NYC Fun

Chris had some work something in NYC the week before Thanksgiving so I decided to follow him out a few days later and enjoy some shopping and sights before we headed down to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. Leigh-Ann, his sister, and her family live in Franklin, just outside of Nashville. Being without BBQ for 5 months we were ready for some smokey goodness.

I had so much fun in NYC! There was a trip to the Natural History Museum and a fantastic walk through Central Park. The museum had free WiFi so it was fun to Skype while looking at fossils!

A face only a mother could love...

I crossed the park and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I took a guided tour of the impressionists.

Don't you love tour guides?

The next day I headed out by myself again and took an art history tour of the Rockefeller Center buildings.

The Tree imprisoned for another couple of days... They actually saw off branches and chain them onto the "skimpy" areas. They are also putting on the lights.

Of course I had to go to the "Top of the Rock"

Later that night we went shopping at Century 21. Which was insane and it took me 30 minutes to get a hold of myself and start enjoying looking at a million racks of clothes.

Saturday I shopped around 5th Ave while Chris finished up his business. Then we met up for a tour around the city including Greenwich Village, Madison Square Garden, Empire State Building, and Soho. We ended the night with Chris surprising me with Mamma Mia tickets and a midnight walk around Times Square. Fantastic!

Sunday morning we got up early and went to Liberty and Ellis Islands.

Chris snoozing on the lawn beneath Miss Liberty

Liberty and Ellis were my favorite parts of our trip. It made me proud to be an American, especially since we were the minority during our visit.

Wall Street Bull

Carnegie Deli. Best corned beef ever!

It's London, Baby!

London has been at the top of my travel list for such a long time and I have to say it did not disappoint! This was a complete vacation. Chris had no meetings, conferences, or business calls. We started our day off by eating a fantastic burger with fries and all the ketchup we wanted. No paying for packets here! Then we headed to Westminster Abbey for an amazing tour.
The Abbey was incredible. I had no idea how many people were interred there.

We took a long river walk from St. Peter's to Tower Bridge/Tower of London. The only bad weather we had!

The next morning we headed back to Tower of London and had a great tour by a "Beefeater". My favorite was seeing the crown jewels. We were the first ones in the building so we kept riding the moving sidewalk back and forth in front of the jewel cases. No pictures allowed, of course.

Chris's highlight of the trip has to be the International Rugby Match we went to at Twickenham. England played the New Zealand All Blacks. We took a train to the stadium, bought some scalped tickets and had an amazing time.

Since Chris played Rugby in high school and college, this has been a dream to see one of these matches. The stadium hold 82,000+ and was a sell out match.

Great view!

I love this game. Can you see the guy that is about to get punched in the kidney?

Okay, you might ask why would I took a picture of a guy behind us that is sleeping. Between the halves, this gentleman decided he had a little too much to drink and puked all over. Luckily his friend was with him and took him for "a walk". He came back and sat right behind Chris and we joked a little with him and he even pretended to use Chris's hood to vomit in. He passed out shortly after that and all was quiet until 5 minutes before the game was over. Two mistakes were made: one, that his friend handed him a half empty beer cup which induced him into vomiting and two, that his friend was holding the cup for him. So not only did drunk old guy barf on himself, but on his poor friend too! We actually sat with the guy that sold us the tickets and all his friends. Great way to enjoy the environment and camaraderie. Beer was spilled, fried foods were eaten, T-shirts were shot into the crowd inducing riots, and there was singing in unison. The final score was England 16-26 New Zealand.

You can't go to London and not have curry (at least in Chris's mind that's true) so after the game we went to an Indian restaurant and had some lip-burning, eye-watering curries.

Our last day in London we went to Buckingham Palace and just happened to be there for changing of the guard. We had a great walk in St. James Park and then around Parliament Then because Chris made me eat curry I got to go to Harrods for some shopping!

I can't wait to get back there. Three days was just not enough time!

Lessons Learned Part 2

So Chris had an interesting experience a while ago with our car. I got a message on my phone telling me that he would be late because he thought he put regular fuel in the car. Regular fuel doesn't work too well in a diesel engine. He snapped a photo of the rental car getting towed. The rental car company told him that this happens regularly. He also found out that he wasn't the only Medtronic expat to have done this. Whatever makes him feel better! The tow truck dropped him off in the middle of nowhere and he had to walk 20 minutes and find a bus to get to a train to take him home.

Switzerland is a place of non-stop festivals and celebrations. Last weekend Chris found an exhibition that he wanted to check out. I had no idea what I was in for...

We traveled to St. Gallen and went to the OLMA "fair". It is the 68th year of this agricultural fair. It was huge!!! Blocks and blocks of street vendors, rides, confectioners, livestock pens, art, and exhibition areas that sold every thing from new kitchens to dental instruments. It was like they rolled the Box Elder County fair, the Sonoma Country fair and the Utah State Ag Day BBQ all into one giant event. The only thing that I have never seen at any one of those events was cow racing...

The races were "udderly" fabulous.

Honestly, who wouldn't buy a knife from this guy?


So on my way to the store I encountered these two cars outside our building. I had to add this for all the car lovers. The one closest is a Porsche 911 Turbo and the one further away is a Bentley Continental GT. Since the VAT tax is so outrageous making large purchases like cars about twice as expensive I can't imagine what either car would cost here.

Lessons Learned

I never thought I would be using index cards again other than for recipes, but last week I started my Deutsch (German) lessons so they have found other uses like conjugating verbs. I'm in an "intensive group course" which sounds more like I'm hanging out with Lindsay Lohan, but it just means I have class everyday for 2.5 hours. I missed the first three days because I decided to go with Chris to Valencia, Spain. Needless to say, I was very behind. There are six of us. Spanish is the primary language of four and one is from Poland, but she has spent the last three years in Spain. I have been able to brush up on my Espanol as well.

So my trip to Spain didn't start out real well. I had a few items stolen from my luggage. Nothing too expensive or irreplaceable, but just enough stuff to make me feel like my privacy was violated. It was absolutely my fault for not packing them in my carry-on...

While Chris went and did his thing at a conference I hopped aboard a tour bus and headed all around the city.

Plaza de Torros. Bull fighting arena and train station in the background.


I ended my day at the La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences).

Palau de les Arts (multi level theater) in the background and L'Hemisferic (IMAX and planetarium) in the foreground.

The following day Chris had half a day of work so I headed to Oceanografic which is part of the city of arts and sciences. It was a little like Marine World without the whales, rides, huge lines, and food but it was a great time filler. And I have to say the sea lions made me miss home :)
Chris joined me after he was done and I had to play tour guide for him.

In front of the Cathedral of Valencia. Built in 13th century.

This is a picture of the supposed Holy Grail. Historians believe that this is the most likely candidate since it dates from the first century. It's behind bullet proof glass and we could get maybe twenty feet from it. I dunno...

Chris happy to be done with work and ready to relax for the rest of the day. This was at Plaza del Ayuntamiento. Cool looking tower in background is the post office.

We got really lost for about 2 hours and finally found our way back to Plaza de la Virgen. From here we took a taxi to dinner and had the best seafood paella.

Happenings in Zuerich (not a typo)

I've joined the American Women's Club of Zurich. It is one of the oldest clubs of its kind celebrating 80 years in 2011. Its goal is to help facilitate integration of its members into the Swiss community. They have fundraisers for local charities, provide excursions for its members, have lunch dates and have an English library. About a week ago I went to a fundraiser lunch where one member and two Swiss played the Alpenhorn. We ate traditional Swiss recipes for hay soup and pumpkin soup.

The Alpenhorn is 3.4 meters long and made out of pine. They are used to communicate between
farmers in the mountains and to call their cattle.

I took this on my phone when I was out taking the recycling to the bins. The bins are located every couple of blocks. You have to sort by color of glass and metals. You take your plastic bottles to the grocery store along with batteries, milk containers, light bulbs and some other things that I don't have a clue what they are by the picture. Collections will take your cardboard and paper from the steps and your garbage is picked up for free on a weekly basis. Yes, I wrote free, but the garbage bags are called Zuri-sacks and you have to use them and they cost about $2 for one 35 liter bag.

This is the main street in our neighborhood. The road isn't closed, just not that much traffic at this time of day. This was literally finished in three days.

We've found a great park near by for Chopper. If there is a stick around she will find it and destroy it.

Some professional Alpenhorn music...

Last weekend we went to Jucker Farmart. I've heard great things about this place. Essentially it is a working farm that is open to the public. Every fall they have a huge pumpkin display. Their market is huge with all kinds of organic veggies and fruit.

Entrance

Part of the pumpkin and squash bins

Chris filling up a liter of yummy apfelsaft. They have glass containers filled with fresh apple juice. You find these everywhere this time of year here.


Chris and Shahab walking through the orchards.

Pfaffiker See and pear orchards.

Parent's Week

Last week we picked my parents up in Brescia, Italy. They had just been on a ten day Mediterranean cruise that ended in Venice so they hopped aboard a train and we picked them up at the station. We took a leisurely drive home and caught up on their amazing trip. The next day we headed for the city center of Zurich. We went to all the major sites including: Grossmunster, Fraumunster, St. Peter's Kirche, Bahnhoffstrasse, several different chocolate shops (how else will you know which is best?), Polybahn to the ETHZ (university), and of course ice cream at Movenpick.

They both had cameras. Lots of pictures!

Dad sitting on the old wall at the Lindonhoff (lime tree yard)

Teuscher Chocolate shop. We concluded that Sprungli is better!

On Friday We went to the Lindt and Sprungli factory store to pick up some souvenirs and then to the the Swiss Land Museum then to the ballet at the Opera House. Sorry, no pictures because we all forgot to take our cameras!

Saturday Chris drove us to Appenzell which is a little Alpen town with cutely painted fronts of buildings and picturesque landscapes. They are known for their cheese and beer.

I'm not going to lie, it was pretty cold...

We decided to take a hike a little ways out of the town into the hills. Mom was such a trooper. She had sprained her ankle on the cruise, but she didn't let that or a nasty cold stop her from coming on the hike with us.

Chris decided to take the cow trail back down. Part of the cow came home with him too.

This is where our hike ended on the ridge between hills. There were cows everywhere in the trees because we could hear their bells, but we couldn't see them.

Sunday we met up with Brett and Stacey Wall at church. They are the parents of my friend Ashly Johnson . It was so fun to see them! After church, we headed to Tellsplatte which I think is one of the prettiest places on Earth. It is supposedly where William Tell drowned while trying to save a child.

It was fantastic weather so we made my mom walk on her ankle some more so we could reach the water. She insisted Chopper came with us. I couldn't keep Chopper out of the water so I let her swim.