Museum, Cheese & Chocolate. Better late than never

Here are some pictures back from January that I never got around to posting.

For New Year's we drove to Lucerne and visited the Swiss Transport Museum.

It was a huge museum with different buildings dedicated to trains, planes and cars. You could easily spend a weekend here and not see everything

 Jack seemed to like the rocks in the train tracks the best

 Here is one of the big drills they used to make the tunnels through the mountains

 We took Jack to his first show in a Planetarium

 Jack's most favorite exhibit of the museum

 This was taken on my way to the grocery store. Quite a traffic jam!

 Another weekend we visited the Cailler (aka Nestle) chocolate factory

 The tour was pretty impressive and entertaining

 But the best part was the chocolate room!

 Every type of Callier chocolate was displayed here

 And it was all you can eat!! Luke successfully tasted one of everything. I was only able to try about half of the chocolates before feeling sick

 The gift store was filled with all sort of wonderful treats.

 After stuffing ourselves with chocolate, we drove a short distance to the Gruyere cheese factory.

They gave us a few samples of cheese and we went through the whole tour of how the cheese was made. At the end you have the option of getting fondue at their restaurant, but we decided to save some money and make fondue at home.

A few of my favorite things

Fresh baked baguette

Swiss cheese sampler. (Include Tilsiter, Appenzeller (my 2nd favorite), Gruyere (my favorite) and Emmentaler (the typical "Swiss" cheese with the holes in it, although it tastes nothing like the "Swiss" cheese in the states)

Double lait chocolate bar is my favorite and Luke likes the chocolate with chocolate fondant filling

Makes for a perfect meal and includes all the (Swiss) food groups.

Luke's birthday in Munich

For Luke's birthday we decided to head up to Munich. Tuesday, March 1st is a holiday here in Switzerland so he also took Monday off and we had 4 days to explore the city. Munich is about a 5 hour drive from our house so we left Friday after work and 7 hours later (after several bathroom breaks for Jack) we arrived at our hotel. 

We spent the next several days exploring the city. One of our first stops was the Hofbrauhaus

The Hofbrauhaus is one of Munich's oldest beer halls. It was founded in 1589 as the brewery to the Royal Residence.

It has a very casual feel and rows and rows of tables of people drinking beer.

We had a few beers and ate lunch here. These are the menus

Typical german (and swiss) dish of boiled sausages with a bretzel (aka pretzel). It was served with the most delicious sweet mustard. 

Enjoying their drinks

Luke wanted to try the 3 different types of beers offered here so he got the "small" glass of each. The regular glass is twice this size

Another day we were able to visit the Park Cafe (aka Lowenbrauhaus)

It had a much more sophisticated feeling

Luke enjoying a Lowenbrau beer

Jack with his fresh squeezed orange juice

Most of the time we spent walking around the city. The main center of the city is the Marienplatz which has been the central square since 1158.

On Sunday there was some type of festival going on so we stopped by to check it out:

Jack wandering around the square with his balloon

Apparently the festival was some type of event for kids. There were hundreds of kids and most were wearing costumes or face paint. Everyone was lining up by the stage to see the show so we tried to get a spot as well.

Since this was a children's event, we expected some clowns to come out with balloons or something. So we were really surprised when this is what we saw:

The kids seemed to enjoy the event...and so did the parents. I was a bit shocked to say the least. It was hours of different groups dancing for the kids in their bikinis. (Don't forget that it was not much more than 30 degrees out)

We left the entertainment to walk around the city some more.

Here are the gates to the city:

There is even a place where surfers can surf on the ice creek.

On Monday, we visited the Residenz which is the formal royal residence of the monarchs in Germany.

It was absolutely huge, with hundreds of rooms!

Here is the chapel which was rebuilt after it was destroyed in WWII

A picture of the church after being bombed in WWII

On Tuesday we headed home and made a slight detour to visit the Neuschwansteain Castle. It is one of a few castles that was used as inspiration for the Disneyland castle.

The only way to reach the castle is to walk or take a horse drawn carriage.

We opted for the carriage

Views from outside the castle

If you can see in the distance there is a bridge over a waterfall just outside the castle

No pictures were allowed inside so I pulled these from the internet. The inside of the castle was amazing. Since it is only 125 years old, the castle is in great shape. Just about everything inside was original.

But only about 15 of the planned 200 rooms were completed. King Ludwig died before he could ever finish his castle.

Leaving the castle

We missed the last carriage down the mountain and had to walk. On the way down we got some nice views of the other castle (Hohenschwangau) right across the way