Tour de Suisse, Pt. 1

You've no doubt heard of the Tour de France: professional cycling's Holy Grail each July, the grounds for Lance Armstrong's storied achievements, the vanguard of creative athletic doping, etc. But are you aware of the Tour de Suisse, i.e., Tour of Switzerland, an annual June precursor to and often proving ground for its bigger, more celebrated French neighbor? Probably not, but that's quite all right because this blog is not about Switzerland's biggest bicycle race but instead about our route around the country during Steph's parents' early May visit! Check out the map:



Since blog pseudonyms are mandatory, we'll call Steph's mom Kay and her step-dad Archer. From their jet-lagged arrival early one Friday morning, extra tired from hauling along the first spate of gorgeous, sunny weather we'd seen this year, we rarely provided a rest. As our first visitors spending enough time to allow a really immersed touring, we hiked them all around Zürich ('A' on the map) that first weekend, especially up, down, up and down all the wonderful city hills providing the best views. Not simply content with Zürich's peak Uetliberg views (but well satisfied with the summit's enormous almond-paste filled pastries), we headed Monday to the heart of Switzerland's perhaps most renowned mountain area, the Berner Oberland region around and above Interlaken (B).

Interlaken means "between lakes" (quite fortunate, since that's exactly where the town lies) and plays thruway to the famous towering Alpine triple-peaks of the Jungfrau ("maiden"), Mönch ("monk") and Eiger ("ogre"), the latter's north face being one of mountaineering's most infamous and deadly challenges. Pictures are unfortunately lacking, since the fickle spring clouds obscured the trio during our 2-1/2 day visit; in fact we only needed to cogway-tram up to 6,000 ft., less than half the peaks' height, to witness an impressive, deep-snow encased winter wonderland in stark white contrast to the bright green of our home base in the Lauterbrunnen valley.

The Jungfrau region is a day-hiker's paradise, with the Swiss-engineered connectivity of lifts, trams, cogtrains and busses making seemingly endless hiking trails accessible. And wherever you wander, little villages always await for respite, i.e., espresso. Steph and I had actually visited two years ago (never dreaming we'd ever live in Switzerland) and enjoyed it, but upon our first return as "locals" (two hour trip) and our first mountain visit since moving in November, we felt a much deeper appreciation for the Alps as the immutable heart of Switzerland, with a cultural relevance making Zürich feel almost extraneous. Same food, same wine, same prices, same stores, similar people, and it all just seems to fit perfectly in the mountains. We hiked for two days and slept for two nights, ate schnitzel and spätzle and drank Swiss wine, trammed and walked and even stopped at the bar for a beer.

Rather than return straight home (too restful)--and to squeeze the turnip juice out of Kay's and Archer's train day passes--we departed Wednesday morning the "long way around", through the Alps (C) and the as-yet undiscovered (by us) Valais valley, across that invisible cultural border into the Swiss-French town of Sion (D) for lunch. The Valais is Switzerland's other major winemaking canton (we visited the Vaud in February) with Sion as its fairly bustling hub. No surprise, Steph and I wax poetic on anything French-food related, so lunch (with Stephanie dusting off the French yet again for a waitress who spoke no English) was predictably lovely. You can't go wrong with local food/wine combinations, so when we ordered a bottle of light white Sion wine, it was the perfect carbohydrate match for my otherwise "Atkins" salad (hey, it's healthy!) of two 3-inch-diameter breaded & fried Brie rounds with bacon-laden dressing; perhaps I remember some greens in there too.

Our only rainy weather of the visit spoiled the afternoon's plan of exploring Swiss-French Montreux on the east side of Lake Geneva, although it looked quite lovely through drenched train windows. We opted instead to loop all the way back to Swiss-German Bern (E) for a quick walk downtown and coffee, although its otherwise charming arcades and Old Town were also compromised by cold mist and blustery splattering weather (Steph, Hobbes and I visited Bern way back in November!). We headed back to Zürich (remember A?) to end the day and plot the visit's exciting second half.

Pictures to be found at: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.33omt7c3&x=0&y=-dylrza&localeid=en_US