Blogs from Engelberg, South-West, Switzerland, Europe - page 2

Today was our first full free day. I did sleep in a little bit. Vanessa, Elizabeth, Ryan and I took the 11:45am train to Luzern. This was my 1st train ride! After we arrived in Luzern we had lunch at a place called Cafeteria Emilio. It was a cute, two-story cafe that served hamburgers, sandwhiches, and some pastas. It was quite delicious! Vanessa and I both ordered the "Chickenburger w/ Salad". We then went to the souvinier shop just across the street and all bought some gifts. We walked from shop to shop looking for "original dresses". We sort of gave up after about five shops and decided to stop in to Starbucks. While at the coffee shop we had the best chocolate cake ever. It was called Chocolate Truffel Cake, and it was to die ... read more

This was our free day today. I decided to sleep in today and it was great!! After eating breakfast, I got dressed and Catherine, Nate, and I went walking around. We walked along the river that runs through the city. It was really interesting because we saw lots of snails and slugs around the trail. They were huge! We haven't seen anything like this in Texas. After wondering around town, we got hungry and stopped at this restaurant called "Rosti-Hauseinwaldli". This seems like a nice local place to eat dinner. We walked in there was this big dog sitting there in the doorway. That was really weird. The lady did not speak any English so that made everything really difficult. She passed out some menus that had some English on it. Me and Catherine decided to ... read more

Today was soooo fun! We went to the top of the Alps of Mount Titlis and played in the snow! First off, we walked over to the Mount Titlis information center and listened to a speech on the impact the mountain has on the tourism industry in Engelberg. That was interesting to see how things have progressed and the ideas of how the are wanting to keep progressing. We then rode up the mountain in several different types of ski lifts, including the world's first rotating ski lift. That was scary but the view was amazing! Once at the top we got to run around and play in the snow. We threw snowballs, slid down the hills, built snow men and took and endless number of pictures of us all bundled up. Then we went to ... read more

So I never really thought I'd ride in a cable car in Switzerland up to the top of Mt. Titlus! I was wrong! Today we heard a lecture about Mt. Titlus, the resort and what the past held for Titlus and Engelberg, what is presently going on, and what the future holds! Of course global warming is always an issue when running an operation like this, and even though the resort is taking steps to both combat global warming and lower its own emissions and help with environment protection, it could always be doing better! For example, in the ice cave, it needs to limit the number of people allowed in at once, or else body heat from too many people will lead to the deterioration and melting of the ice. Granted its a slow process ... read more

After a long day of driving we wake up today to go to Mt. Titlis. We walked over the cable car that will take all of us up to the mountain. We stopped at a bar/restraint to have a presentation by Gabriela Sigrist. He is the marketing director and sales rep for Mt. Titlis. Mt. Titlis is 10,000 feet high and they have changed cable cars 3 times to better improve them. Last year, Mt. Titlis made about $42,000,000 in revenue. 60% of that figure was from the winter season and 40% comes from off season time which is normally during the summer. We had some croissants and hot chocolate for us to snack on. He gave a really nice presentation. After the presentation, we left to go to the mountain. We have to take 3 ... read more