Weekend away: Engelberg

Saturday morning I got up early ready to make sandwiches for our trip to Engelberg. The previous weekend I wasn't prepared with fresh bread for sandwiches so I decided that this weekend I will be a better wife and pack us a picnic. But André decided we didn't need sandwiches... :-( We regretted it later. Or I did...

We drove just over an hour to Engelberg in central Switzerland. André wanted to ski, but to my relief we were told that the last ski day was last Sunday. Phew! Then I was smiling and ready to enjoy the weekend! You see, I have never tried skiing before and I'm not really one for adrenalin sports. And I don't like heights. I really don't. I love the snow, but I'm quite happy to go through live without putting on skis. I'll will give it a try sometime. 

We booked into a really nice hotel in Engelberg. We were a bit early so parked the car at the hotel and then walked to the ski lifts about 5 minutes from the hotel. We bought tickets to go right to the top of Mt Titlis, the highest mountain in central Switzerland at 3020 m. I got a half price ticket with my half fare card. It's proving to be really useful and we're thinking André should get one too especially if he's going to go skiing regularly in winter. (You then pay only half price to use public transport.)

The ride up was amazing. Although there were a couple of times where I closed my eyes and had to wipe my sweaty palms I still enjoyed it. It was beautiful.

The view of Engelberg. Our hotel is there right in the middle.

At the top it was white white white and really cold!

We went into a little igloo. 

André walked up a slope to the highest point. I tried joining him, but didn't get far and he had to help me get down again. The snow was very hard and it felt so slippery. I don't like it at all. Just does not feel safe. So I watched the tourists posing in the snow while André walked up.

I did some posing myself:

We went in a stunning stunning ice cave. It's a glacier cave, 150m long with 3-20 m of ice above the cave. 

On our way back down we got out at each station to enjoy the view. The last stop before we got to the bottom we walked to a lake and André took some photos there.

View from our hotel balcony:

Engelberg means angel mountain and all over the town they had these beautiful angels, each one different. This one was at the entrance to our hotel.

We had a great time. It felt like being away on holiday!

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A visit to Heidi

Just to get you in the mood and bring back some memories:

Looking for a place to drive to on Sunday I came across Maienfeld, Heidi's Village. André and I both immediately agreed that we have to go see this! 

From Dietikon we drove 111km south along the left side of the Zurich Lake. A beautiful drive. On a Sunday the parking was free. You can also go by train as the trail starts at the train station. From there follow the red "Heidiweg" signs. You'll pass Scloss Brandi's. Follow the signs for Rofels. I think close to this was a Heidiweg sign pointing in the opposite direction. This we later discovered is for the circular route. 

It's an easy 20 min walk slightly uphill. You'll arrive at Heidi's village (Heididorf). Buy tickets to go see Heidi's house at the souvenir shop (CHF7 per adult). The house is lovely. It looks as though Heidi might walk in there any moment! You can go up to her room and see her little dresses hanging in her cupboard and the kitchen looks as though she just got up from the table.

From here you can walk up the mountain to see Peter's house and Grandfather's house and some other things. Well that's what the sign said. Apparently it's about an hours walk up and another hour down the same route. We must have missed a sign somewhere because we didn't see anything and ended up back down in the town! It was a nice walk though. We'll take visitors there next time and try again!

Here's a video with some pictures of our day at Maienfeld and Heidi's Village.

A visit to Heidi from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Weekend trip part 2: Stein am Rhein

After lunch in Schaffhausen we drove another 20km to Steim am Rhein. Next time we're taking our swimming costumes and a picnic with and spending the day next to the river. There was such a lovely summer holiday atmosphere there. There's also a castle on the hill which we planned to visit, but when we got there we felt we did enough walking for one day and just walked around the old town. We decided that next time we go there we'll climb up to the castle before relaxing next to the river!

Here's a short video clip to give you an idea of what it's like there with some photos at the end. I must give my husband credit for most of the photos I post which he took :-)

Another beautiful town worth visiting.

Stein am Rhein, Switzerland from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Tomorrow: Our visit to Heidi

Weekend trip part 1: Schaffhausen

After getting the car on Friday we had to of course drive somewhere this weekend! André wanted to also include a bit of a hike so I remembered seeing an easy hike on My Switzerland. I enjoy hiking as long as it's a leisurely stroll and doesn't involve too many up hill parts. This one said: level = easy!

We drove 60 km north to Schaffhausen which is close to the border of Germany. The google map said it would take 48 minutes it took us much longer! We got stuck trying to get onto the autobahn! The signs on the road are not always the same as the directions given by google. André's GPS is still on it's way here with all our other things from South Africa so we had to rely on my navigational skills. In the end we got the iphone out to get us on the road. All part of the fun!

We arrived in Schaffhausen and tried to find the tourism office to get a map and better directions for the hike. myswitzerland.com is a great site, but not very detailed.. Anyway we never found the tourism office. Saw it on a map and saw direction signs to it, but never actually found it!

So here's directions if you want to go there, it's well worth it. Start at the train station and follow the signs to the river. I could tell you to walk in the direction you came from, but you might come from a different direction! Follow the river downstream and cross at the bridge. You can't miss the bridge. The rest of the walk is all along the left bank of the Rhein river. After a while you'll have to leave the river (follow the yellow 'Wanderweg' signs) and you'll pass by some vineyards. Beautiful!

You'll walk through a town called Flurlingen and after about 10 min you'll reach a forest. 

Carry on along the river through the forest. Nice and cool in the shade for a summer walk.

You'll arrive at Schloss Laufen. Sadly this castle was closed for renovations. From what I understood it will open at the end of May so we were just a week or two too early. Never mind. Passed the castle we got to steps. This takes you to the most amazing waterfall!!! 

You have to experience this! It's the Rheinfall (Rhine waterfall) and apparently the biggest in Europe. 150m wide, 23 m high with 700m3 of water rushing over the cliffs every second! You get so close to the water. If you go all the way down the steps you stand on a platform and water rushes pass beneath you. Truly an amazing experience. 

You can take a boat ride closer to the falls and even climb the rock island. 

Before we went I planned for us to do all this. While we're being tourists we should do it properly, right. But when we got there just standing there was enough for us! We didn't feel like getting wet which happens when you go so close to all that water falling down a cliff. And the part about climbing the rock - I didn't expect it to be quite so high and steep and close to the falls. I don't like heights!

From here you can walk downstream past the "Rheinfall Mändli" boat landing another 15 minutes (or so they say) through the forest. At Nohl bridge follow Dachsen signpost and arrive at Dachsen train station. You can take the train back to Schaffhausen.

From the website they said it's a 3 3/4 hours walk there. It took us about an hour only! I don't know if we did something wrong or accidently took a shortcut somewhere! We didn't even walk fast. So we decided to get some more exercise and walked the same route back to Schaffhausen. All in all, with many photo stops it took us about 2 hours 40min there and back.

We strolled around the old town of Schaffhausen which is so beautiful. Cobble stone streets, beautiful old building and a great atmosphere on a Saturday. 

Look around for Haus zum Ritter with it's Renaissance frescoes:

We had lunch at a Thai restaurant. Happy to find something other than Italian! We love pizza and pasta, we really do, but it can get a bit much. Why are there so many Italian restaurants here? I know there might be many Italians but surely there are other people who could open restaurants too and serve something else.

A bit off the topic now, this week I want to try make my own pizza dough. So watch my other blog to see how it turns out!

After Schaffhausen we drove to Stein am Rhein. I'll tell you more about that and Sunday's visit to Heidi later.

What's for dinner?

Have I mentioned that I started another blog? I don't think so. It's called 'What's for dinner?' So often I've said to André after dinner, "This was so good, I should have taken a picture!" So that's what I've started doing now. Posting what we've cooked if it's something homemade. Over the weekend we had pizza two nights in a row, so I'll skip those.. Unless you want to see a picture of the pizza box? It was actually really good pizza. It was the frozen ready made ones from the grocery store. Much better than the ones we got in SA. 

So if you also enjoy cooking, go have a look. Let me know what you think.

We have a car!!

It feels sooo good to be able to drive around where we want to and when we want to! 

I guess coming from South Africa where the public transport is very close to non-existent and not that nice to use we've been used to everyone having their own car and driving wherever you want to go. Now after being without a car for a month, and actually it really isn't a problem here not having one, I really do appreciate it so much. It is just easier when you need to buy big stuff (e.g. at IKEA..) to be able to just load it into a car. 

Or buying a whole lot of groceries and driving it back home (as you can see below).

So we've been doing A LOT of driving this weekend! All day yesterday and today. That I'll tell you about in posts this week. I also took some video and I think I'll put my photos in the videos too. It'll take me some time to edit this week. Keep me busy while I wait for husband to come home from work...

To end off here's the proud owner:

And his wife ;-) 

It will be a while still before I'm brave enough to drive on the right side of the road.