It’s hard to believe that the holidays are over for another year. It took me all of last week to recover from my Christmas and New Year holiday time off. Switzerland was very beautiful and the trip there was eventful in itself. We all decided to do the trip in two days so we stayed the night in Métz France, a beautiful town between Luxemburg and Strasbourg. I would really love to go back and spend a few days exploring.

(Photos are of the car train and of Metz)

In the morning, Kristina and I wanted to go and grab a few pastries for the road and we ended up finding some great little shops right up the street from the IBIS hotel where we stayed. There was an open air market in the church square that we past throw and then we found a little bakery that was also a chocolate maker. They had little chocolate figures of all kinds made out of different flavors of chocolates that were used as “color” to make the figures more interesting. Each figure had a “50’s” look to them; I have never seen anything like them before. Everything was incredible. After leaving with some pastry goodness, we came across another little shop that had incredible liqueurs. I bought some Blanc absinth and a chocolate liqueur. I also bought a bottle of “Pirate punch” for my son Michael. I have no idea what it is; I will wait for Michael to tell me how it is. Kristina bought a Carmel liqueur. The liqueurs we planned to share once in Switzerland, the absinth is waiting to be shared another day.

After getting back on the road (Saturday the 23rd of December), we made it a little beyond Strasburg and stopped to do our grocery shopping for our Christmas Eve and Christmas day meal. French stores are the best in the world. Wonderful stuff everywhere. I had gotten a turkey from the British shop in The Hague so all we needed was breakfast food and the holiday trimmings. The plan was to have fondue that night, our first night in the cabin, then foie gras (duck breast) on Christmas Eve (I have to say sorry to my vegetarian friends, but this was a meat filled holiday).

Being the last shopping day before Sunday and the upcoming holiday, the store was a mad house. We were completely loaded down after the shopping stopped and had enough food for most of the week. Of course this did not stop us from food shopping in Switzerland! More about this later…..

Back on the road and heading south, we arrived in Switzerland just before sunset. By the time we hit the mountains, it was dark. After traversing up the side of one mountain to the pass we needed to cross, we became a little confused as to were we needed to go and at around 7:30 we drove into a picture postcard ski village to ask directions at one of the hotels. Because Kristina can speak enough French to get by, she went in to find out if we were headed in the right direction to Brig. The town closes to where we were staying. After returning to the cars, she looked perplexed and stared into all of our faces and said,” the pass is closed, but we need to head down the road 9 kilometers and catch the car train to the other side of the mountain”. We were all confused because no where in her driving instructions did it say anything about a car train. All of us were starting to feel stressed, that happens to people who live bellow sea level and are thrusted up into snow covered, mountainess terrain with the possibility of taking a car train through a tunnel to god knows where is looming over your head.

After a deep breath, we all decided it would be a good adventure because none of us had ever been on a car train before. So we headed down the road and soon arrived at the train station and just drove up onto the string of flatbed cars just waiting to snake its way through the mountain. The time from one side to the other was a little less then 20 minutes. A half hour later we were pass Brig. Moral and our cabin for the week was just a little farther down the road.

We arrived at about 9 pm. After unpacking we made fondue, drank too much, and headed to bed for our first nigh In Switzerland.

I'm going to go this in parts. More Soon!

Love you all

Kim