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Weekend Snapshot #30

The Swiss Vapeur Parc

Lies next to the lake harbour of Le Bouveret is the Swiss Vapeur Parc. It is our Saturday destination for family fun. It is one of Europe's most magnificent miniature railway layouts consisting a lovely 17000 sq. m park and dozens of steam locomotives. The place is like a dream for adults who is fascinated with this dreamful journey into the kingdom of railways. This was also a great discovery for little children.
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Hope your weekend was a great one!

Haydee

Ticino Adventure

Ticino is the canton located in the southern part of Switzerland and their language is Italian. This is our second time visiting the area, only this time, we decided to stay in the town of Locarno for 4 days.

It takes about 4 hours of driving and a 20 minutes interesting ride on a train car. This train carry all the cars heading to the other side of the pass (Instead of taking the high road up the mountain which is close during winter time). On the way, we pass the town of Andermatt before going through the St. Gotthard tunnel (this is the third longest road tunnel in the world ). It runs from the north to Airolo in the south, and is just under 16.4 kilometres (10.5 miles) in length. This is our only entrance to Ticino during winter.

We arrived at our hotel in the late afternoon and the beautiful weather right away welcomes us . The hotel is superb (exceeds my expectation). After settling in, we took a short stroll along the quai and getting acquainted to it's surroundings and sights.

The following day, we decided to visit the town of Ascona and it's nearby town. Ascona lies in a spectacular sunny bay on Lake Maggiore. It’s one of the best loved and most exclusive tourist destinations in Switzerland. Then we drove up to the town of Ronco where one can check the vista point to have one of the best view of Lago Maggiore and the Brissago Islands. The end of the day was a short adventure of finding a "Grotto". Nothing is more typical for life in Ticino than the grottoes, simple taverns in quiet hideaway places, well in the shade of trees. They usually consist of a kitchen and a generous garden with solid granite tables and benches, where everybody sits in the coolness of the trees, drinking and eating the products of the local cuisine (such as the famous Polenta and Risotto ala Ticinese). It was so good!

The third day brought us to the center old town of Locarno. The "piazza grande" is where they hold the international film festival each year. There was a festival of Camilla in their park where various colors of Camillas were displayed. We checked the tourism office for some other interesting sights and places to see. We found the place we fancied, the Valle Versazca. The rest of the afternoon was an excursion going up the valley where the river runs wild with it's magnificient beauty. It was extremely spectacular.

Our last day was visiting the town of Bellinzone aka Bellinzona (The capital town of Ticino) before heading our way back to Vevey. It is a beautiful town with three castles. They said that it was its unique geographical position which made Bellinzona as the "key to the Alps" from the sourthern people (like Italy...) and from the north as the "key to Italy". Today, there are so much charm and beauty as you stroll the town. You can feel the old and rich history with each sights you see.

There you go...our travel report for this month. Until next time.

If you would like to see more photos from our trip, you may visit my family online gallery.

Photo Hunt: Different

Three generation of women

...a grandmother...
...a mother...
...a daughter...
all going through different stages in life...

check for more photo hunt.

Weekend Snapshot #27

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SATURDAY
Our family went to the town of Avenches. It is also renown for its Rock Festival, Musical Parade and especially the IENA, a unique 140 hectares Equestrian Sports Center. Europe's first multidisciplinary hippodrome intended as a place of both work and leisure. The pictures above where taken in the Roman theatre in Avenches. Avenches is built on the site of the Roman town Aventicum, which was the most important in Switzerland.

SUNDAY

I hope your weekend was as great and fun as mine.

Visiting Bern

Bern the capital of Switzerland is also a Canton, BE (State). It is about an hour from our town and the language spoken is a Swiss German dialect (totally different from High German). I will not go through the details about it's political info etc., just search it online if you are interested to know more about the place. We decided to take Saturday as our leisure day to stroll the town. First stop is to find our favorite restaurant. Just look at the pictures for the food we chose to eat that day.

Rösti (is made with potatoes, like hashbrown in the US) with bacon and eggs

Spaghetti with Mussels (Mine was with Risotto)

When everyone was happy and energized, we went for a little window shopping while crossing the old town. In between stop was my fascination with the fountains. They are all over the places. Like any of my excursion, i must take photos regardless of what...Just for a bit of information, Bern is also the city known for its fountains. There are probably 100 or more of them in the city and what few i found in the old center town have a very powerful images. Here are some of the fountains.

The Ryfflibrunnen

Brunnen is the German word for fountain. As much as I would like to share the perspective by taking the entire image of the fountain but, obviously failed, I can however give you a measurement of its actual size for the fountain, including statue, column, and basins. Each fountain probably reaches about 15 feet (roughly 4.5 meters) in height, with the statue being nearly life-size.

The Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen (Justice)

Too bad we didn't get a closer shot of him

Here is myself taking a pose with my children with the armor standing guard over the city fountain, and another smaller bear between his legs eating some grapes.

The Simsonbrunnen

This fountain shows the biblical story of Samson and the Lion. Apparently this fountain was paid for by the butcher's guild. It is easy to see why they would chose this image to represent their trade.

The ChindlifresserbrunnenMy favorite although it is a bit graphic and all, the Chindlifresserbrunnen (Child-Eating-Ogre-Fountain). The Chindlifresser is kind of like the Swiss boogey-man. I was a bit afraid and worried that Calvin might have a nightmare from looking at this fountain. I didn't dig on the history about this fountain (yet) but it is really strange that the people of Bern do not seem to be too fazed by this image of cannibalistic infanticide.

After what seems to be a walk of eternity, we ended crossing the bridge to our final destination. To see the famous bears. Which is literally the mascott of the town.

Just a bonus picture on our way to see the bear. I am still not sure if this is a real person posing a yoga. We had a debate with the children about it. Still continues to talk about it on our way home. It was a great day. I hope your Saturday was a fun one as well.

For more photos on this trip, you may visit here.