The Drought: Broken!

Wow - over 14 months since the last one! Should do this more frequently ... otherwise I'll lose all my followers! So, we're in the Summer holidays here, and enjoying the relaxing time ... while my wife has to work, the kids & I get to kick back at home. Still, it's not all lounging about doing nothing! We've also been on a journey to one of the furthest corners of the country (less than three hours by train), gone out for half the day for the national celebration of the anniversary of my birth (with fireworks!), and received a phone call about four in the morning from a friend needing back-up to go in to give birth. Oh, and Minecraft has updated, which means the multiplayer servers have as well ... So, our little trip - three days, down in the Swiss National Park. It was wonderful. The Visitor Centre in Zernez looks like a concrete block from outside (which it is) but inside is a wonderfully-designed layout that has a massive amount of interactive info stations - all explained by the audio guide you can hire from the desk on the ground floor (in the gift shop ...). A variety of languages are available (including English), you proceed at your own pace, and can skip anything you find boring (although I found precious few of those!). Each station has a number, which you enter on the guide, and voila - the info is there (including instructions on what to do at the interactive displays). We could probably have spent longer there, but thought it best to leave so we could find a place for dinner ... which we did, having wood-fired pizza in a traditional oven that looked like it could be older than I. Better maintained, too. That night, we slept in straw ... Breakfast was provided the next morning, once our hosts recognised that we were conscious and moving. Beautiful fresh bread, butter, jams, cheese, cold meat, yoghurt, juice and milk (with chocolate powder of course!). Once we were suitably stuffed, we headed off for the National Park itself - stopping at the Visitor Centre on the way, to pick up the GPS guide we'd booked the previous day. We caught the bus to the stop at the start of the "Kinderpfad Champlönch", a walk designed for kids - which had several "points of interest" programmed into the GPS, with some stories and info about those spots for the kids. These little gems kept them going, and gave them mini-goals along the route to keep them motivated. Snacks helped, too. Sadly, due to volume issues, we saw a few birds, heaps of butterflies, a handful of insects on the ground ... and deer tracks. The mammals all chose to remain out of sight. Still, the walk was good. We had lunch on the way, near a wooden bridge that looked fairly new (across what looked like a massive snow-melt run-off river, although you could jump over it the day we visited). At the end of the walk we had ice creams from a hotel/restaurant at the bus stop. The kids were falling asleep on the bus. Once back in town, we went to the building next to the Visitor Centre - the local pool! While most of it was indoors, there was a small pool outside - made completely of stainless steel, they kept the temperature between 30 & 38 degrees the whole time. Luxury! The springboard inside was fun, it was even more amusing when the local teenage boys tried to impress the girls with their jumps - and were then outdone with ease by a girl who clearly does diving or trampolining fairly regularly. Oh, and #3 discovered water wings ... thanks to his big brother, who spotted a box of them already inflated and available to any pool users. Now we have to buy a set, so he can "float away" on his own. Dinner was at a different restaurant (the Pizzeria Adriana), where I considered the "S" hamburger too small (although two of the kids had one each) and ordered the "M". What I received was, in fact, simply two hamburgers - leading me to the conclusion that the XL must be three hamburgers, a fact to recall for next visit - since the XL is less than twice the price of the S. Suitably stuffed, we bought ice creams on the walk back to our barn to fill our dessert stomachs. We slept much better that night ... despite another family sharing the straw. So, breakfast again - this time at a pre-arranged time! After breakfast we paid up (far less than any hotel, even less than most hostels) and shoved our packs in a locker at the train station. We went on the bus to another, shorter walk. Child #3 managed to wait until we got off the bus to spew (but only just - if I hadn't picked him up a second before, he would still have been standing on the step). The walk was nice, crossing another two snow run-off rivers. The boys enjoyed playing with the rocks, building small dams in the creek that ran through the bottom of one river bed (the other was dry). We ate lunch at a different restaurant at the end of that walk, which completed blowing our dining-out budget for the next few months. We scrambled onto the bus back into town, and returned to the pool. We also tested out my new toy, a waterproof digital camera. We got some amazing pics, the clarity both above and below the water is impressive. Oh, and #3 ran straight to the water wings on arrival, so he could "float away" again ... We finally left the pool with only fifteen minutes to get to the station, on the opposite side of the town! Luckily, we're in Switzerland - we made it with eight minutes to spare, even though we bought more ice creams on the way. Our train back was an old clunker, similar in vintage to Sydney's red rattlers. Fortunately the windows open far wider, so we could enjoy a cooling breeze for most of the trip. We had to close the windows in the 19km rail tunnel, since it was simply too loud to leave them open. We got home, had dinner, and the kids crashed. Unpacking was half-done that night, and completed the next day. Oh, and #1 child has been practising her walk to school these holidays - since she will start at the local secondary school when they're done. I think she's going to enjoy getting to school in under ten minutes, rather than over half an hour ... and she'll definitely not miss having to travel with her brother!