Photo of the Week - Three Huge Roman Vases!

This was taken back in August 2013 when we visited the town of Roskilde in Denmark, we walked through the town and saw these beauties. The aim of visiting this town was to see the Viking Museum and of course see the town. I will post soon what we saw at the museum and the town, Alessio had a good time here.

Schynide Platte

Alpine Horns

Views of the Jungfrau and Eiger

Lake Thun

The mountain goat strikes again!

Lake Brienz

At the end of September Alessio and I had a free friday, we went to the Jungfrau region, to visit Schynige Platte which is 1,967m above see level. Once you arrive in Interlaken, it is only one stop to Wilderswil, where the historic cogwheel railway is situated.

It takes 50mins to go the short 7km, but once up you are rewarded with magnificent views of the Jungfrau, Eiger and Mönch to mention but a few. It was somewhat cloudy so the views were not completely clear, but nevertheless still amazing.

Once up we stopped in the restaurant for some refuelling and then Alessio got a chance to play at the small playground. Afterwards I think we did the panoramaway which takes you to the viewpoint called Daube, it certainly gave us lots of exercise. It was worth all the huffing and puffing to see the 360 degrees view of Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, the famous mountain trio and interlaken.

I hope to visit more mountains this year including Titlis and Schilthorn, where one of the James Bond movies was filmed.

Hike from Andelfingen to Rheinau!

Goodbye Andelfingen

Lovely village of Marthalen

Oh hello there!

Alessio, Noah and Halloween

View of Kloster Rheinau

Autumn Colours

During the school holidays in October Alessio and myself went to Andelfingen to meet Aimee and Noah to go on a hike together. The hike started in Andelfingen and we would take us to the Monastery at Rheinu, it should take 3.5hours and is 13.5km.

Once we left Andelfingen we continued walking along the river Thur shore, crossing over a bridge and eventually climbing steep steps into the forest. We reached the lovely village of Marthalen with lots of wonderful houses from the 17th and 18th centuries which are all protected. We walked through the village and came upon some goats and a lovely black cat which then proceeded to follow us on our journey. We also saw unexpectedly a bunch of llamas, hidden away in a shed munching on their food. Our walk continued through more bits of forest and the black cat was still accompanying us, the boys had decided to name him Halloween. Aimee and myself were a little afraid the cat would not know its way back and we would have to take it back. But lo and behold he suddenly stopped following us, he must have know his boundries.

Finally we saw in the distance the maginficent Rheinau Monastery which is situated on a little island on the Rhine. The Benedictine Monastery was founded in 778, in 1184 a Roman Basilica was consecrated and to this day it remains one of the most significant religious buildings in Switzerland. It certainly is amazing to see from near or afar. It is well worth a visit, there was lots of renovations going on inside though and the gardens were also lovely to walk around.

We then went into the village of Rheinau and stopped for drinks and the kids could play a bit. We continued on to get our train at Altenburg-Rheinau only to discover that the station was closed so we had to walk on to Jestetten which is in Germany. It was the last thing we wanted to do and the kids were not at all happy about this extra walking which added about 30mins to our hike.

It was a lovely walk and we saw lots of great scenery, I think the whole walk took nearly 5 hours in the end! We were all happy to get home that evening!

Football Fever!

One of the things we did while back in Scotland over the Christmas period was to go to see a football match. This was planned ages ago back maybe in the summer, since I knew which dates we would be there and plus we only wanted to see a home game. So the only match on Saturday 21st Dec and it was Dundee United v Ross County, Alessio and myself were both quite excited as we had never been to see a match. before.

Only thing that would stop us from going would have been the weather, as the kick off was at 3pm we waited until around 2pm to decide. If it had been raining we would have not gone but lucky for us it was only frigging cold but not raining! So off we went and arrived at 2.30pm stood in line for the tickets and then tried to find a seat. Most of the seats had reserved written on them,  therefore we were unsure if we could sit there, in the end we did.

We were there with my father, my sister Elena and her son Jamie, Alessio was really happy and cheering United on. The half second the action was at our end which was really great and finally when Dundee United scored we all shouted and screamed. In fact it was the only goal of the match, now I will try to take Alessio to see a match here in Zurich.

Photo of the Week - Hanging Bike!

For the photo of the week, I go back to summer 2013 and the trip to Malmo we took from Copenhagen.     We had been walking for ages to see the Turning Torso building and afterwards we headed back to the train station. It did take awhile and it was bloody warm and I think by this stage of the day we were all just wanting to be on the train. There were some shops really near to the Santiago Calatrava building and there I saw this bicycle hanging. I thought is looked rather nice and took a photo, not sure what kind of shop it was anymore.

Pretty Rainbow!

Hope everyone has had a great start to the New Year! While I was in Scotland we did a trip to Stirling castle with my father. As you may all know the weather in the UK at the moment is pretty bad with high winds and flooding. The day we visited the castle was quite windy and very rainy, just pretty miserable. After we had seen all that there was to see Alessio and I went to look at the canons and then I saw the wonderful rainbow. It did manage to bring a smile on my face for a bit, the view of the hills and the Wallace Monument is amazing. I will do a post on the castle itself at a later date. On the bright side only two days left until the weekend!!

Places Visited Recap 2013

View from Victoria Peak

Paris

Leith

Stockholm

Lugano

Copenhagen

Malmo

Wengen

Munich

View from Stirling Castle

Well goodbye to 2013 and a quick look at the wonderful places I managed to visited some new and some old.

February saw Arlene and myself in Hong Kong for a week and what a brilliant and exciting place that turned out to be.

March was a weekend trip with Aimee to Paris, I love that city always lots to see and do. Even though I have been there 4 times, still so much to see for the next time.

Then in April/May a trip back to Scotland and I did many things but one was a weekend visit to Edinburgh with my sister Elena.

July I went to Stockholm to see a Calvin Harris gig which was amazing with my sister again and Aimee. Also in this month was a girls weekend in Lugano which was great fun and full of laughter!

August, Alessio and I met my parents in Copenhagen for one week, we did many trips and one of those was to Malmo in Sweden.

September my parents came to visit me. which they always do in this month as it is Alessio`s birthday. We had a weekend in Wengen and went up the Jungfraujoch which was one of the many mountains I had wanted to see.

November I went to Munich with Arlene and we had a great time at the Christmas markets and caught up with friends.

Finally for Christmas it was back to Scotland and one of the trips we did was to Stirling Castle and there were some wonderful views from the castle.

Looking forward to see where I go in 2014, already planned the trip to Norway. Happy holiday planning!