Xmas in the Alps

24th December 2006

well the count down to christmas is well and truely on....

with only one sleep till christmas day, everyone was excited at heading to lucern, and hopefully snow.

breakie was at 7am, and we left munich at 7:30, first stop was in Lichenstein for lunch at 1030...

were hoping to be able to get our passports stamped, but the office was closed, changed some money into swiss francs, before boarding the bus for Lucern...

we needed to be there by 3 as that was when the last cable car ran up the mountain.

bypassed the city and headed straight for the gondolas...

it was freezing outside, but no snow down here.

we headed up the first section in groups of 4.. which took about 30mins...it was amazing we went from freezing cold, grassy hills, to snow covered trees to actual snow on the ground people skiing and tobogoning...

it was exciting...

then when we got off at the first stop, it was snowball fights galore!

it was the first time a few people had ever seen snow before too, and it was thick on the ground...

didn't get to spend too long here as dave sheppard's us onto the cable cars to get to the top of the mountain.

the cable cars somehow held 30 people... and took about 15mins to ascend to the top of mt pilatus.,

as we came up here we cleared the clouds and all you could see was a sea of clouds and mountains...

it was spectacular...

and needless to say i have thousands of pictures to prove it..

the sun was out, and it wasn't as cold as it was down the bottom.. well it didn't seem to be.

the views really streched as far as you could see,

and there were a fair few people up on the mountain for the day...we were eventually showed to our hotel...

we scored the old run down one... with 13 people to a bathroom!

but the rooms were warm...

everyone quickly dropped off their overnight bags and headed out to explore.

most of the walking tracks were roped off due to the ice covering everything... and they were rather unsafe

nothing like slipping off the side of the mountain!

hey!

we did get to climb one, which had a great view over the swiss alps...there was one section that was covered in ice, and it slightly amusing to watch people slip and slide allover the place...

it also happened to be one of the areas we overlooked from our room....

countless entertaining moments!

my poor roomate was one of the casualties. but it still didn't stop her snoring!

got some nice bruises though

came back down from up the top and went to get a hot drink... but do you think anything was open???

we'd been told that after the last cable car leaves at 4 everything shuts down... but yeah everything did!

you'd have thought since there were 100 of us stuck on the mountain with no way down between 3pm-9am... that they'd have something open!

but no

so we just sat around downing nothing until it was dinner time...dinner was an interesting and drawn out affair...both contiki groups were crammed together, of course no one sat with someone on the other tour!... had some soup, which was clear with weird little floaty bits in it.... interesting, pasta for the main,and this custard looking dessert which had an interesting texture... (i look like it should taste really good, but ince i've lost my taste buds i cant taste anything... so i can only go by what others said it tasted like!)

after dinner we ventured out over the frozen path back to our hotel, where there was a swissco happening...

lots of alcohol and laughs...and the boys ran riot...

25th December 2006

woken bright and early once again, but a tremedous thud.... got up and was looking out the window, when i hear rushing feet then crash...two bodies came flying through our door... meg jumped a mile (funny) and these two shapes are in the doorway trying to beat each other up...they needed about 4 others to pull them off each other...hahaha

i turned on the light and there's this snowball on the floor... mmmmmmmmm (this was all about 4am!)

didn't get much sleep after that... the boys games continued well into the night...

matt, and his get up the bus is leaving....

it'll leave with out you...that combined with tractor snoring roomate...

it was a lost cause...woke up about 7am by the bright sun shining in the window....

it's so great to be this high... more sunshine and there was snow everywhere...

quickly followed by an excited bec that began jumping up and down on the bed...

soon we had a huge gathering in our room..Merry christmas...

everyone was rather chipper that there was snow around... orgainised to have a snowball fight later in the morning.

headed out into the cold to breakfast in the other hotel... before boarding the cable car down into town...

to see what might be open after reaching the bottom, followed leader dave to the bus stop down the hill and around the corner, and caught the bus which took about 15mins to the center of town...

headed straight into this tiny swiss army knife shop, though the back doors... and ended up coming though behind the checkouts!!!

it was so crowded in there you could hardly see anything.

left there and headed in the back door of a chocolate shop...and bout a few souvineers...

not much choice, as nothing else was open...

eventually the other contiki group filtered in as well, so we had to move on...

headed over the bridge and around to see the lion monument...before heading back and having to settle for maccas for lunch as nothing else was open...nothing like paying $15 Aus to get a small meal!!!! and at christms no less!

as exciting as it was it was freezing, so we decided that we'd rather be cold and playing in the snow, than being cold and having no snow to play in, so headed back up the mountain...

had a massive snowball fight at the first stop....but when it started to get evil (rocks and icicles being rolled up in snow than thrown hard) we caught the cable car up to the top..

where we grabed some lounge chairs and blankets and set up to sunbake and relax...

got to laugh at our door...

it no longer locks, and all the wood is broken around it... seems when we were gone, they came around and assessed for damage...seems our door alone is going to cost 240 euro's to be fixed... the damage bill came up to 360...haahaha

everyone knew who had been the ones to fly through the door... good old matt! (you'd have thought he would have learnt after the fire extinguisher in florence!)

Dave was not a happy tour guide...also on the list was a broken lady... (they'd found this lady in a cupboard and she was a life sized woodend cutout, and someone had stuck her head on with masking tape... anyway they'd brought her out and stuck her outside tegans room, so when they opened the door half asleep in the morning it scared them half to death!

anyways instead of putting it back where they found it they'd just left it there in the corridor), along with other random items they happened to find while wandering around at night...)

went down to the lobby about 5 where dave and derrick came out all dressed up like santa to hand out our KK pressies..i was impressed everyone got really nice stuff...

headed into our special christmas dinner (in our hotel!)

first course was this awful tasting soup, but at least we had bread... followed by turkey, with these really weird egg nodle things that looked and tasted like french toast only like scrambled egg in apperance (that so doesn't make any sence... but hey!) and steamed veggies

dessert was amusing... someone came out and counted how many people there were before looking horrified and then running back out...next thing you know they wheeled out the freezer (plug still hanging out) and handed out pre packaged icecreams...considering it was meant to be christmas stars... we're thinking they didn't make enough so they had to improvise...but hey... it was good.

and we were all wondering why we were given a dessert spoon!

from there we headed down the corridor and went and watched Euro trip.

kind of cool watching it when you've been to nearly all of the places now...

headed up to bed afterwards.

it was christmas, but it didn't really feel like christmas...

but it was a good day.

i definitely enjoyed coming to switzerland, it's definitly a change from the cities we've been visiting... all the cities are all begining to blend into one another... and the fact tht everything is covered in snow, just gives it such a sureal feeling about it all...

like you'rein some sort of fairy tale..

i'm a huge fan of the snow covered trees... maybe cause we don't see them much over our way... but you just look and go ahhhhhhhhhhhhh... :o)

i'm glad we were in switzerland for christmas...