The day started with a thunderstorm reverberating around the mountains. The valleys must turn into sound boards for the thunder to bounce off so that the noise is amplified. It didn't last long and the weather soon turned to cloudy and warm with no rain for the rest of the day. We packed a picnic lunch and headed of to Zweisimmen about 15kms away in a different valley. This valley is named for it's Simmental cattle rather than Saanen goats of Saanenland. We went to the Tourismus office to enquire about the best hikes to do in the area. We chose to go to Sparenmoos which is known for rolling pastures and flowers. We wound our way up and up a narrow road from 900m to 1650m. I'd hate to think what it's like on a ... read more

We had a rude awaking at 5 o'clock in the morning by an unholy clanging below the house! It was still dark. What was going on? We stumbled out of bed to see a herd of cows being driven along the road with bells on their necks and lights on their heads. We've seen the bells before but never lights. Whether these were set amongst garlands of flowers as we've seen before or tied onto their horns, I have no idea. I was too groggy to get my camera working in time to capture the sight. These are the scenes that make rural Switzerland special and interesting. Farming here is so different from home where everything is done intensively. Here, charm still exists. We had a domestic morning. First, we had to find somewhere to get ... read more

We had a day of problems but got off to a good start with Marc taking us to Kontanz to pick up our rental car. It is VW Golf, automatic, has a GPS and is a good size. The GPS was odd to operate and when we put in an address we headed off towards St Gallen. Wrong. So, we put in Saanen and headed off towards Zurich. Correct. We had a lunch stop at a huge Movenpick outfit which straddles the motorway where my 1E coin wouldn't work for the toilets - of course. The Indian lady finally let me in after some gabble between us. The scenery along the way is low lying, rolling hills with a lot of forest cover. More forest than we see at home I might add. The towns and ... read more

We took the long haul from Auckland with no stopover on Emirates Airlines A380 from Auckland/Dubai/Zurich. Amazingly, we were wandering through Dubai Airport and someone called out my name. It was Heather and Doug from New Plymouth on their way to Sweden! Apart from that the trip was the usual - endure the trip and get it over and done with. One point of note is that Dubai had a population of 30,000 in the 1930's and now has 4 million. That is some growth!! Not for this Kiwi though - very modern, very busy, very hot and very sandy. On the Dubai to Zurich stretch we flew over Iran which showed some spectacular geology with outstanding examples of layered and folded rocks in the landforms.From flying height you could virtually see that the land had ... read more

After a good night's sleep in our high rise bed (we almost needed a ladder to get into it) our day started with a four course breakfast at the Victoria B&B. It is well known for it's breakfasts and the Victorian house and rooms. Needless to say there was more than we needed for the breakfast so our lady gave us a bag to put in any excess food which we did - true to our TTATs philosophy. We shared breakfast with four Ozzies three of whom were immigrants which made them interesting. The man ( a real Ozzie bloke) was married to a Mauritius woman who was born in Australia. She had her Mum and Aunty with her and they were originally from Mauritius. How much do we know about Mauritius? Practically nothing. English is ... read more