Holy Hotcakes!

Today, I can't decide where I'd rather be:

Uster (without air conditioning):


or

Charlotte (with air conditioning):



I definitely know where I'd rather be on Sunday!!

Wooo! Sun & 80 degrees in Zurich!

In case anyone was wondering, Switzerland is green for a reason.  It rains.  A lot.  At least it seems like a lot.  As someone at work said this week, "it really only rained once this week.  it just happened to be for 72 hours".  Luckily the rain took place during the weekdays this week and the weekend was gorgeous.  It was sunny and about 27C both days!  So we took full advantage and went exploring.

On Saturday, we headed to Rapperswil.  It's about a 20 minute train ride from Uster.  We took Sophie, walked ourselves over to the lake, sat ourselves down at a lovely cafe and proceeded to spend a few hours eating and drinking the afternoon away.  We finally got up and walked around the city along the lake.  We found a nice staircase down to the lake, faked Sophie into climbing down the steps and threw her in!  She was not amused.  :)  We let her dry off in the sun as we relaxed by the lake.  We had a light dinner at home of mozzarella and tomatoes and then the Taosuwan family went to bed by 9:45.  Yes, it was still light outside.

Today, we headed to Bern to see the bears!  According to legend, the founder of Bern named the city after the bear he killed while on a hunt.  The bear is on the coat of arms and the city has kept bears still the early 1500s.  They used to keep the bears in a pit but recently renovated the area and created a nice park for the bears.  We had a nice lunch and then hiked up to check out the Rose Garden.  Who knew there were over 200 types of roses?  I figured red, yellow and pink were enough......

A view of Bern from the Rose Garden

The Zytglogge (Clock) Tower 

Built in 1530

This little gold dude bangs the bell every hour

And these little dudes have their own moves.

It's like the world's largest Cuckoo clock!

Bern has about 8,000,000 of these fountains

and they are all awesome.

The bear park!

Rose Garden

And finally:  Sophie after 2 days of Sun & Fun

For those who are interested, we highly recommend both Rapperswil and Bern as day trips from the Taosuwan basecamp in Uster.  :)

ahhhhhh - rest

So we haven't done much the last couple of weekends.  Mostly we've run a bunch of errands.  I tried to go shopping yesterday but I found it to be a disappointing experience.  The high prices combined with my overall unfamiliarity with the brands resulted in disaster.  Not to mention, I have no idea what size I wear.  Bleh.  I'm thinking of taking a trip to London to go shop at the Banana Republic.  :)

Anyway, a pictorial representation of what we've been up to:

We are continuing our effort to try and be Swiss so we did go "hiking" last weekend.  We're still going with the downhill hiking.  Maybe sometime in the next two years, we'll start working on the whole uphill concept.  Or maybe not if I have anything to do with it.  :)  It was a nice sunny day so we took a few pictures of Zurich.  Enjoy!

Look closely.  Someone is looking at you!