Switzerland!

The lion statue, the flowered bridge and a restaurant in Lucerne

Today we left Venice bright and early and drove to Switzerland!  For those of you who don't know, Switzerland has 3 main languages - German, French and Italian. They also speak a lesser known language called "Romansch", but that is only in some small parts of the country.  They speak Italian in the southern part since it is close to Italy, French on the west side since it is close to France and then German in the majority of the country since it is under German and beside Austria.  I am in the German part of Switzerland.

I am staying in a town called Sarnen, which is 20 minutes or so south of Lucerne.  It's quite charming and the hotel is nice, but my room is ridiculously small - it's like a dorm room.  The hotels in the other cities were a lot bigger, but in general in Europe, they have this weird practice of putting two twin beds and pushing them together (or not) instead of just a double or queen (and that has been fine as a single traveler because the room has still been huge).  However, in my room in Italy, it was just a twin and the room was not only minuscule, but it looked like it hadn't been updated since 1952.  We had actual keys instead of the normal magnetic cards.  I actually thought it was charming and I totally didn't mind that the rooms were out of date (by the way, there are a few people on this trip who are bitching about everything that is not what they're used to at home and I want to murder them; I honestly believe that the only good way to have fun on a Costsaver type trip like this where the hotels aren't all 4 stars, you have weird showers and you have aching painful feet cuz of all the walking is to just roll with the punches and be flexible.)

The view from my room in Sarnen

In this room, it's no better than Italy (just one twin and very small - I'm almost bumping into myself!), but at least it's modern and my adaptor plug for my laptop fits in the holes here! Yay!  And despite the teensy room, please check out the picture of the view from my room.  I actually could've posted three views - that is the right view, but the centre and left view are just as gorgeous. You literally cannot look anywhere in Switzerland and have it not be a breathtaking gorgeous view (at least in my limited knowledge having been here for about 8 hours!)

Tara - I will get you this and more!

We did a rest stop about 10 minutes over the Swiss border and I found the cookies that my sister, Tara, asked me for.  She wants a much more massive quantity than just the 250g bag, but this was just to start out with.  I actually looked hard for these cookies in Germany and Italy thinking they must be there too and they were not.  I guess they really are only in Switzerland.  In any case, Tara, you have talked these cookies up so much that even after I buy your quantity and despite the fact that I am constantly dieting and do not eat cookies or sugar, I am buying a bag for myself!

Anyway, I am going to go to bed soon since I have an early call for breakfast at 7:15am, but I am not actually joining the tour tomorrow because I am going to see Heather!  Woot woot! Heather is my friend who I met at Telefilm, for those who don't know, and her husband, Tim, got transferred for his job to Zurich over a year ago.  I am going to get on the train in Sarnen tomorrow at around 8:45am and meet her in Zurich at around 10:30am.  We will hang out in Zurich for a bit and then head to her place in a suburb of Zurich (I'm assuming it is a suburb of Zurich anyway) called Horgen.  I will see her hilarious cat, Short Round, who I think is the most awesome cat ever - he's so grumpy and ginger and fluffy -

(And yes, Heather, I stole this pic of Short Round from your blog!).  And I also hope to see Tim and their son, Jasper.  Heather has told me she's making me a fondue for dinner, so I'm super excited!  In any case, it's after 11pm, so it's time for me to sign off, get to bed and I'll update you again tomorrow night after my adventure to Zurich/Horgen!

*p.s. no Euro McDonald's update today since Sarnen has no McDonald's, but Heather sent me a picture of something called "McRaclette" and after I hear the story about what this is, I will post about it.

*p.p.s. I almost forgot to mention. I am a Smurf today! I wore the top I bought on Burano Island yesterday, and while it is beautiful and looks really good on me, it leaks blue dye like crazy! My fingers were blue all day and I washed my hands about 10 times.  Then when I got to the hotel tonight, everywhere that was moist was blue - my armpits, my cleavage, under my boobs, the insides of my elbows.  Even my neck. I had to use exfoliator and scrub like crazy to "un-blue" myself and it barely even worked.  My armpits and some parts of my fingers are still blue.  It might take a while to go away.  Needless to say, that top will now be relegated to my luggage for the rest of the trip and when I get home, I will soak it in Woolite for a while to get the excess dye out of it!