Holy cow! It’s national day! Again?
Well, this time it’s going to be different as the family is complete now. And since my Japanese gang never experienced a Swiss National Day we agreed to go to the mountains to celebrate…
Where else may I say!
So we went to “Emmetten” – a place on the shores of the lake of Lucerne… There you take the cable car and go up to a bit more than 1000 meter where the weather can be surprisingly “fresh”.
(Yes - watching the local weather forcast *is* a valid option - but then again - who trusts the weather forecast, right?)
After a short while trip over some ranch and farm land where you can see cows roaming around freely, we finally arrived at the farmhouse.
The thing is this: on August 1st some farmers literally “open up” their farm to the public for a nice brunch. You get to eat cheese produced on that very farm and some meat and bread and lots of other nice stuff… So you pay a flat rate fee and off you go! Very useful when traveling with hungry Japanese kids ^^…
Later we had a look around the farm to show kids that milk is actually not “growing at the grocery” but rather produced by cows on farms…
My wife was very attracted by the cheese and was even able to visit the local little cheese manufactory located within the farm itself. They are producing 6000 KG of cheese over there after all.
After a while we decided to leave and had to “crawl back up” the hill to the cable car station since walking down for 3 hours was not an option ;-). It’s not good for your knees you know…
Speaking of the cable car – it actually spans over quite the canyon and since I am getting vertigo already from standing on a thick carpet – the ride was rather unpleasant. For me that is. The rest of the bunch was enjoying like hell! A friend that was part of our little group even had “that funny story that happened last year where they had to stop the cable car due to heavy winds during the decent”.
Yea I needed this kind of information – thanks! Not! ^^
Later the day we went on a boat trip on the lake of Lucerne where we boarded on of the old steamships for a nice trip on the lake. When to steamships meet on the lake they use their impressive horns to signal each other.
Those ships are more than 100 years old and run surprisingly fast and are very well maintained. You can see a part of the engine inside as well.
After getting of the ship we went home – the kids were hungry again (what??) and went home.
All in all, a very nice and calm National Day.
Yours
Michel