warmer by then but we had to replace Picasso with Amadeus. I rode on a nice horse named Lily. Lily was the well behaved one. She was the opposite of Spirit, who was very stubborn.

After the party a few of us got a ride home with C. It was a very fun  party. That was the first time I've ever ridden a galloping horse and it was a lot of fun. I'm glad I was invited. I  hope C enjoyed her birthday and I hope she has a lot of  fun with  her  presents.

Best seat in the house

Before we moved here we were told that one of the hot events in town is the twice yearly kids' clothing etc consignment sale put on by the women's club. We skipped the one in fall - I think we were busy getting rescued from the base of the Matterhorn. But we went today and found enough to make going worthwhile, including: a Barbapapa shirt for T, much needed jeans for R, a Swiss Olympic team windbreaker for S, and sneakers for L since she has outgrown all her shoes. We also got a magna doodle for L. We hope that she'll draw on that rather than every other possible surface.

After the sale we went to the farmer's market then hurried home before it started to rain. It rained heavier than it has for quite a while, so we postponed our plans. Instead, E took S and T for a little jaunt into town. S and I went yesterday to buy a birthday gift for her friend. We checked out a lot of shops along the way and had fun looking at all the Easter specialties at several of the chocolate shops. E had another mission: to buy a souvenir we wanted so that he can take it home on his trip in April. S hinted earlier in the day that she wanted some time with him, so they made a trip of it and stopped at Schwarzenbach for dried fruit and at Peclard's for hot chocolate.

They got the good seats at Peclard's! It looks like S's seat was so plush she had some trouble with it.

E writing:

Though it was raining a little we had a good time of it. T liked to sit on my shoulders and hold the umbrella to keep us all dry. It's a nice walk up through back alleys from Stadelhofen train station to Schwarzenbach, which is a great little dried fruit store. It has baskets of every imaginable fruit -- star fruit, whole Swiss pears, Iranian figs, kumquats (my favorites), and so forth. We got a little bit of several fruits then headed across the street to Peclard's, which has great hot chocolate and a downstairs pastry shop, where we picked up a couple of tarts and a chocolate eclair. In the pic above S demonstrates how luxurious the chairs are. 

Afterwards we were thinking of taking a stroll through downtown Zurich but it was raining too hard so we ran back to Stadelhofen and grabbed the next train home.  It was a nice day.

Farmer's market post by T, who loves everyone

This is T telling Mama what to write. I took these pictures. Every single one. It was a beautiful day and it's lovely to get things from the farmer's market. I'm going to tell you about every one of the pictures. These are eggs colored orange, green, blue, purple and red. I paid for them and I got them. They were hard boiled eggs. I peeled it, but I didn't like it. R and L ate it.

This is Mama showing me a rhubarb. It is colored red, my favorite color. My favorite color is red you know. We are going to eat it because we have a lot.

I love tulips. I want to buy some next time.

I love these flowers and they are beautiful.

Do you know what those are? Tell me on the website. Just write what you want to say back to me.

See the unicorn tag on the tomatoes. Do you know something? The unicorn is pink and yellow.

I like these because they are shiny.

I like peas and I will eat them. If you show them to babies they will think they are real peas, but they're just on the computer. If babies know what peas are and say it, be sure sure to write it on the blog. Type anything you want to.

R likes to eat the little tomatoes. Speaking of R, I love R and I love Mama and I love spaghetti.

I not know what white asparagus is and we got a lot.

When I got home I ate almost all the strawberries. I left the tops sitting on the counter because I don't like the tops.

We walked near the water and this is what we saw so this is what I took a picture of.

I like the colors and I like pinwheels. I have one at home.

Why did I take this picture? Because I love this picture. 

I like watching the guys work and I like the equipment and their job.

Mama took this picture of me looking at the ducks. A duck went all the way under water, I don't know why. Some ducks can go all the way under water swimming and some ducks can't. Some ducks put their head in the water so they can drink some water and get some food. Some ducks go all the way under water to get more food.

Mama took this picture at home. This is everything we bought. I ate most of the strawberries. Daddy just made the monk's beard for dinner and now it's on the table. Speaking of monk's beard it's almost my dinner. I'm going to go eat it so I can have my lemon cake in the picture. Bye.

Promise kept

We promised the kids that we would go back to Bernaqua watermark sometime, so that is where we went on Sunday. This time R and I also checked out the women only sauna.  One of the coolest things about that was the rooftop lounge area. From there we could see the futuristic Daniel Libeskind mall and park around us and the old traditional farmhouses on the other side of the highway. We all had a great time. Monsters, Inc was showing in the dark salt water pool. The lazy river was running more than last time, so L and T had a great time riding the currents. It wasn't crowded, so there was always a free recliner, or massage lounge, or seat in the peppermint steam room. No cameras allowed, though, so no pictures - just a stock picture of the sauna from their website. The sauna was actually much darker than this with more candles.

T said something so funny today. He was talking to his Grammie on the phone and was losing interest in the conversation so he said, "Let's move on to the next topic!"

Our own market

This morning E, S, T, and L walked down to the grocery store to buy strawberries for the waffles they were making for lunch. We had forgotten that today there was a bigger than usual farmer's market to kick off the market season. I have never been to the market in town since I prefer the market in Oerlikon, so I asked E to take some pictures.

I am transcribing as E tells me about it:

There were about 20 booths selling fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, yogurt, flowers, crafts, and flea market stuff. So we got some nice looking clementines and apples. We got some fresh yogurt. There were a lot of people there.

That's all he has to say. I guess it's just as well that I've never bothered to go to the market here. There is nothing to say and he came home with only five pictures! I suppose it doesn't matter. We gave R today to make sure she was really feeling better before we start dragging her across the country again, but we only have a few weekends left. There should be no more weekend days at home from here on out.

An exciting possibility: E was invited to give a talk in Dubrovnik in June. The timing isn't ideal, but his supervisor is also invited so E is going to look into things. If we go we could just continue travelling from there before we come home, which might be convenient.

At least someone is outside

 

As you can see, E accepted T's invitation to take him to the playground. They expected to go to the playground we can see from the train, but it belongs to a day care center and was locked. But T must have some sort of instinct, because he asked if they could walk around town a little and he very quickly found this place. When they got there three boys were already playing. They all recognized T and ran over to say hi and play. E was pretty surprised.

Note from T: I crossed over a rope. I was hanging onto two ropes on the top. Then I saw another rope. On the other rope there was only one rope across the top and it goes very far and is up high so I can't reach it. So I only went on the ropes that were easy. My friends were at the park. They played with me, but one kid had a stick. He was spinning around with his stick and hitting trees. His Mama broke his stick because he didn't put it down. Before that he was helping me on the slide.

 R's favorite short cut to and from the train. 

The swing in our backyard.

Flowers are blooming everywhere, and T wants to pick all of them. 

The girls were home sick on Monday and today, so we took them to the doctor. The doctor says it's the flu and that all this off and on sickness is probably the same virus running its course. There is nothing to do except treat the symptoms. The girls came home with cough suppressant, electrolytes, and two different stomach medicines. After being sick in several countries, I think giving lots of specialized medicines is the European way. S plans on going to school tomorrow. R has a follow-up appointment. I don't know how much they think is going to improve in just one day.