Switzerland

Switzerland was yet again one of the coolest places I've been. Still very expensive, but definitely tres cool. We ended up driving from Strasbourg into Germany and down the Autobahn into Basel, Switzerland. We decided not to stop there as it looked like a very industrial city and I really wanted to see Lucerne. So we kept driving and arrived sometime just after lunch. We parked the car in some random parkade and started to walk around. We were starving so we found a relatively cheap place to eat at called Pinoccino's (spelling?) that was filled with crazy masks - creepy. But the food was good and the lady seemed to understand us even with her lack of English and our lack of German. Then the real fun began. Tina and I found H & M, our absolute favourite store in the world. Soon they will be expanding into Canada, let's keep our fingers crossed for Victoria or at least Vancouver! So we spent a good hour in that store, while by poor dad had to wait for us. But we left with a few Christmas presents and were happy. Then we sent my dad to find us a hotel room while we wandered in and out of quite a few more stores. For a city of 58,000 people, they have a gizallion shops, and good ones too. My dad came through and found us a hotel about a 15 mins walking distance away and we headed there with sore feet and empty tummies. We braved a tasty meal at the hotel, as the entire menu was German. We eventually figure out most of it, but it took some serious time.
Tuesday morning we got up at a decent time and headed up Mount Pilatus. The steepest cog-wheel train in the world goes up this mountain, but is closed during the winter due to the snow. So we had to take a 30 mins gondola ride instead. It was pretty cool. We went up this snow covered mountain into more and more clouds. At one point we couldn't see the car in front of us and could barely see the wire holding us up. But then we burst through the clouds and it was like we were in an airplane as we were above the clouds!!! We could see the top of this mountain we were climbing and the tips of others in the distance. Tres cool. It was very chilly but we braved the cold and walked around the mountain for a bit. Most of the stairs and trails were closed due to snow but there was one tunnel through the mountain around the edge that we could walk through. It had openings along the way so we could see out onto the ocean of clouds with mountain tips as the ships. This place is highly recommended by me. I want to go back in the spring so that I can hopefully get a non-cloudy day to look down on Lucerne and hike the trails to the very top of the mountain.
After our decent we had lunch in a cafeteria style restaurant in a grocery store, despite this, the bill came to 60 or 70 cdn for us all. Yes, Switzerland is expensive. We did a city tour of Lucerne and discovered that we had accidentally walked down all the important streets when we first parked in town. Then we wandered around the shops some more until we were tired of shopping and left Lucerne. We were going to have cheese fondue but the prices were crazy, so we decided to stop somewhere on the way home. This we did, at a crazy truck stop with the best restaurant and services ever. Switzerland is the greatest! We were back to Strasbourg that night, tired but happy.
Wednesday Tina and I headed off to Paris at 11:45 and left my parents behind to finish packing and head off in the opposite direction to Frankfurt.