The Last Day and Coming Home

Chillin'
So our last day in Europe  *sigh* :(

Basically we just (to use one of my favorite words) chilled. We slept in a little, and had a really nice breakfast (but then again, we did everyday :)). We also played some Wii, and built a fort in the girls room... stuff like that.

Then later, early afternoon, we walked down to the lake again. The lake was COVERED in pollen. All this yellow stuff floating at the top. It was actually kinda gross, and I was really glad that I'm not really allergic to pollen. We all waded in a less pollen-y part of the lake. It was really, I mean REALLY cold. And my dad and Okan went swimming. Well, actually they jumped in, got out right away, shivered a lot and then repeated. Yeah, they're crazy.

Once back at the house, my dad, my mom, Coral, Ellie and I went to a Swiss mall... to go grocery shopping. I know! Crazy right? But the mall was really nice, with hard wood floors and a mountain view through a glass window. There were also these elscalator-like things, that were ramps for the carts. The cool part was that the carts didn't move if you let go. So we did some food shopping, and tried to do some shoe shopping, but we got kicked out of the store because it was closing.

Dinner was DELICIOUS! The kids watched a movie, and then it was off to bed because we had to get up early for the plane the next day.


Coming Home
We got up at 6:30, which was hard, and I was tired. Then the plane ride which was pretty uneventful. When the ride was finally over we were back in America! It was nice to hear English and recognize places on the drive home. On the way back we stopped at Wawa and got a soda filled with ice. (they don't really put ice in drinks in Europe, something we found both weird and annoying).

We got back to our neighborhood, and all the flowers and trees were blooming, so that was nice. Also, we got into our house and eggs were hidden everywhere! We went on an egg hunt before we started doing laundry (we have a LOT of laundry to do). We also had a very nice Easter dinner. :)

The trip was GREAT, and I never wanted to leave. I had such an awesome time. We visited great places, ate great food and stayed with great people :) But at the same time, it also feels good to be home.

So, I guess that's it! I hope you enjoyed my blog of the trip! Thanks for reading :)

Strasbourg

Arriving
We drove to Strasbourg, just my family. We stop for breakfast on the way and ate in the car. Strasbourg was awesome. Unfortunately, a lot of stores were closed, it being Good Friday and everything , but since Strasbourg is pretty tourist-y, there where some souvenir shops on the street open, as well as some restaurants.

Strasbourg was so pretty

Checkin' it out
We walked around the shops for a little. Strasbourg is famous for its puppets, so there were a lot of those. There were also a lot of things with cranes or storks things on them. I think that's a symbol of the Alsace region, which Strasbourg is a part of. We found the tourist office in this square, along with a giant cathedral and some restaurants. After looking at a LOT of menus, we finally picked one. We ordered a Tarte Flambé for the table, a food Strasbourg is famous for. I got some chicken and pasta dish, that was also Strasbourg-ish, according to my dad. My dad got some Sauerkraut. Strasbourg is kinda a mix a German and French. I tried Sauerkraut for the first time, and guess what! It's not sour at all! And we had a great view of the cathedral (Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg) during lunch, which was built in the 14th century. It also had a record height until the 19th century.

Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg

Us at a café

Boat Ride
After lunch we took a scenic boat ride tour around Strasbourg. It was slow, but very relaxing. There were also headphones to listen to commentary, and you were able to chose the language. I chose English, and Anna listened to the children's commentary (in English). Anna's was narrated by a pirate (arg!) and mine by some dude with a Irish or Scottish accent. 


Some cool facts I learned from the tour:

• Sauerkraut is actually from China
• Monks invented munster cheese
• One time there was a building on fire, and there was only one window with a ladder attached for people to escape. A fat monk got stuck in the window frame, and 20 people couldn't get out and they died.

Pic from the boat ride

Another pic from the ride

We went under a lot of bridges

Crepes

After he boat ride, it was crepe time, something I had been looking forward for a while. They were delicious. I dare you to look at the picture and tell me you don't want one. And then we went home! It was a fun day :)

Me at the crepe place

Ellie's crepe- pears, chocolate, vinilla ice cream, whipped cream

Mine! -chocolate, whipped cream, mint choc chip ice cream

Mom's- butter and sugar (sounds simple, but it was sooo good)

Anna's- nutella and pears

A dounut shaped like a pretzel! How cool is that?

Italia

Wednesday

Drive

On Wednesday, we drove to Italy. We stopped in Schwyz, a pretty mountainous part of Switzerland. There was a little spot where you could pull of the road and park to take some pictures. We took a LOT.. We also went into the Gotthard tunnel, which was 17km (about 12 miles) long! Later on, we drove through Lugano, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Again, it was cool to see how the signs changed languages, but this time it was Italian not French, n. Driving into Italy was cool, too. It is amazing how the building styles, and just everything changed once we drove over the border. The best I can explain is that the buildings were more rectangular and brightly colored, like orange, pink, yellow. Also, most of the buildings had moldings around the windows painted on, they looked real!

Schwyz

Italian buildings

Painted on moldings

Menaggio

Finally, we got to Menaggio, a city on Lake Como. It was lunchtime so we found a restaurant that Okan and Coral had eaten at before.  The restaurant had seating across the street that was literally ON the lake. Well technically over the lake, but it was awesome. I ordered a pizza, and it was AMAZING. I ate almost the whole thing! Words cannot describe how good the pizza was. Yum!

Pizza!

The restaurant

Bellagio

After lunch in Menaggio, we took a car ferry to Bellagio. I had never been on a car ferry before. We just drove the car onto the boat. Then we went up to the top to enjoy the ride. It’s amazing the boat doesn’t sink, because it must be really heavy with all those cars.  Once in Bellagio, we sat down at a restaurant and ordered some lattes. I don’t normally like coffee, but this stuff was good. Then, we went shopping :).  I loved all the Italian glass, especially in the jewelry.

So cool! 

The streets with the shops looked like that ^

Thursday

Santa Margherita

In the car again, we drove to Santa Margherita, where our hotel was.  We got there kinda late. The hotel was called Regina Elena, and my sisters and I got our own room. I was so tired and I fell asleep right away.

The hotel had a buffet breakfast. After we ate, we walked into town and admired everything. We were just chilling on a bench, when some random family came up to us and told us that we should climb up these stairs, and find this garden. We took their advice and found the garden. We had to climb up a bunch a steps and go past a really pretty church. At the garden we ordered some drinks from a restaurant. I got this lemon soda. It’s like lemonade but bubbly. After the garden, we went back to the hotel. The hotel had a private beach across the street. We spent some time there, putting our feet in the water and skipping rocks.

Sante Margherita

Awesome

The steps we climbed when trying to find the garden.

The church

Portofino

The drive from Santa Margherita to Portofino was only about 20 minutes. We ate lunch by the sea. I ate pasta with Portofino sauce, which was  pesto, cream and tomato. Of course, it was delicious. We ate gelato for dessert and walked around Portofino.  Later, we climbed up a bunch of steps to go to Castello Brown, which was more like a villa. It mostly had empty rooms, but the garden outside was really cool, plus there was a great view.

My lunch

Lara enjoyed her lunch very much :)

The steps to the castle. I am tired just thinking about it!

There were lizards everywhere! I almost felt like I was in Ponte Vedra! :)

The Castle

Portofino

The view of Portofino from the castle

Zurich

Train
We took the bus to the train station, and the train to Zurich, which, according to Ellie, is the most populated city in Switzerland. The train was double decker and we sat on the top. We got another butter pretzel too. Mmmm mmmm good! :)

On the train to Zurich!

Zurich
In Zurich, there were a million stores. I didn't know that Zurich was such a shopping hotspot. Not that I minded though :). First we went into a book store. We were looking for books in French for me, but they only had German. Boo! But while we were in there we found some cool stuff for my cousin. Then we went to this store called Zara. I really like looking at the European styles. Scarves are really big here. Ellie, Anna and I all got cute stuff.

Food
We ate at this Italian place that Coral had been to before. I ordered some gnocchi with shrimp. It was delicious! Like really, really good. After we ate, Celine's tooth fell out! It was very exciting.

My food

Before

After

Train again
We took the train back to Luzern. While we were waiting, we had some ice cream. On the train, Lara fell asleep on Ellie. It was really cute and my dad had carry her back. We were all tired from a very exciting day :)

Cool sculpture in the train station

Lara asleep

Tomorrow, we are going to Italy! I can't wait to have some Italian food! Yumm!

Lausanne and Montreux

The Train Ride
Yesterday, just my family went on a day trip. We visited anotherFrench speaking part of Switzerland. Since it was just us, we took the train. The train ride to Lausanne was about 2hrs and 15mins. Before we got on the train we bought some pastries and pretzels to eat on the train for breakfast. The pretzels were so good! We got his one kind that was a butter pretzels, it was basically a pretzel cut in half, with butter inside! YUM!

When we got on the train, we ate breakfast. It was a really nice train.  We chilled there until the ticket guy came. He told us that we were sitting in first class. We had to get up and move down two cars to get to second class. It was still nice in second class though. I even slept a little. It was nice.


Lausanne
We got to Lausanne, and the weather was so nice. The great part was, I didn't need my coat. The annoying part, I had to carry it around. Even so, it was still awesome. We were going to the old part of Lausanne, and we had to walk up this GIANT hill. It was really tiring, but totally worth it, because at the top I got a great view of Lausanne. And another cool thing, we walked by Rue Caroline! And there was a Caroline Centre Commercial (Mall).

Me infront of Caroline Centre Commercial on Rue Caroline.

Lausanne from the top of the hill.

Cathedral
Also at the top of the hill was this really old cathedral: the Cathédrale de Lausanne. It started being built in 1175! So yeah, it is really old. And really, really beautiful. It is made out of stone and there are these awesome stained glass windows. One window, called the Rose Window, has all the months of the year represented and all of the star signs. The window on display today is a reproduction, but it is still breath-taking. There was also this organ inside, and this guy was playing it. He was really good. 

The Rose Window

Some of the star signs

Pretty reflections of the stained glass.

Another cool part of the cathedral. It was so old that most of the noses were worn off!

The inside

Lunch
We ate at this cute café, where I ordered in French! I asked for de l'eau (water) and it was pretty epic. I also asked where the bathroom was: "Où est les toilettes?" For lunch I ate a sandwich on a roll, with lettuce, tomato and goat cheese. It was really good. After lunch we walked around a little, took some pics and then headed back to the train station. We had to walk down that really big hill.

Us in front of a statue after lunch.

Montreux
We took a train to Montreux, which was only about 20 mins away.  We had too look around a while to find the information center, but eventually we found it. Montreux has this really pretty garden on the lake (Lac Leman). There were so many bright flowers and it smelled really nice. I wanted to chill there for a while, but we decided to go to Chillon to see the cool castle there.

In the garden

Moose!

Château de Chillon 
We took a boat ride there. The castle was built in the 12th century, right on this rocky surface, so in some rooms of the castle there was giant uneven rock on the floor. There was over 40 rooms. We walked through almost all of them. We even went into the dungeon, which was kinda creepy. In one part of the dungeon, there was a projection of figures on the wall. I think they were supposed to be ghosts. I tried to get a picture, but my flash washed it out. All the doors were really low, because people were shorter back then. I had to crouch through most of them. And we climbed all the way to the top. There must have been like, 8 staircases. It was really tiring, but it was really cool at the top.

A passing scene from the boat ride.

Ellie on the boat.

The rocks on the floor.