European MFME — part 3, the end of Switzerland, and on to Germany

We were quite taken with this place.

We couldn’t stop taking pictures, the light was just so beautiful.

I have to pause right here right now and just give a shout-out to my sister Saydi.  I’m usually the sole picture-taker and I LOVED that Sayds may have surpassed me on this trip.  Lots of these pictures are from her and I meant to put her little photography emblem on each of hers but it got too complicated.

Let’s just go ahead and say that probably all the really good pictures I’m posting are from her ok? 🙂

Thanks Sayds!

This guy is the cheese expert.  It was pretty cool to watch the whole process as that humongous cauldron bubbled over the crackling fire.

Then of course we had to sample all the cheeses.

Bread and cheese.  Can’t get enough of it over in Europe I tell you.  Why is their bread so much better than ours?

After those adventures we got to a little town called Pontresina where we had dinner in one of the very gondolas they had used at one point on the mountain.

This picture is kind of out of place right here, but I want to remember that every night we talked until late, and then huddled around wherever we could get internet (IF we could get internet) and tried to communicate with all our 27 kids and all those great husbands we left behind.  Kind of fun to overhear all the facetime conversations and hear little snippets of what was happening back at home.

That night we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast in what was unanimously one of our very favorite towns, right in the Italian part of Switzerland: Zouz.

Wow.  The little place we stayed was up what seemed like ten flights of super creaky old stairs winding around in a circle.  At the top was this perfect little gathering place filled with warmth and little beds that reminded me exactly of how the house of the seven dwarfs would have looked.  We adored it.

Cobblestones as far as the eye can see.

Who the heck decorates it all so beautifully with flowers is what I want to know?  It’s as if everyone in the whole country has a pact to never litter and to always, always exhibit at least ten thousand flowers.

I didn’t get many pictures of the next town but it was equally as beautiful.  It was a town called Guarda and it’s where the famous Swiss story “A Bell for Ursli” originated.

It was the perfect spot to try to find my “bell” I had been looking for the whole trip (I loved loved loved the melodic sound of all the cow and sheep bells everywhere we went and wanted to bring an authentic one home for my kids.  I thought it would be a good way to link them to their Swiss ancestors from back in Schmiedrued.)  I figured the cheese making guy would know so I asked him where I could find something authentic, and he sent us to this house where this guy makes bells.

It was pretty awesome and we found a perfectly authentic sheep bell which I didn’t get a picture of, dang it.

Now a whole slew of pictures of Guarda because it our cars kind of got lost from each other and one didn’t have keys and we were trying to get situated, but it was gorgeously beautiful just like the rest.

Plus the bell story made it into an extra fantastic memory.

We drove away on to the next adventure in Germany…