Snowshoeing in Einsiedeln

On Sunday we went to Einsiedeln, which is a popular ski area close to Zurich (45 minutes by train). It was a perfect day for snow-shoeing, cold and sunny. I found a route plotted by someone using their phone. It is difficult to find good trail maps online, I think because everyone just "knows" these things and they are very well signed. But you need to know where to start and which direction to head, this is where a map would be useful.  The route was about 15km and took us about 8 hours, including quite a few breaks.

Benedictine Monastery. 

Possibly gold plated (or a very good gold paint), statue of Mary.

Start of the hike, you can see the Monastery behind me.

It was very cold at the start of the hike, especially as we were in the shade, at least -10 C I'd guess. We made good use of the ballaclavas and gloves Mom gave us for Christmas.

We took a break at this spot, overlooking Sihlsee. (A See is a lake, in German... so Lake Sihl)

Sihlsee and a little village.

Time to put on the snowshoes.

 For the first few hours of our hike we carried our snowshoes. The trail was partly on small roads or had been shovelled or plowed (yes really) for "winter"  hiking.  Also, it hadn't snowed in a few days so the trails were well used by walkers which makes difficult walking with snowshoes. We thought the hike was quite nice up to this point, beautiful scenery of hills and villages. But it just kept getting better.

A mountain hut where you can have a hot bowl of soup, glass of wine or beer, and maybe if you are lucky some Wurst und Brot  (sausage and bread).  We brought our own lunch with us, so we headed up the hill to the barn you can see in the distance.

A warm spot for lunch.

Up the hill from our lunch spot.

A cross with a seat at the bottom is common on hilltops in Switzerland.  

 This was the first of a number of hills, but we didn't know it as we were just following a route and I didn't really pay much attention to the elevation information.

The Mythen Peaks, along the way someone told us there is a hut on  top of "Grosser Mythen"  and the thing to do is stay at another hut in the saddle, and hike to the peak for sunrise.  We have added the Mythens to our list.

Our highest peak, the second of three.

School in Alpthal beside the bus stop.

  We hiked out at Alpthal and caught a bus back to Einsiedeln. The bus was packed with skiiers, snowboarders, and snowshoers, we were shoulder to shoulder. But you gotta love the Swiss transportation system. So nice to take a bus and train home rather than have to drive.  It was a fabulous day. We were tired but happy at the end of the day. This is one of great things about Switzerland. This weekend we are taking cross-country skate ski lessons. I was told by several people that even if you are an expert at classic it is much less frustrating to take a skate lesson than just do it on your own.  I'm looking forward to it, but looks like the weather won't be as nice as last weekend.

Christmas continued

On Christmas morning we went to Mass at the Dom, it was quite spectacular.  The sermon was in German and we were actually able to understand some words.  There was an organ, full choir, and orchestra. Unfortunately, they were in the balcony at the back of the church so you couldn't see them unless you turned around.  If we go to a Christmas mass again I think we will be a little late so we "have to" stand on the side which offered a much better (and more polite) view of the choir and orchestra. No pictures allowed during the service but following cues from everyone else, it seemed acceptable to pull out the camera for the processional.

In the evening we went to dinner and a concert in the castle.  This is the view of the city from the castle walls:

We wanted to do something special as this is the first Christmas we haven't spent with our families. Claire spent Christmas in Guatemala quite a few years back but somehow that was different.  Dinner was excellent, especially the dessert (although not as good as Torrey's Mom's or Claire's Aunt Janet's)!  The concert was also pretty good, but they played a bit sloppily, sometimes rushed and barely together.  Not bad, just not really solid musically.  Overall it was a fun evening, we sat beside a friendly couple from the UK who had been to this dinner and concert 4 or 6 years in a row.

Later than night we had video chats with our families.  I am so thankful for this technology!  It was great to see everyone!  The Hoffman's opened the gifts we sent them while we were on video chat which made it seem like we were really there.  We had to sit in the hotel lobby for the chats and the women at the front desk found it quite amusing to hear the comments from the kids when they opened their gifts.

On boxing day we went for a little hike up the Kapuzinerberg, a little hill behind our hotel with a great view.  After lunch, we went back up to the castle and toured around.   This is the cable rail system which hauls tourists up and down the hill to the castle:

This stone column in the palace was damaged during a peasants uprising hundreds of years ago.  I remembered that story from when Dad and I were in Salzburg ... 20 years ago this year!  so I had to go back and take a picture.

And the view from the castle wall, this time during the day.

Dinner was casual in our hotel room (as we were getting a bit tired of restaurant food) and a good game of Scrabble. We have added a new twist, both German and English words are allowed and you get double points if you use German!

Tuesday we travelled to Faisteneau for cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing.  Unfortunately, Torrey had food poisoning, we suspect from lunch the previous day. He spent the remainder of Tuesday and a lot of Wednesday in bed.  However, the weather was so beautful Wednesday that we did go out for a few short snow shoes.

Our apartment was great, right on the cross country ski track!

We had bought snowshoes our first day in Salzburg as they weather was supposed to be more rainy than snowy.  Thursday Torrey was fully recovered although quite hungry and we snowshoed to Hintersee, which means "behind the lake" or "lake behind".  Unfortunately, that day the weather was mediocre, rainy and almost snowing. We took our snowshoes off a fair bit as sometimes there was insufficient snow and other times the trail took us along the road.  Not the best conditions, I (Claire) wasn't fond of the ice but we were fairly determined to get some snow-shoeing in.  We were dressed well enough so didn't get cold until the end.

View from our room in Faisteneau overlooking the skating (skiing) track.

Snow-shoeing - sort of.

Hintersee

Having a drink at the local Brauhaus.

We then headed off to Munich for shopping and New Year's Eve.  Torrey had done research in advance so we hit a sports store (bike gear - check), an organic grocery store (coconut, coconut oil, spices, and other goodies - check), a mall (boots for Claire - check)!  We could have bought brand new 5.25" floppy diskettes. Most of you kids reading this won't even know what those are.

We also wandered around the Viktualenmarkt, a large outdoor market with a variety of foodstuffs from around Europe.  This was a great place to take pictures, and Torrey did (mainly in the indoor part) until the security guard made him stop.

For New Year's Eve we had a fabulous dinner at an Arabic restaurant.  We walked past it a few times to and from our hotel and it was filled with Arabic looking customers and the menu looked good. We were quite stuffed, it was at least twice as much food as we had eaten anywhere in Switzerland, and about half the cost.  We rushed outside about about 11:40 (we were finishing up a game of scrabble) to catch the fireworks. We walked to Königsplatz to watch the fireworks.

Happy New Year!