Tag: travel

Sightseeing in Switzerland

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Just another dramatic backdrop in Mürren

Topping off our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I flew from Stockholm to Geneva to spend three weeks traipsing around Switzerland in June.  In Geneva, we walked around and rented electric scooters over a couple of days.  One day we took a train to walk around the medieval town of Annecy in France.  After that we were off to the other side of Lake Geneva to visit Lausanne, Vevey and Montreux – checking out the Olympic Museum, the wonderful Chaplin World and the historic castle Château de Chillon.

10-minute video montage of highlights from our time in Switzerland

Then we were off to stay a couple of nights in the tiny walled medieval town of Gruyéres – known of course for its cheese and fondue.  We visited the castle museum there and the surprisingly extensive HR Eiger museum.  We also enjoyed tours at the cheese factory La Maison du Gruyére and the chocolate factory Maison Cailler in Broc.

Continuing on, we spent a few hours in Bern after dropped off our rental car to continue by train to the main attraction for our trip, the Jungfrau region.  We broke it up by spending four nights in Wengen, three nights in Grindelwald and two nights in Mürren.  With so much to see and experience in the region and so many tremendous vistas in every direction, we could have happily spent many more days exploring the area and following the many hiking and biking trails – and perhaps we’ll come back someday to try out the many ski areas.

Staubbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen valley
Hiking towards Jungfrau peak

Besides gawking at all the incredible views every which way, some of the other highlights of the Jungfrau region were seeing the thunderous subterranean Trümmelbach Falls, ascending to Jungfraujoch and traversing across the top of the Aletsch Glacier, walking through the Grindelwald Glacier Gorge, hiking beneath the peaks of Eiger and Mönch, visiting Schilthorn peak and the Piz Gloria above Mürren and taking a side excursion into the St. Beatus-Höhlen cave system near Interloken.

The view among the wildflowers looking up to Eiger and Mönch.

After the Jungfrau region, we traveled to Zurich, stopping mid-day to see some sights in Lucerne.  We had three nights in Zurich and wandered about a bit.  We missed out on getting a tour through the Lindt Home of Chocolate (d’oh!) but our day excursion to go see the amazing Rheinfall (Rhine Falls) was so worth it.

There’s still lots more we haven’t seen of Switzerland and so I’d love to go back – and maybe in winter for some skiing in the Alps!

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Exploring Sweden

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View from Skulebergets nature reserve along the High Coast

Continuing our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I crossed over from Copenhagen into Sweden in mid-May.  We had two weeks to explore a bit of Sweden, starting in Malmö.  We visited several connected museums in Malmö before venturing out to the southern coast to see the standing stones at Ales Stenar.  After Malmö, we made our way north along the west coast, stopping in Helsingborg, staying overnight in Falkenberg, visiting Tjolöholm Castle and an automobile/aviation museum before reaching Gothenburg where we spent three days exploring the city via foot, bicycle and canal tour.

4–minute video montage of our trip

After Gothenburg, we left the west coast to traverse across the country and north to the more remote High Coast region of Sweden, stopping along the way at a castle, Läckö Slott (apparently just missing the one daily midday tour) but then overnighting in Skultuna.  Our destination was the city of Örnsköldsvik, from where we went hiking in Skuleskogen National Park, kayaking in the bay, climbing up Skulebergets and touring the coast.


Our last five days were spent in Stockholm, walking and/or electric scooting around the city, visiting several museums, including the spectacular Vasa museum which houses the world’s best preserved 17th century ship – raised and recovered from the harbor sea floor.

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Our Copenhagen Visit

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Continuing our European vacation, Darlene, her sister Kathy and I spent four days in Copenhagen – first time for all of us.  We did some sightseeing around the city, from the top of the Round Tower astronomical observatory to inside Frederik’s Church, we enjoyed a boat tour of Copenhagen’s waterways and very interesting Danish architecture.  We visited the immersive Museum of Danish Resistance and climbed up Copenhill, a surprising combination of waste-to-energy power plant and recreational site for year round hiking, skiing and climbing.  We rented bikes to tool around a bit like proper Copenhageners, enjoyed an open air street food market and strolled some of Copenhagen’s famous streets and waterfronts like Nyhavn and Strøget.

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Six Days in Ireland

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I joined Darlene, her sister Kathy and her aunt Judy on a trip to Ireland last week – a return visit for me but their first time in the Emerald Isle.  Darlene organized the itinerary which included seeing the Book of Kells at Trinity College, taking the tour at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, visiting Blarney Castle and grounds, spending a couple of days in Killarney and touring a portion of the Ring of Kerry.

Here’s a video montage of our trip:

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Saguaro National Park

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Our last stop on our road trip home was to Saguaro National Park which is split into two halves on either side of Tuscon, Arizona.  After our cave tour at Colossal Cave, we spent the afternoon cactus-touring along the scenic loop of the east park and then found some dispersed camping in the foothills back near Colossal Cave.

The next morning we made our way across Tuscon to explore the western half of the park.  Each half is a little different, including the visitor centers.  I wouldn’t skip either one.  We didn’t do any hiking but just toured the scenic loop, checking out the cactus varieties up close.  That evening we were treated to a grand sunset out in the open desert west of Phoenix, near Saddle Mountain.

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Down into Colossal Cave

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Oh look, another cave system!  Colossal Cave Mountain Park is a privately-owned park and cave system near Tucson, Arizona.  We hadn’t planned on going here but decided to stop by and check it out. As there happened to still be space available on their next scheduled tour, Darlene and I joined their mid-grade “Ladder Tour” – a little more than their basic walking tour but not so much spelunking as their “Wild Cave Tour”.  Anyway, it was fun – we’re glad we stopped for it!

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White Sands National Park

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Onward to White Sands National Park in New Mexico – the world’s largest gypsum dune field.  We spent a few hours hiking around and taking pictures.  The fine gypsum feels nice and cool underfoot – it doesn’t heat up in the sun like sand.

I had hoped to also visit the Trinity test site but it’s open to visitors only two days each year (once in April and once in October) due to the site being part of the active White Sands Missile Range. We left the park an hour or two before sunset to find a nice dispersed campsite beyond the next little range of mountains:

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Carlsbad Caverns

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Continuing on our return trip, next stop was Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas near the New Mexico border.  We checked out the visitor center and went for a hike in the afternoon before continuing on to camp on some BLM land in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  The following day was of course to visit Carlsbad Caverns.

We bought tickets for the self-guided tour and spent several hours enjoying and following the extensive walking paths of the cave system.  There are ranger-led tours to some more isolated portions of the cave but these are very limited and get booked up well in advance.  After exploring the cave at our leisure and having lunch back in the van, we waited around to join the ranger-hosted twilight event to learn about the bats that use the cave for much of the year and to wait for their grand, swarming, evening exit from the cave.  No photography allowed (or any devices or talking for that matter) but we did get to watch many hundreds stream out.  Apparently at later times of the year, you can see many hundreds of thousands of bats exit the cave.

We camped on some more BLM land that evening but woke the next day to a forecast for severe high wind and dust storm expected for hundreds of miles in every direction later that day.  We had already planned to restock food in the town of Carlsbad so we ended up just renting a hotel room in Carlsbad to sit out the storm.

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