Alpentower

On Sunday morning we took the gondola up to Alpentower for a buffet brunch with sparkling wine. The gondola ride was lovely with views of the surrounding mountains, the dairy cows on the hills (all wearing bells which rang as they chewed and moved about) and glimpses of Murmeli - the little beaver/otter like animals which live in burrows in the Alpes. Cute!

The view from the top is spectacular and we managed to catch glimpses as the clouds moved around the mountains and there was new snow up there!! After brunch - yum! we walked from Alpen Tower down to the next gondola stop - Magisalp. It was about an hour down and just beautiful!!

Wildflowers were out amongst the green, green grass and we managed to get some closer views of the Murmeli. One of them stands guard while the others wander about eating etc and if they sense any danger (eagle, people) they give a whistle and everyone returns to the burrow - toute suite!

If I said it once, I said it a hundred times... I LOVE the bells!! the hillside echos with the sounds of the cow bells ringing as the cows wander about and eat their heads off! Its such a beautiful sound! We came across some cows standing quite close to the fence so we went through to give them a pat. I got a big cow kiss!! Man, their tongues are really rough and scratchy!!

We stopped at Magisalp gondola station and had a plate of delicious meats and cheeses with bread... tasty! I was also introduced to another swiss speciality - Rivella - its basically a soft drink, but full of good vitamins and so forth, and some kind of milk product - not sure exactly how that works but its really yummy! We caught the gondola back down to Hasliberg Reuti and headed home. Between the stations of Magisalp and Bidmi there is a trail for the Muggestutz - basically little dwarf like guys local to the region - for the kiddies to wander through the adventure trail. We skipped this walk because of the weather, so I’ve started a list of things I can do on my next visit! They’re cute little cartoon guys - probably magic!!

On Sunday afternoon we headed up to Engstlen where we had a beautiful walk in the countryside beside the lake. We saw some foxes on the hillside - more cows, and bought the makings for fondue for tomorrow night and another yummy drink made from some kind of milk product but basically like juice - blood orange flavour. Full of goodness again, sadly I’ve forgotten the name.

We had pasta for dinner, and lit a fire - this temperature is incredible!! My muscles were seizing up and I was feeling a bit sniffly! Still, the fire was fantastic and warmed up the whole house - that, and the wine with dinner warmed me up too!