Early morning wake up call! On the road before 7:00 so we can get to Grindelwald and take on the world famous 15km toboggan run. Donna’s driving today, as Jon may or may not have gotten a photo radar ticket yesterday! After a 2 hour drive, we arrived in Grindelwald, another smallish ski town. We stopped at the visitor centre to figure out just how one goes about getting tickets for lifts and rentals and parking etc., only to be told that Big Fritz, the 15km run, is closed today due to avalanche risk. What??? We decide to make the best of things anyhow, seeing as there were still several trails that were open. Parked the car, rented ourselves some “sledges” and helmets, purchased transit passes for 2 different options, and boarded the train for the ... read more

Another drive today, this time to Rhein Falls (supposedly Europe's most powerful waterfall, although we were also told that about one of the waterfalls in Iceland...?) and also to the town of Stein-am-Rhein. The waterfall was spectacular (see pictures, although it's much better in person). Although most of Stein-am-Rhein was still closed up, the old town was beautiful. After that, we drove around the countryside a bit more, and then thought we'd see if there was such a thing as Boxing Day shopping here. There's not. Malls completely deserted. Back home again, one more day of "local" sights planned tomorrow, and then we have a 4 day weekend trip planned that will take us away from Zurich.... read more

Today started off with a drive to the country of Liechtenstein. At approximately only 20 kilometers in length, it's not too much ground to cover! We started off with a visit to the castle in Vaduz, where the royal family lives, followed up by a visit to an old Catholic church. After a very nutritious lunch at McDonalds (where Donna had a salsa bacon chicken sandwich, who knew?), we walked around a shopping district for a little while, got our Liechtenstein magnet, and headed back for Switzerland. Next stop, Appenzel. The scenery on the drive was amazing, like nothing we've ever seen. Appenzel is the Swiss equivalent of the American Ozarks, and although we didn't see any hillbillies, the mix of houses and other buildings was unique. Were planning to take in a few more sights, ... read more

Today is the day we get our cuckoo clock! We had planned to leave by 7:00, giving us ample time to drive to Germany and other explorations on the way back. We both had such a terrible sleep, that we opted for an extra hour in bed and so we left around 8:30 instead. A few minutes later, we were out on the open road, and 90 minutes later we were in historic, quaint Triberg. Our first stop, the Original World's Largest Cuckoo Clock. We loved this place when we were there a few years ago, and the lady there spent so much time explaining how things worked and showing us around the house-sized cuckoo clock. Turns out it was her father-in-law who had originally built it. We always wished we had bought a clock when ... read more

We arrived at the Zürich airport around 11.00 am local time. We made our way through customs without incident and found our rental car, a VW Polo (which, incidentally, means "chicken" in German). After successfully loading all our luggage into the European sized vehicle, we plugged in our GPS and headed off in search of the rental office to pick up our keys. However, to our dismay, it seemed the GPS was not working - it was just frozen - and we had not thought to print out actual directions to this place. As Jon tried to figure out road signs and traffic lights and lanes and what the heck you can and cannot do on Swiss roadways, Donna was on the lookout for internet cafes, while trying anything to make the GPS kick in. By ... read more