Once more to the breach

How do you know you need to start blogging again?  When your girlfriend, who has been been blogging about her now 10 day-old Spanish experience, has almost as many posts as you do.

My sources tell me that when we left our intrepid heroes they had just finished jetting down an Alpine slope at 9:00 PM. That fearful task finished, we headed back to our hostel where, if memory serves, we spent the entire evening watching movies in the hostel's movie lounge.  It was great hostel.

(See, this is why you shouldn't wait so long to write blog entries; you forget the exact details, which of course can provide a springing-off point for discussions on other matters.  Don't do what I do)

Skiing was on our agenda in the near future, but we had decided to wait another day to ski on the North American-based assumption that going mid-week would lessen the crowds.  More on this later.  Monday therefore became the day that we would see Lucerne, the picturesque Swiss city next to Lake Lucerne and nestled in among a ring of mountains.  Though not particularly significant for anything much, it looked pretty in pictures and had a really old wooden covered bridge (a lot older than Ada's).  We booked the tickets.

Continuing what would be a vacation-long trend, the weather sucked; it was misting and 40 degrees the whole time we were in Lucerne; Becca and I joked, not un-seriously, that it was the worst possible weather for walking around a city.  The rain couldn't altogether destroy Lucerne's undeniable charm, however; it is indeed a very pretty city, with big, old, Victorian-looking buildings lining the river which divides the city and a quaint old city with murals covering the walls of plazas.  At the top of the hill which slanted up away from the river was the old city wall, and climbing up to them provided a great view of the city.  I love looking out over European cities; the humanity is so much more evident.  You can see all the rooftops of the buildings where there are clotheslines or deck chairs or old furniture or some combination of totally different stuff.  It's like a tiny, tiny window into the city that you don't see from the H&M discount rack or the overpriced restaurant booth.

After ascending to the wall, we descended down to the banks of the river and I stared down through the crystal-clear water while Becca let her inner artist talk her into taking pictures of swans.  The water in Switzerland is unbelievably clear.  When we were up in the mountains a few days before there were water fountains, outside in the street, feeding directly from the mountain streams.  Great country?  I say so.

But even great countries have Christmas markets, which is where we ended up next.  That's actually not fair; I have a certain fondness for Christmas markets, mostly because I like happy things and Christmas is a happy time filled with happy souvenirs.  In keeping with the season, I bought two small hand-carved wooden angels which had slipped past the Swiss embargo on reasonably priced items, and we headed back in the direction of the old city to eat dinner and then board our train back to Interlaken.  We wanted to get back early enough to get a good night's sleep; it's not every day that you get to fulfill a life-long dream, and the Alps weren't going to ski themselves.