I am trying to work on my procrastination skills by writing a blog rather than cleaning, gardening, unpacking, doing homework, etc. Practice makes perfect.
We had a great extended weekend with my mom’s brother Todd, his wife Linda, and my cousins, Morgan and Julia. We met up with them in Zermatt, Switzerland on Saturday. Chad and I have planned to go see the Matterhorn (when I was little I always thought the Matterhorn was just a Disneyland ride) since our arrival in Switzerland and have been waiting for a Saturday with perfect weather to go. We knew when we planned to meet them there that we could very well not see the great peak after all since the weather has been so inconsistent. Wow! What a spectacular sight! We really could not have planned or hoped for a better day to visit!
We arrived around noon and checked into a great little place called Le Petit Hotel. Then we had lunch with the family. After lunch we road a cable car and gondola up to an area called Glacier Paradise. Poor Linda was not too fond of the rocky heights we were traveling over. We were super high, the air was thin and it was cold. We all had to breathe deep on the top. I get altitude sickness at 9500 feet and we were above 12500! On our way down we opted to hike the last third of the trip back down to Zermatt. It was steep but nice and shady most of the time. The only bad thing were the millions of ants climbing all over our sandaled feet. There were alpine photo ops all the way down.
We walked around town and got some great crepes and chocolate before the shops closed. We also ran into some enormous Saint Bernards at a tourist shop. I love BIG dogs. Before dinner we sat out on our hotel’s roof with a spectacular view of the Matterhorn. Chad taught the family (and retaught me) the card game Durak which became our mainstay for the rest of the trip. We had some typical Swiss food and then parted ways. It was a really wonderful day!
We missed our own bed so much! It’s nice to be home again. It’s going to be hard to leave again next weekend.
Since we last wrote, we visited two more Spanish ports. The first was Ibiza. It’s another one of the Balearic Islands. It’s a lively party spot for singles. Elisa and I walked around the old fortress walls. It was cool, but the sights weren’t too different from the other ports.
Our last full cruise day was our stop in Barcelona. We went to the Sagrada FamÃlia right away, of course. Then we went to the Park Güell. We really liked looking at GaudÃ. (But we didn’t like it enough to pay the 18 euros to see Casa Batlló also. We wouldn’t have had time anyway.) We wish this port stop was longer than just a few hours. A whole day would have been perfect. As our time ran out, we strolled on Las Ramblas. Then we rushed to catch a subway in time to get on the boat again. Barcelona was my favorite port. It offered something unique.
Most evenings we saw the ship’s singing and dancing entertainment. The best show though was Karaoke night when Elisa worked the crowd with I Will Survive. I was a little disappointed at the English selection. That was the only song that I could even try to pull off. The others I hadn’t heard of or didn’t know well at all. And then there were the French, German and Italian songs.
We were happy to get off the ship. We had a great time, but we were ready to go home. One of the 16 English passengers asked us if we were sad that the cruise was ending. I replied that we don’t get sad when our vacations end anymore. 🙂
Genoa has really good Focaccia bread. We tried to make the most of the fact that we had to leave the cruise ship after lunch but our train wasn’t until after 4 pm. It was so irritating that they made us leave our rooms on the ship by 8 am, so really we were homeless all stinking day. Our train ride home went well because we met the nicest couple–they are from São Paulo and have also lived in Switzerland and Austria and Ecuador. They talked about Chad’s three favorite subjects: religion, the presidential race and computers. We chatted in Portuguese too. It was so cute!
After leaving AFRICA we headed back on the cruise ship and docked later in the afternoon in Gibraltar. We had some options for how to spend our few hours there. We could either go up the rock and see monkeys or go out in the bay on a boat and search for dolphins. We chose the dolphins, but now that Elisa has heard about the monkey tour she wishes we saw that one. I had to promise we would go find monkeys some other trip. 🙂 We went out on the boat and found a whole group of dolphins after a lot of searching. I thought we might be the 4% group that didn’t find any for awhile. The weather was perfect and you could see Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco on our ride. I even got to see a few flying fish! I swear!
