More Swiss Huismans - Part 3

The last two days Jeff and Amanda were here, Andy was able to take the afternoons off. So Carsten was able to get his morning naps at home and then we stuck around Zurich a bit so we could make the most of our time all together. We met for lunch on Wednesday at the Chef School's restaurant and we were told that lunch was pretty informal and we didn't need a reservation. Apparently the hostess for the restaurant did not agree and she told us that we would need reservations for lunch and in fact, all day (despite over half of the tables being empty). Hmmmm, so we were either underdressed, they don't like Americans, or babies are not accepted at this hoity toity place. Fortunately, they also had a bistro cafe which we were allowed to eat at, so we enjoyed cheese fondue and various other lunches. Carsten was amazing through the entire meal and did a great job eating his food and then playing until we were ready to leave (about 1.5 hrs!). Here's some pictures of us at our cafe:

what a great kid :)

Jeff and Amanda!

Andy and I :)

After we were done eating I loaded Carsten up in his moby wrap (after he screamed for a few minutes in his stroller) and we walked to downtown where Jeff had scoped out some chocolate shops for our very own 'chocolate tour'. I dont' have any photos of us eating chocolate because I was too excited for the chocolate and it wasn't around for very long... :). We really enjoyed seeing the different shops and it was fun to try different chocolates (YUM!). We even ended the day by finding another truffle cake, which we just had to try for comparison :). I think Carsten enjoyed having Andy around, although despite Andy's best efforts, he really doesn't have this particular hold down yet in a way that's comfortable for Andy.... :)

notice the sunglasses....

notice the hair.... 

giddyup! 

"Ok, I'll play nice now."

That evening Jeff and Amanda graciously made us risotto, which was yummy! I really enjoyed not having to do the meal planning and the cooking :).

The next day we went to a nearby castle, Scholss Lenzburg, for the afternoon. It was situated on a pretty high hill overlooking the town of Lenzburg and was reported to be a 30 min hike up to the castle. We elected to take a bus, which was definitely the right decision. The weather was quite warm and I'm pretty sure it'd be more than a 30 min hike for us :). The castle was really quite pretty and one of the main draws were rooms set up for different periods of the castle. It took me a while when we first got there to get Carsten to sleep (it was hot and later than his normal naptime), and once everyone else had finished eating, he had finally fallen to sleep. The rooms were really cool and the one major downside for me was that I couldn't really spend a lot of time looking because they had projectors with audio descriptions going in most of the rooms which I was afraid would wake up Carsten. All in all, it was a nice castle to see and it was really nice that it was only a 20 min train ride out of Zurich. Here's some photos of the castle:

I took this photo :).

pretty gardens

Andy took this for me as we were running out to catch the bus back down to Lenzbug. I love that I was thinking, "man, I'd like a photo of the drawbridges (especially the pedestrian one on the right), but we're running short on time, so I won't ask Andy." And then he took one for me, without my asking, because he knew that I would love a photo of it. What a guy :).

We had planned on taking a bus 30 min more to get to see another castle right in the area, but then we decided that it would be better to get home and make dinner since we were running short on time. We could have waited a few minutes to get the express train back, or their was a local train directly to Stadelhofen. We elected to take the earlier local train, however, once we were on Andy and I realized that we didn't have tickets (whoops!). So we got off and then bought our tickets. Unfortunately, the place we got off at only had a train once an hour, so we were stuck. And there was absolutely nothing there except a gas station and convenience store. So, we got to wait and wait and wait and wait.  Good thing we left the castle early so we could get home early.... wait, nope :). Next time we'll remember our tickets :). 

Anyway, that ends Jeff and Amanda's time here - we had fun! Thanks for coming Jeff and Amanda!