Trip to Switzerland

David's next conference was in Lugano, Switzerland. In total, David was gone for almost two weeks. That was just a little too long for me to be apart from the kids. Plus the second conference was much more important and much busier. David didn't really have time to be sightseeing. So after Amsterdam, we traveled to Milan, Italy, where I hopped on a flight back to Indiana and David took a train to Lugano. On our way to Italy, we spent a night in Zurich, Switzerland, and a day visiting the Alps in Lucerne.

Our view from our hotel room in Zurich

 From Zurich, we rented a BMW for the day to drive to Lucerne. David was excited to try out the German car, but unfortunately we never made it to the Autobahn to really put it to the test. Maybe our next European vacation...

The right side of this map shows the trip we took to the top of Pilatus Kulm (7000 ft). We took a gondola up two parts of the way. Then we took a cable car the last leg.

David, who is not a fan of dangling from high heights, was a little nervous to get in the gondola.

Lucerne below me in the gondola.

Our view of the city as we traveled higher.

You can see Lake Lucerne in the background. Beautiful views of the lake the whole way up!

At the second station, we got off the gondola, and enjoyed to view along with some food and drinks.Next we will be heading up that mountain behind David.

See the cable car on the way up?

The trip up the mountain was so peaceful - you could hear birds singing, the bells on the cows grazing on the mountain side ringing, and the occasional Alpine horn playing a song.

The view of the cable station from the side of the mountain. See the cable car almost at the top?

We hiked around the top for a couple of hours.

Many of the Alpine peaks around us were much higher than this mountain top.

I loved the Alpine horn!

Lake Lucerne down in the valley.

After Lucerne, we took a train the rest of the way to Milan. We spent one night in Milan before heading different directions. We did get to enjoy some Napolese pizza in Milan our one night there. David had a little time to explore the city but I did not. My flight left early in the morning for the long journey back home. I was so excited to see the kids! It seemed like they had a great time visiting their grandparents. They went swimming, went to the zoo and Children's Museum, ate ice cream, and splashed in the splash pad. So it was a good vacation for everyone! The night we got back to Columbus everyone slept in until after 8am, so I think we all were ready to be home in our own beds!!