Luzern - July 12, 2011

Today we packed up our things and checked out of the hotel to leave the Interlaken area. We drove about an hour and a half up to Luzern arriving in the early afternoon. Our hotel in Luzern was located in the center of town so we dropped our things off and parked the car then headed out to explore Luzern. We first stopped at McDonalds for lunch.

Luzern's famous Chapel Bridge built in the 1300's

These 17th century paintings depicted life in the town
The bridge caught fire in 1993 and half of it was burned down. You can tell the new wood from the old.

We did a little walking tour of the town. This is Switzerlands first Baroque church

Soph playing in the fountains along the way

Some of the architecture around town

It was a hot day, Sophie stuck her head in the fountain to cool off

Sophie and Chris dancing. There was a street musician playing here in the courtyard


In the evening we had dinner at a Italian restaurant along the waterfront then went exploring on the ramparts, Sophie also found a park to play at for a while.

View of the city from the ramparts

Ballenberg - July 11, 2011

Today we spent the day touring a Swiss open air museum called Ballenberg. It's a large park with several hundred acres filled with old and new swiss houses, farms, etc. brought in from around the country to be preserved.

This first house was from the 1800's and had traditional Swiss costumes and musical instruments on display. Sophie got to try out the different instruments.

Most of the homes were set up as they would have looked back in the day.
They even had gardens planted outside many of the houses.
Of course there was a playgound area and a old fashioned carousel.

Climbing the barn loft

Checkin out the chickens





This was a fun water mill used to turn a wheat grinder.
Were looking at the wheat being ground inside the building
Blacksmith shop, in many of the buildings they had demonstrations going on
Pottery house

See this house? It's over 300 years old...

But check out the inside


The Swiss are demonstrating how you can live perfectly modern lives in an old building without tearing it down. They simply built a new house inside the old shell. We thought it was wonderful. We'll take one!

The backside of the modern house, the little modern addition off the side of the house was a spa like bathroom.

Old fashioned bowling game. The ball was very heavy.



Sophie enjoyed setting the pins back up

Chris and I had been to Ballenberg before 10 years ago in 2001. We tried to get this same photo taken from our previous trip.

Ballenberg 2011

Ballenberg 2001

Funny huh? Chris had a lot more hair back then.

We stayed at the park all day until closing time at 6pm. Then deciding what to do for dinner we thought, why not go back to Murren & Gimmelwald to the same restaurant we ate at 2 days ago since it was our favorite meal. So 30 minutes later we were on the gondola up to Gimmelwald.

Views from Murren again

We both ordered the exact same thing as the previous night and it was delicious again. After dinner we decided to hike down the path to Gimmelwald again, this time though we brought the stroller and ipad for Soph since the path was paved the whole way and to save Chris from carrying her all the way down.

Starting our hike

Nicely stacked wood pile. These are everywhere in little shelters dotted along the mountainside.

Soph was entertained and happy to sit in her stroller and we got to enjoy our walk and the views.

There goes the gondola overhead


Sunset on the Alps


We wandered around Gimmelwald a bit more then Soph played at the playground while we waiting for the tram to take us down to our car.