Hoogeveen Vacation - June 16

Mt. Rigi! We headed out pretty early in order to start the 3 hr trip up to Mt. Rigi, which is on the Zurich side of Lake Lucerne. We realized on the train (about an hour into the trip) that Ashley had forgotten her train pass. We got off the train at Zug (without getting a ticket - woot!) and went to the ticket booth to buy her a ticket. The guy was really nice and issued them such that if she went back to another ticket office and presented her pass with the new tickets, she'd get a refund. After we got her ticket we waited for a train in Zug to continue on our trip. Once we got to the base of Mt. Rigi, we had to wait a bit for the cog-rail train up to the top of the mountain. I should mention that this is one of the few trains to the top of a mountain that is covered by the Swiss pass (otherwise you usually have to pay 1/2 fare), and plus, Mt. Rigi is one of the closest mountains to Zurich.

Mt. Rigi! I think it's a fairly unimpressive mountain, but it was fun to walk down and had pretty good views :).

Cograil.

We reached the top of the mountain and were greeted by a pretty good view of the Alps, Lake Lucern, and Lake Zug. This was fun for me because when I was there in 2009 there was pretty much nothing to see because the cloud deck was on the mountain (consequently I thought it was a dud...). The top of Mt. Rigi has nice cement walking paths (you could take a stroller here) and once we reached the very top (after a steep but short climb!) we had lunch. It was beautiful and fun except for all the BUGS. For whatever reason there were a million bugs (both big and small) flying around and bothering us. I must admit that I'm pretty sure Carsten ate some with his lunch... poor kid. Here's some photos of our view at the top:

pretty Alps!

haha :)

cute!

at the top!

Lake Zug.

Mom and Dad!

The whole crew!

Love Carsten here :)

ready for some hiking!

pretty :)

Swiss Ashley and Luke!

Swiss Mom and Dad! For those of you who remember, Andy and I had photos in these for our 2009 Christmas card :).

Once we finished our lunch and enjoyed the scenery we started hiking down the mountain along the cograil line. Now, I'd have to say that hiking with a child carrier, even a super nice one like ours, gives you a really good workout! Carsten fell asleep in the hiking backpack when Ashley and I were yodeling to him (I had given up on getting him to sleep and I think he must have decided that sleeping was the best way to tune us out.... :) ). We got down to the next train station and were going to have to wait about 40 min for a train, so we decided to hike down to the next train station since Carsten was sleeping anyway. This path turned out to be all cement too (I think it was a road as well for the farms). Here's some photos of our hike down:

More cowbell please!

hiking!

More hiking!

Waiting for the train down the rest of the mountain. We had fun!

Even Carsten got to have fun :).

Too cute :).

All in all, we had a great vacation! But all vacations must come to an end eventually. Thanks for coming out everyone! Carsten, Andy, and I had fun seeing Switzerland with you all :).