Before dawn's early light we were up and packing our luggage into the car.
Michel and Raymonde brought us to the airport and Yvette met us there to say our goodbyes. It has been an exhausting trip, but oh so fun!
Rod & Linda & Mavrik met us at the Redmond airport and Pat had dinner all ready for us! Hello Bend, and thanks to all our friends who made this a stress free vacation!
Back ‘home’ in Geneva we enjoyed a quiet morning which we used to start packing for our return to the U.S. The fun and excitement started late morning with the arrival of the chefs and all their goods. Raymonde’s sisters, Yvette & Josianne, arrived with bags and boxes of food to begin preparing the gourmet meal to celebrate their little sister Raymonde’s birthday.
The table setting for 11, our hosts and 9 guests.
The Menu! Five courses not including the appetizers!
Translation:
Preparing the salmon tart appetizer.
The morels and chanterelles.
The 2 chefs, tasting and correcting seasoning for the mushroom sauces.
Guests Ginette and Gilbert at the appetizer table.
Raymonde, Josianne and her husband George toasting to health and happiness. Other guests included Michel's brother Paul and his wife Giselle and us of course.
After the Champagne toast it was back into the kitchen for the chefs to prepare the fish course.
1st course, the pumpkin soup and mushroom casserole.
2nd course, Sea Bream on a bed of spinach.
The wine decanters lent even more elegance to the occasion.
3rd course, pork tenderloin with a delicious morel sauce and an assortment of vegetables.
4th course, a selection of cheeses and nuts.
Besides the soft cheeses, hard cheeses and fruit were also served.
5th course, Dessert! The exotic delight of pineapple with vanilla or mango ice cream and a delicious tropical fruit sauce.
The cake to welcome us (the American friends) was decorated as the American flag with whipped cream and raspberries! The Birthday cake was covered with fresh strawberries!
Cake!
Yum!!!!
We can truly say, that was the best meal of the entire trip, and one of the best meals we’ve ever had! It looks like a lot of food here, but the consumption was spread over about 7 hours of conversation, convoluted translations and laughter! The attention to details, from the fresh ingredients, the seasonings, the presentation, even to the warming of the serving plates was impressive. We all finished the evening off with coffee and Kirsch -the homemade cherry or pear ‘Swiss moonshine’!
The Three Sisters!
A reminder that tomorrow is a travel day (and we get to see Mavrik soon). From Michel's extensive model car collection.
We left our B&B, a working farm in Rustenschwil, near the small town of Auw, and headed to Lucerne.
Decor around the barn at the B&B.
The famous Chapel Bridge over the Reuss river that drains Lake Lucerne.
The trusses of the covered bridge are decorated with painted panels dating from the 17th century and depicting scenes of Lucerne's history.
Exploring the streets of the old town, we found many elaborately decorated building facades.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (a writer, poet and philosopher, considered to be one of the most important thinkers in Western culture) "stayed here in 1779".
More modern facade decor, just in time for Halloween!
Another bridge over the Reuss river is the Mill bridge which features a series of medieval-style 17th Century plague paintings titled Dance of Death.
We finished our tour with lunch at the Stadtkeller Swiss Folklore Restaurant. While we ate our traditional fondue we enjoyed a show of traditional Swiss music, alpenhorn, yodeling, flag throwing and good hearted, audience-participating, fun!
Cheese Fondue!
Today Michel and Raymonde took us on a tour of the area they refer to as “Suisse primitive”. It is an area encompassing 2 part-cantons that still practice their political tradition of voting by raised hand at mandatory gatherings in the town square. Maybe the ‘primitive’ description is because they didn’t allow women to participate in the voting until 1991! The landscape is very green with rolling hills dotted with the typical immaculately kept farmers houses with attached barns decorated with flowers at every window. Again it was a gray, non-photo-friendly day, so for good pictures click HERE. We stopped in the town of Appenzell to admire the traditional architecture and have lunch.
A very traditional house in Appenzell.
A row house in the shopping lanes, lots of souvenirs, but also excellent traditional crafts.
A toy store, decorated with paintings of childhood scenes.
A detail of the decorations.
We had lunch at the Marktplatz Restaurant, an excellent meal and atmosphere. It is more than a restaurant tho, the walls are decorated with carved wood panels depicting traditional scenes of Appenzellerland and they also display Scherenschnitte – the art of papercutting. The staff even serenaded Raymonde to celebrate her birthday!
A sample of the decorative wood carvings on the wall.
We continued on to the town of Stein and visited the Appenzeller cheese factory and sampled some of their products. Then visited the Appenzeller Volkskunde Museum, the Folklore Museum next door. They had demonstrations of some of the traditional work of the area. There was a cheesemaker and a woman working an embroidery loom dating from the 1850’s.
Detail of a decorated house wall from the 1500's discovered while renovating the house in the 1990's!
We finished our tour of the area at The Landgasthof Ochsen where the locals were relaxing to the sounds of the traditional Swiss band. Apparently it was a jam session because people would get up, pick up an instrument and join in, then put down the instrument for the next performer.
Today started rainy and was rainy all day. Our tour guides took us to indoor venues to experience more Swiss culture. Our first stop was the Glass Factory in Hergiswil on the way to Lucerne (Luzern in German). The museum was a fascinating tour, like a labyrinth of scenes illuminated to guide you through the 190 years of glassmaking at the factory. The exit from the museum is above the factory floor where you can watch the craftsmen blow, shape and form the glass.
A line of glass threads mark the path of the molten glass from the furnace to the work station.
Our next stop was The Transportation Museum in Lucerne. The Museum exhibits and interprets all forms of transportation throughout Switzerland; planes, trains, automobiles, but also, cable cars, all form of boats and even space travel!
A vast array of electric trains through history are on display.
An "interactive theater" of fullsize autos, bikes, and other road transport vehicles cover one huge wall. Visitors can select the vehicle they want to see, and the robotized system conveys the choice onto a turntable for closer inspection.
The exhibits of navigation include a collection of excellent ship models.
The Aviation hall included a model of the Wright brothers plane and the Spirit of St. Louis.
We finished the day at a restaurant close to our Bed & Breakfast near the little town of Auw.