For this Easter micro-holidays, comprising Friday to Monday, I had Erica and Andrew (top-left picture) as my Canadian guests (they are living in London now). We had an abusive cheese raclette for lunch-dinner, since their flight arrived quite late, and finished the day in a lazy way (well, we couldn’t move anyway) watching the full season 4 of The Office (US).

Saturday, we left Geneva really early in the morning towards the Jungfrau region, after Interlaken. We arrived to our hotel in Stechelberg, dropped our stuff and took the cable-car up to Gimmelwald, were we planned to stay but the mountain hostel was fully booked. After the typical knocking at the locals doors to buy Cheese (from Esther) and dry Sausage (from Erika). We walked around Gimmelwald, stopped in some panoramic-view-bench and started eating… more cheese (bottom-right picture). Heinz, the cat (we named it like that almost 2 years ago) appeared as usual in the same spot while we were eating.

We took the other cale-car up to Mürren, where after a short walk and thousands of pictures we rented some sleds and moved further up to Almendhubel, taking the funicular train. First day we only sledged once (the slope is quite big) and got enough bruises. There was some trampoline randomly in the middle of the snow (top-right picture) so we stopped and waited for 3 kids (aged 6 maximum) to get out of there, complaining to their grandparents that “that was not for adults to play”. Well, after they kindly leave, the “adults” gave it a try. It was quite fun as the pictures might show and the video will for sure, as soon as I find some time to cut the best-of for the weekend.

Back to Stechelberg, in the valley, we get drunk at the hotel. Licor Beirão with snow works very well (middle-left picture). For dinner we eat until we are almost able to roll. The food at Hotel Stechelberg is outrageously good as usual. There’s accordion swiss country music until late but we are back to one of the rooms, drinking more.

Sunday started kind of early, with me defrosting the car with some good 3cm of snow on top (middle-right picture). After annoying Erica and Andrew knocking on their window we had a (40% cheese) breakfast that would be almost enough to feed 4 families for a week. We check out and get to the cable-car station to go back to Gimmelwald-Murren-Almendhubel and go on the sleds again for a few times. After collecting some more bruises (specially Erica) we eat some more cheese and stop for a coffee. Instead of taking the cabe-car from Mürren to Gimmelwald, we buy an extra plastic bum-sled (sku). We go downhill on our bums trough snow, ice, asphalt and even wooden stairs. My jeans get a huge hole and end up looking like some Village People’s outfit (bottom-left picture), with the difference that I have underwear. Some tourist films us on the last slope just using a hill as shortcut.

We drive back to Geneva completely exhausted. We have cheese fondue for dinner. And chocolate fondue with fruits for dessert. We rest a bit on Monday morning, to have an abusive Röstis lunch with cheese and sausages and more cheese. Afternoon is spent boiling in Lavey les Bains SPA, between Jacuzzi, Whirlpool, Sauna, Turkish Bath and whatsoever. After we are cooked, in zombie mode, we get back to Geneva but driving on the other side of the lake, to stop in Evian and have 2 huge pizzas (more cheese) in my boat. We head to the casino afterwards and quickly back to Geneva (none of us won anything, apart from awareness that gambling is stupid).

Today we were planning to have roasted Peking Duck (at a great Chinese restaurant close to my workplace, but ended up changing our minds to something lighter (I wonder why) and ended up having sushi.

Andrew and Erica are leaving in a few hours and are now doing the last shopping for tons of Rösti, Cheese and Chocolate to take to the UK. They bought a raclette machine after lunch time. Click the mosaic on top to see a picture selection. Video will be coming soon on the next post.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 17:34 and is filed under Trips, Weekends & Breaks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.