Friday, July 20, 2007--Zermatt to Lucerne--Day 12

Last night “the group” had an impromptu party in the hotel garden after dinner. We first went in a large group to an outdoor café for dinner. Most of us had cheese fondue, which was delicious. There’s just something almost reverent about eating authentic cheese fondue in the shadow of the Alps. We had invited Erich to join us, and he had us in stitches with his tales of previous tours. As he is a scholar working on a book, some of us have wondered if we might be part of a grand sociology experiment, innocently providing Erich with fodder for a future book. We’ve been pretty dull compared to some of his other tour groups, though, according to his stories.

Anyway, after dinner we met in the garden and had about an hour-and-a-half of conversation, wine, beer, and snacks. Erich joined us for a while, and others from the group dropped in and out. It was a lovely, relaxed evening in this valley of the Alps.

This morning we loaded up again and took the train from Zermatt to Tasch, where we were reunited with our bus, and, happily, Massimo. Mauritzio was good, but we’ve bonded with Massimo, and he really is a superior driver. We drove from Tasch through the French Swiss countryside covered in many vineyards. Erich tells us that some of the grape varieties can grow up to altitudes of 5,000-6,000 feet. I had no idea this was possible, but I have the pictures to prove it. Usually when one thinks of vineyards, Tuscany comes to mind, but I guess different varieties of grapes grow happily at different altitudes. We passed by the edge of Lake Geneva, viewing the village of Montreaux with its Castle of Chillon, and we drove through the Gruyere region, famous for its cheese. Lake Gruyere was small and pretty.

We stopped in Berne for lunch, back in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and we discovered that people in Berne are very laid back and slow. We were only given an hour for lunch, so we found an outdoor café and waited……and waited…….and waited. We finally ordered and waited some more. Ten minutes before we were to leave to board our bus, our lunch finally arrived. We choked it down, tracked down the waiter to pay, then ran to meet the bus, barely making it. Whew! Massimo drove us to the Bear Pit for a photo stop. The bear is the symbol of Berne, and there are two city mascots beloved by the Berne citizens. We then drove to Interlaken, a beautiful town nestled between Lake Thum and Lake Brienz, in the shadow of Jungfrau Mountain. It was very pretty, but many of the cars were dinged and dimpled from a huge hailstorm the day before. Since I drive a very dimpled Suburban for the same reason, I sympathized with the victimized owners of these vehicles.

At last we arrived in Lucerne. We were supposed to have an afternoon excursion up Mount Pilatus, but it started raining, so Erich cancelled that excursion, as well as tomorrow’s, a noon boat ride on Lake Lucerne. The rain isn’t so bad because it has brought much cooler weather, and again, we have no A/C. This heat has wreaked havoc with my crazy body temperature fluctuations. Some women call them hot flashes, but my son-in-law Josh calls mine “power surges”, a much more fun way to describe a very annoying condition.

So, Lisa, Bob, Tony, and I took the city bus (electric) to downtown and strolled a bit in the rain. We took a leisurely walk back to the hotel on the promenade that runs along the edge of the lake. We had a nice dinner at the hotel, then we spent about an hour outside on the hotel’s covered terrace. We met a very nice Russian couple from Toronto, who joined our conversation, although the husband was not very fluent in English (but he thought he was). He really tried, and he cracked himself up. His wife, a dentist and mother of two sons, was a hoot.

Tomorrow………souvenir shopping!