That Little Voice

I’m heading out in the near future for my 80th birthday celebration…some of you may be wondering how long I will be reveling this particular milestone, and the answer is, probably all year long.

Anyway, my friend Janetta and I are heading to the Swiss Alps, and I’m in the middle of packing.

Yes, you have heard my woes of packing, but this time I’m positively excited. The temperatures in San Miguel are ranging in the high 80’s and even into the low 90s, and that is hot for here. May is always the hottest month of the year, and this year the heat has seeped into April. The thought of travelling to cool mountain air is exhilarating.

Let me give you a brief overview of our upcoming trip, and more details will follow as we take trains across Switzerland, to high peaks and lush valleys.

We begin our tour in Lucerne, a lakeside city where we will enjoy views of Lake Lucerne and the Alps, and a train ride to Mount Pilatus on the world’s steepest cogwheel railway. Legend holds that the mountain was named for Pontius Pilate, blown here by the devil after the Crucifixion. I hope to avoid any lingering devil winds. We return to the base of the mountain via gondola.

The Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland will be our next train ride. Our destination is Iseltwald, a village on the banks of Lake Brienz, where we will cruise the Aare Canal and visit the Ballenberg Open Air Museum of Switzerland to learn about alpine farming.

On day five of our tour, we travel through Alpine valleys to the village of Grindelwald deep in the Swiss Bernese Alps. We board a train for a ride up to Jungfraujoch, a UNESCO-listed mountain pass that is popularly known as ‘the top of Europe,’ overlooking the largest glaciated region in the Alps. At 11,000 feet above sea level we will see a collection of intricately designed ice sculptures in the Ice Palace.

We head to the Lake Geneva Region for a tour of the Swiss capital of Bern, the Lavaux Vineyards, and Bern Bear Park, home to a community of brown bears.

We’ll end that day with a wine tasting on the shores of Lake Geneva, and the first half of our train travels through Switzerland.

I’ll give an overview of the last half of our adventure next week.