January 11th, 2009, Skiing in Switzerland again ... alone
As our kids are busy finishing school or studying respectively, we decided to go skiing outside the school holiday period ... alone!
But before that, we used our wedding-present-voucher from Daniel and Eveline from Zurich, Switzerland ... but have a look yourself
So on Friday we drove to Zurich to spend the night at their house ... being pampered with a lovely meal and wine!
... Next day we drove to Engelberg in the mountains, where we would spend a night in an igloo ... here the entrance ... not knowing, what would wait for us ;-) The igloo is made every year completely out of snow, so the inside temperature is around 0-2 degrees ...
... inside we had our first Gluehwein to warm up ... but warming up was not part of the program. Although even in skiing gear, you were just cold!
In the "dining room" we had a lovely Swiss cheese fondue (accompanied with wine) ... the "curtains" you see were carved in the snow / ice of the igloo.
After dinner, we went for a walk outside with special snow shoes ... the picture shows Engelberg in full-moon light
After our return, we went to our fridge (ehm room) ... the sleeping bags were extremely warm however everything outside (e. g. your face) was cold ... but we survived and you cannot imagine what a pleasure it was to have breakfast in a WARM restaurant on the mountains!So we thank Eveline and Daniel again for this unique experience and we'll add this special hotel to our long list!
After our igloo experience we drove to Sils Maria, Engadin Switzerland, to our hotel "Waldhaus" (see circle), a family run hotel since 1908.
We lived in a lovely suite with this breathtaking view over the frozen lakes of the valley ... the hotel itself was great too and deserves its five stars ...
Monday morning, we got ready for skiing and waited for ...
... Cynthia's ski teacher, Michelle. Funnily she's married to an Argentine (!), so the two clicked immediately. To summarise: Cynthia's skiing is excellent now and we had a lot of fun!
The weather was - except for one day- fantastic, but cold ... so we had to buy extra gear to convert Cynthia into Darth Vader (left in this picture)
Every afternoon after skiing, we had a drink in the saloon (e. g. Thomas' hop tea and Cynthia's grape juice), followed by a lovely dinner ...
... and a subsequent drink after dinner!
Finally on our last day, Thomas enjoyed Cynthia's xmas present ... a horse coach ride into the Fex valley at night, where we had a lovely dinner (basically in the middle of nowhere) and a nice ride back! If you ever wanna hear (and smell) horse fart ... now you know what to book!