We were all raring to go on Monday. Paul and Mark bought a 3 day cable car pass that allowed us unlimited rides in any of the cable cars in our region. I had done some research and something that caught my eye was a toboggan run on the Rellerli mountain. We were all drinking in the gorgeous scenery on the cable car ride up. 
The girls were fast companions. It was as if they had never lived on opposite sides of the
We were surprised at the top of the Rellerli mountain to find a great play area, bungee trampolines and a hand cranked “scooter” on train tracks as well as the toboggan run. The kids had a fantastic time on the “spider web”, a European climbing and spinning device
while we adults stared in awe at the scenery. Here Megan is swinging at the top of the Rellerli.
It was especially nice to be able to snap “family photos”. I think we’ve only had that done once before in the whole 18months that we’ve been in
Then it was our turn for the toboggan run. In these little pictures, it's hard to see how things really looked. If you click on any picture, it will get bigger and you will have a better idea of what the toboggan looked like. At the end, the sled hitched onto a chain and was towed up the mountain - very relaxing! In the 2nd picture, that little dot on the track nearest the view of the mountains is one of our crew, sliding down.
It was 620 meters long and was built right into the side of the mountain. It was GREAT FUN! You sat in something like a mini bob sled. It had a brake for those that didn’t want to go too fast down the mountain. Megan and Jennifer were old enough to go by themselves. They flew down and came up asking to go again. Here are Paul and Andrew getting their ticket punched before their ride down.
Here is Megan ready to go, with Jennifer right behind her. The bottom picture shows either Megan or Jennifer on the track.
Kathryn wanted to try the bungee trampoline. Can you believe the gorgeous scenery behind her??!
Andrew had no fear and was not scared when Paul didn’t brake much. In fact, Paul actually fell off rounding one of the corners, and it didn’t bother Andrew at all!
After the Rellerli, we had lunch at a pizza place at the bottom of the mountain in a village named Schonried. We had our first taste of Gstaad prices. They don’t offer tap water in restaurants, only bottled water. A ½ liter bottle of water was $5! We had 10 thirsty people and ½ liter didn’t
seem like a lot of water. We cautiously ordered 2 bottles. We had even more sticker shock with the food prices. A kids meal of chicken nuggets was $15! Switzerland is known as an expensive country. We were finding out just HOW expensive it was.
We were just relaxing at lunch, chatting and catching up with each other when the fun began. One after another, every kid started to spill their $5 water. The first time we reacted as we normally would. By the 5th time, we were really starting to wonder what was happening, and why so much spilling was happening with the most expensive water we've ever had! Was it due to the excitement of racing down the mountain, or being in the warm sun outside, or even the altitude? Only John and his sippy cup were immune. What was the deal?! Maybe God wanted to remind us that He would provide and we were to trust Him? It was bizarre!
We had a delicious lunch, despite the sticker shock. Here is Lauren eating lunch. She's a cutie!
After lunch, we rode another cable car back to the top of Videmanette mountain. This exploration required a cable car change in the middle. The first half was beautiful – green grass below and gorgeous mountains all around. Just beautiful.
The 2nd half was a real surprise. It was STEEP for one thing
We were going straight to the mountain peak – not a nice flat part of the mountain where there was still grass....we were going to the pointy part at the very top! Follow the thick wire on the left - that's our landing spot!
I wondered what it would look like up there, and where we would walk around. It turned out to just be an observation deck (no space on a mountain peak to wander around), but what amazing views!
This was a serious drop off if you left the deck. It was all roped off and we kept tight control of all 6 children. I caught Megan idly going down the steps to “explore”, and had to rein her back in at one point. Andrew asked if we could leave the observation deck and “climb” the mountain. Again, the answer was, “NO”! The views were spectacular and we marveled at the scenery. God created some unbelievably gorgeous parts of the world, and here we were, right in the middle of one of them. It was just amazing. As usual, the pictures are so much less than the actual view, but you can get the idea looking at these.
We were there in the later afternoon and we had to watch our time. If we weren’t careful, we’d miss the last cable car down! There was a “comfortable margin” of 3 behind us after both of our families descended. Phew! I imagine it got pretty cold up at the top of Videmanette mountain at night!
As part of our stay at the hotel, breakfast and dinners were all included. That was a huge bonus given the prices of food in Switzerland. The dinner was a 5 course gourmet meal which was absolutely delicious. There was only one problem. Even though the hotel was indeed child friendly, it was European child friendly, which meant that the food was fresh and to be enjoyed. Therefore, dinner was a 2 hour plus affair! After a full day outside, in the fresh air, high on the mountains, and lots of excitement with friends, the kids were struggling to make it through 2+ hours of dinner. The dining room didn’t open until 7pm. They brought the kids meals first, which did help fill their tummies, but it was tough to get them through the rest of our meal – our entrees hadn’t yet arrived when the kids were completely done eating! We couldn’t blame the kids; we adults were struggling to stay fresh during that
amount of time, given our full days of activities! Paul thought there was another restaurant in the hotel that we could use instead. It only had 3 courses and it was “fast food”, but it opened at 6pm instead of 7. We discussed this option during our long and delicious gourmet meal tonight. We were in favor of giving it a try....at least once.
We were having a great time. We were still in awe of the gorgeous surroundings. We agreed that tomorrow we would go to the mountain, Glacier 3000. From the top, it was possible to see 24 four-thousand meter peaks, from the Matterhorn to the
1 comment:
Wow! What an amazing time, and what GORGEOUS scenery.
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