Bellinzona

On Saturday, we had the privilege of taking a trip with Megan and Luke to Bellinzona, which is in the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland. We decided to go there, even though it was a 3.5 hr trip 1-way, because everywhere else in Switzerland was going to be rainy. In Bellinzona, we had beautiful sun and fall weather. Bellinzona is known for its set of three castles which make up a UNESCO world heritage site. The castles guarded an important intersection of three passes through the Alps, and originally was a part of Italy until it surrendered to the Swiss a few hundred years ago. Our trip there was fantastic, especially since Carsten really was enjoying looking out the window of the train at first and then afterwards, he played quietly with us in his seat. He knows from our train trips into Zurich that you cannot get up when the train is moving, and for now, he still follows that rule which made for a very pleasant trip. Once we got into Bellizona, Carsten was ready for adventure and spent a good portion of the time we were in Castle Grande (the lowest and biggest castle) climbing steps, exploring, and running around; he was bound and determined to do everything that we were doing. We spent a long time exploring the extensive walls (has a unique double wall) and grounds of the castle, and here are some photos:

Castle Grande as seen from the ground. It's built on a natural rock hill.

We took the elevator up. Don't let this pretty lady fool you. :)

Carsten was SO excited to be able to walk around and explore.

photo time!

You can see the other two castles up on the next hill.

Family photo opp. Cheesey Carsten. :)

Megan and Luke!

We climbed up the tall tower to see what we could see. Carsten climbed up all by himself!

These are the nicest/safest stairs we've climbed in a castle or church :).

On the double wall with Castle Grande in the background.

Carsten got really thirsty while we were walking. I had made the error of leaving his water in the stroller, which we had ditched a while back. Whoops. This is him enjoying his water after we got back to the stroller.

After exploring the outside, we decided to try out the museum inside the castle. I wasn't super impressed by the coin and art collection they had displayed, but the movie was good because of both the content and its ability to put Carsten to sleep. I had the foresight to put him in the Ergo carrier during the museum, so after the movie we then walked around the grounds for just a bit more and then went to a church in the downtown area. Carsten only slept about 30 min, so that's all we had time for :). Here's a couple of photos:

beautiful towers of Castle Grande

Sleeping buddy.

Pretty church

disgruntled, awake buddy

After Carsten woke up, we all felt the need for some gelato, so we found a stand and got some! It was YUMMY. We had one tiramisu and one strawberry to share as a family, and boy, it was good. Carsten kept asking for more. After walking around the town a bit, we decided to head up to the second castle, which was a pretty good hike up some stairs. We ditched our stroller, and then dragged Carsten up the hill to the castle (understandably, he wasn't quite as excited about the stairs as he had been earlier in the day). The castle was very pretty, and the view of Castle Grande and the town of Bellinzona were both lovely. The museum of this castle was really not worth the money as it mostly just had old pots without a lot of information (such as dates) to go with it. Plus, Carsten was not in the mood for it, which always influences our perspective :). Here's some photos of the middle castle (we did NOT hike up to the top one, so these are the last castle photos, I promise :) ):

Pretty Middle Castle. And no, that's not the official name. 

Pretty.

We climbed the wall, and it was nicely secured except where Carsten could have possibly fallen through to the ground where those bars are. We got him down rather quickly.

The highest castle. No way we were dragging Carsten up there :).

Drawbridge!

Huisman family photo :)

 So, I'm a little sorry for the massive number of photos in this post, but I just have to post this sequence of photos of Andy and Carsten running down the hill on the middle castle grounds.

At the top!

We're in trouble!

Buddy down.

Get back on that horse.

And he's having fun!

Buddy down again. :)

Here's some more photos of the view from the middle castle:

I love this photo. Thanks Viv!

Castle Grande

Us with Castle Grande. Don't worry, Carsten is somewhere close.

Megan and Luke with Castle Grande.

We then hiked back down to the town where we thankfully found our stroller where we had left it. We decided that we were hungry and wanted to sit down, so we found a lovely pizzeria off the main town square and had Italian (well, Swiss Italian) pizzas! The waiter was really nice and spoke English, which was very helpful. We had yummy desserts after pizza, and then got complimentary mandarin liquor to help digest the food. I understand lemon liquor is very common in Italy, so it was very similar. It was the perfect meal to end a perfect day :). Here's a couple of photos:

Vivian and I

Mandarin liquor

Castle at sunset. I bet you thought you were done with castle photos :).

Carsten thought this should be sat on.

So, I took the opportunity to get a photo in while he was sitting still :).

We ran onto a train that got us home pretty quickly (only 2 stops before Zurich), and Carsten mostly just sat on our laps and watched Bob and played on the ipod. We got home at 10 pm (late night!) and Carsten fell asleep on impact as we never heard any noises from him. It was an amazing day, and even more impressively, Carsten did super the entire day despite 2 long train rides, many steps, and an extremely short nap. Granted, we can only do that every once in a while, but still, it's nice to have a trooper kiddo for our adventures :). Thanks for going on a lovely day trip with us Megan and Luke!