Liz fulfilld her promise.

As promised here is a small (HAH not) telling of my recent holiday in SWITZERLAND.

This first thing you need to know is that it started very early on the 7th of August.
Our first train was at 7:42 am.

I just got distracted by a prepare yourself for uni leaflet.
Oh darn it's already 11:20 am. I'm going to type this all up now then hopefully get some photos into it.

While we were waiting for the train at Durham station Hazel revealed that she hadn't packed conditioner and Mum looked really dissapointed even though it didn't actually affect her at all!
Also we had a bag of all the "perishables" that were left in the house... about 8 bananas.
The EuroStar was at 12:29 and had so much leg room!
And these odd fold up tables (that once you've been in Europe for a week become the norm).
We had this nifty little meal because we were in First Class (oooh Great Rail Journeys (y)) it was BEEF.
We then swapped to a TVG train to Dijon (France) where we would spend the first night.
I did a very strange experimental water colour painting.

There was a coach to the hotel and Hazel and I were in room 512.

The flush on the loo was silly, you had to pull it up.
*shakes head in bewilderment*

On our travels we saw street ping pong. We tried to remember the other name for it, which is wiff waff although Mum was sure it was flim flam...

I was also very silly when I asked about breakfast: "Will it be pain au chocolat? or bacon au chocolat?" When I know I meant pain au bacon.
For dinner that night we had more BEEF, and for pudding a cheese cake that actually had a cake base and NOT biscuit.

At 9:54 Dad lost the game and ruined it all for everyone.

Walking to our room I said "My feet feel all floofy" to which Hazel replied "My feet are full of beef".

Our tour guide was a guy called Ian Gordon. He was Scottish.

The breakfast on Sunday morning was scrummy.
After another day of trains (Dijon to Bern, Bern to Interlarken) and a coach because there was a landslide before Interlarken and we had to get a shuttle coach and wait for ages in boiling sun.
Then Interlarken to Meiringen.

Our Hotel was Park du Sauvage and we were in room 443.
More beef for dinner after a welcome drink and a welcome speech from the manager who was dressed as Sherlock Holmes.
At these welcome drinks I was offered orange juice and Hazel, the wine. THIS IS NOT RIGHT. I'm the 18 year old.



We also had to order what we would have for dinner the next night, the option was "Poulard" even though EVERY other word was translated for some reason the chicken was left as the ambiguous chickenduck.



The view from our room.

MONDAY!

We went up on a funicular railway to the Reichenbach falls.
They were beautiful.



We (Hazel, Dad and I) came down the mountain on these fantastic things called "Monster Trotti" which will be in video and not picture form.

It was exhilarating!

In the afternoon we did a walk through Aareschlucht gorge! It was so amazing.

Poulard for tea.

TUESDAY!

Early morning for a train from Meiringen to Lucerne.
We had a bit of time to explore these nifty old bridges and a big Catholic overdecorated church!
Then we got a boat over to Weggis where we spent 2 hours in the sun, saw some sheep with bells and ate cake.
Back in Lucerne we saw a crying lion carved into a wall.

To "fill time" we walked and shopped and we bought new watches BUT this made us late for the train. Oh the IRONY!

We only just made it back on the next train to Meiringen for food at 7:30!

Melon and ham followed by veal then apple strudel.

I finally learned the names of some of the other folk we were travelling with.
Brian and Joan, a couple from Coventry and a cable car enthusiast called Linda who teaches in Reading.

WEDNESDAY!

Rothorn day.
I wrote a postcard for Caitlin and managed to avoid using the free internet computer booth even though I had time!
10pm train to Brienz for the rack and pin train up the mountain.
It was such a class view from so high up till the clouds came in.
We spend some time at the bottom after the hour down on the train and visited a carving shop thing and another.
I ate a chocolate covered, pretzel shaped biscuit as Hazel drank strangely constructed tea (look to video later).
Picnic tea from the co-op, it was the best shopping in there because of the amazing air con.

THURSDAY!

Early train to Interlarken and a series of 4 trains to the top of the Jungfraujoch which boasts to be "THE TOP OF EUROPE!".
There was snow, which was odd for me in August although not for the fact we were over 3000 metres above sea level. (3454 to be precise)

We even did a bit of sledging.
At about 2:30 pm we visited Grindlewald which was part of the journey back.
WHICH WAS AMAZING ON PRINCIPLE and pretty.

Dinner was lamb and meringue for pud.

Red Dwarf was on BBC Prime this night "This is SO happening!".
The only other all English channels were news (CCN and BBC worldwide) and MTV de which had German subtitles but American shows.

FRIDAY

Cable cars to the top of Planplatten, one of them we shared with Alison and Don who were in fact the cutest 70somethings ever!
He was an astrophysics lecturer, they're from York.
We were told it was going to be Macaroni for lunch which I was not looking forward to from the cheese direction but looking forward to just because I was missing my sexymacaroni's quite a bit.
I ended up with a tomato sauce anyway and a fruit salad.

We walked the last leg of the mountain instead of getting all the cable cars and saw a lizard!

We went to the Sherlock Holmes museum that afternoon and had another picnic tea and watched a show called "Freezing".

SATURDAY!

Was in our own hands so we decided to train it to Thun and boat it back.
Almost all the music that came up on random "Album of the Day" was youtubian and gave me internet cravings. Wrock, Trock, ALL CAPS, DFTBA, Milsom and Day. I mean REALLY?

I'm scared by the amount of footage this holiday leaves me to edit.

I properly finished 5 books on this holiday by the time I got home too (which I will probably blog about on Friday)!

I didn't diary SUNDAY or MONDAY because they were mainly train related.
We stayed Sunday night in Köln (Cologne) and the Cathederal there was awesome.
On Monday we went from Köln to Brussels to get the Eurostar and at 6:30 from King's Cross to Durham.

This is the holiday, it might look better in video but it might take you half an hour to watch the footage depending on what I decide to show...

27:50 when unedited and I don't want to stop the MoM to listen to my video...

OMGOODNESS
I am NOT happy with blogger, the photo loader is REFUSING to work.

If it DOESN'T work before 9pm I'm quitting this shebang and I'll come back and add the photos on Friday.
Why Friday you ask and not tomorrow?

Tomorrow is results day, I'll leave the house very early, maybe about half 9 and I won't be back in till, er Friday.