Destination: Melchsee-Frutt, Switzerland

Travel Diary:

What would you do if you were granted half a day off all of a sudden? Half a day without your beloved, nerve-racking little sweetie pie-monsters, your kids…? Drink champagne and eat chocolate? Party and go wild? Or read a good book without being interrupted? Clean up the house?

Go horseback riding, would have been my answer before. But now my horse is dead so there’s no going anywhere with her (read more about that here). I’ve often heard a saying one day spent at the mountains is a day well spent. Why not? So we decided to try that one out. We quickly decided to head to Melchsee-Frutt which is reachable in less than two hours from where we live. And also something we never landed our feets on before…

Right after lunch we kissed the little sweetie pie-monsters goodbye and mounted our Skoda das Auto. Road to Melchsee-Frutt was sunny and winding like the mountain roads often are. We were planning to drive all the way up, but discovered that since it is kind of in-between-season, they were having an offer with really reasonable price for a round trip with gondola. Yes, there are some benefits in going up there when nobody else is there. No snow for the skiers yet but the summer season also hopelessly over. Perfect. So we decided to save Skoda das Auto from trouble of taking us up there and mounted the Gondola instead.

I just love the odd silence that there is at the mountains. Which is broken only by cow bells underneath your feet. The sceneries are breath-taking and naturally you can wave for the cows as you pass by traveling through the air with your Gondola. Most of the time they don’t wave back, they are too busy with their eating business or whatever, but anyway…

We put our feet back to the ground on top of Melchsee-Frutt, discovering that we had just reached the clouds. It was beautiful. Walking around a lake on top of the mountains and almost being able to touch the clouds that really look like cotton candy… streams of light coming through the clouds and making the water sparkle. What else do you need? We walked around and took some photos (like real tourists!), and my dear geocacher husband had a really fruitful day. I stopped counting after three finds.

We also looked around the little village that is located up there. Some hotels, apartments that one can rent, restaurants, playground, post office. A very well equipped grocery store that also sold hiking shoes amongst other things. Obviously everything was planned for the skiers, and was just waiting for the winter to arrive. No skiers yet, but the only thing that was spoiling my joy a little bit was that the new buildings didn’t fit in to the scenery. I really don’t get it, why do they build these concrete blocks instead of the beautiful Alpine houses??? Or of course I get it. Money talks. Easier, cheaper, faster. And maybe the skiers don’t care. But I REFUSE to ACCEPT. Period.

So we turned our backs to the concrete blocks and headed back to the lake. Too soon it was time to mount the Gondola again and travel back to the car, wave the cows goodbye on the way. My dear husband couldn’t resist but had to look for one more geocache which was located nearby Gondola Station, so I headed to the restaurant instead and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee served by immigrant waitress from the eastern bloc, guessing from her dialect. We had a pleasant conversation about how’s life here in the shade of Alps, and she seemed nothing less than happy. Good for her, I thought. My coffee moment was close to perfection. Afternoon sun was warming up the terrace (and my face!) just right, and together with the thin Alpine air it was making me sleepy, invalidating the normal effects of caffeine… Meanwhile my husband was getting frustrated trying to figure out the code to open up the geocache he had already found. In between daydreaming my eyes half-closed, I checked after him a couple of times, wondering why he was taking so long. Who knows, maybe he fell into some hole or something…?

Finally the mystery was solved and since my coffee cup had already been empty for a longer while, we decided to head back home to our little sweetie pies… yes, half a day off is sometimes enough to forget the monster-part! Skoda das Auto drove us back through the winding mountain roads and we had a happy reunion with our little ones. Perfect afternoon. Time to go back to reality…

Traveler’s daily verse: