Growing up, I was a gymnast.  Mary Lou Retton was my idol and each week I spent hours in a stale warehouse turned gym by its fixtures of vault, bars, beam, floor trying to immitate her score of a perfect 10. I am reliving my gymnastics days a lot lately as I take Belén to [...]

Our final day in Switzerland was spent driving back to Zurich where Elisa showed us a great time walking around the gorgeous city.  I have a vivid picture in my mind of the vantage point above the Limmat River as well as tasting macaroons for the first time but unfortunately my iPhone’s battery was dead [...]

For our last full day in Grindelwald, we decide to take a page from the hang-gliders constantly passing through our view of the Eiger and be adventurous. We walked through town to find the gondola which would take us up the mountain to an alpine playground we had read about in the tourist brochures. This [...]

We finally arrived at the top at which point, Andy and I kicked it in fast gear wanting to get up to the lookout at the “top of Europe” and try and catch the next train down. We stopped briefly at the bathrooms where a guy puked on Andy’s shoes. Between the thin area and train in a tunnel for 50 minutes a few people were sick. We were glad the girls were not with us. Belén probably would have freaked out in that tunnel, but even more importantly, it was not advisable to bring a baby up to this altitude as the air has 20 – 30% less oxygen than sea level.

A high-tech 90-second elevator ride up 364 feet to the Sphinx Observatory and we were truly at the “Top of Europe” from a vantage point in the Bernese Alps.

The Sphinx Observatory was completed in 1937 is the highest-altitude construction in the entire continent. With multiple laboratories, a weather observation station, astronomical and meteorological domes, and a 76-cm telescope, the Sphinx has served as a headquarters for researchers in fields such as glaciology, medicine, cosmic ray physics, and astronomy. And over the years, the building has adapted to meet scientists’ needs. Today, the observatory is fully outfitted with electricity, water, telephone, internet, and even a machine to produce liquid air (this information was borrowed from here.)

Since I have already spent two entire blog posts telling you how we drove to Munich and the Black Forest, I will spare you the details of the commute to the Swiss Alps.  I will just tell you that we knew we were getting near when we started seeing views like this: This: And this: [...]

I was going to try and do all of the Black Forest in one post but it would have been way too long so it is now three. After the post-wedding breakfast, Claudia told us that we must visit the town of Freiburg on our way to the Swiss Alps. I had had her say how cute it was a c0uple of times so I convinced Andy to make the stop. We were really glad we did.

Keeping our promise to Anna probably had a few people suspicious of us crazy Americans. We didn’t have them take Anna’s place setting away (even though she wasn’t there) and so they continued to serve the phantom guest food. Each time a course was served, Andy and I took turns slinking out of the room with the plate and walking it back to the top floor of the farmhouse for Anna to consume. We would then bring back the dirty dish from the previous course. Luckily the wait staff was varied so I don’t know that they caught on. For some reason the exercise conjured up images of taking food to someone in a dungeon. Anna was happy though and we were very grateful to have her there to watch the girls.

The road to the Black Forest was long especially because the notoriously fast autobahn was riddled with construction. Between detours to quaint little German towns, stopping for meals, stopping to breastfeed and pit-stops in response to “Mommy, I need to go potty” at which time I almost wished Belén was not yet potty-trained,we eventually found ourselves driving in the dark in a foreign land with still more than an hour projected for our commute. We made one final stop at a gas station on the edge of the Black Forest where Andy took Belén to the bathroom and came back to the van with a crying child and puzzled look on his face. He then proceeded to ask Anna and I about the female anatomy and what would cause pee to not go straight down into the toilet but instead squirt up a bit getting an emotional toddler’s tights wet.

Even though the cold didn’t bother our fearless toddler, the rest of the crew was frozen so they headed back to Grammy’s for hot chocolate.