Overlook Mountain

The day after Christmas Martin, my dad and I headed over to Overlook mountain for a little walk to burn off all the extra calories we had ingested over the holiday weekend. The hike to the peak (which is at 3,140 feet elevation) is only 2.5 miles, making the round trip a comfortable 5 miles (beware the hike to the top is a lot of uphill and is quite steep in spots). Though of course when we went there was quite a bit of snow and ice towards the top but we still managed the hike in sneakers.

Here is the old abandoned hotel that is near the top of the mountain. It first opened in 1871 and apparently burned down several times throughout history and in the end was just abandoned and looted and what remains today is just the stone skeleton:



Me and my dad, at the top:



Some views from the top:







And the fire tower at the top. It's 60 feet high and we would have gone to the top but the stairs were covered with ice so it wasn't very safe. We did climb up a couple of flights just to see above the trees but that was it.



And Martin and I at the top:

Walkway Over the Hudson

This morning Martin, my dad, and I went for a walk along the walkway over the hudson. This used to be a railroad bridge that connected Poughkeepsie to Highland but it was abandoned after a fire in 1974. In 2009 it was redone and turned into a pedestrian-only walkway - the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park. At 212 feet tall and 1.28 miles long, it is the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world.

It was quite brisk this morning with temperatures in the 30's ... well below freezing with the windchill on the river. Here's a pic of some of Poughkeepsie with maybe a Catskill mountain or two way off in the distance:



My dad and Martin, starting out:



The Mid-Hudson bridge:



You can actually do a big 7-mile loop where you start in Poughkeepsie and walk over the walkway then follow the old railroad line for a bit and then come back over the mid-hudson bridge and through a bit of Poughkeepsie to end up back where you started from. We opted not to do this because a) it was really cold b) we didn't feel like walking over the mid-hudson bridge since it has cars on it and is not as peaceful and c) we didn't feel like walking on streets in Poughkeepsie. Eventually the Dutchess rail trail will be connected to the walkway on the east side of the river so you can walk a bit beyond the walkway without ending up on the mid-hudson bridge.

Here we are all bundled up:



And here's a picture of the shadow of the bridge which was neat:



For more information on the park, visit http://walkway.org/

Daisy the Llama

Daisy the llama passes through my parents' yard in Rhinebeck almost every single day. The next-door neighbors own 3 llamas and even though there is a fenced-in area where they are supposed to be kept Daisy manages to never be inside of that area. She wanders up and down the street, eating constantly, every day. Grass, small trees and shrubs, leaves ... nothing is safe.

Of course while it is legal to have a llama or two as a pet (on a 3-acre lot like the neighbors have 3 llamas is one too many) they have to be kept in a fenced-in area and taken care of. My parents have tried to have the llamas taken away from the neighbors many times since it's not safe for Daisy to be in the middle of the road on a regular basis, but so far nothing has been done. Thankfully she doesn't eat their shrubs too often.

Here she is in the street:



And a few pics of her munching on things in our yard:

A Swiss Thanksgiving

Martin and I decided to tackle Thanksgiving again this year. We ended up having a group of 11 friends over for Thanksgiving dinner - held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving since the Swiss do not celebrate Thanksgiving and therefore do not get Thursday off from work. Our guests were natives of Switzerland, Germany, the US, Slovenia, and Canada.

There are enough Americans in Switzerland that the grocery stores sell cranberries and turkeys for a few weeks in late November so we were able to find all the ingredients necessary for a proper Thanksgiving feast. Of course the turkeys weigh 12 pounds, max, so we had to buy two to feed everybody this year. So we made turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, brussels sprouts, corn, and cheesecake. Our guests brought an eclectic mix of foods like potato salad, nüssli salad (a lettuce specialty of Switzerland), caprese salad, macaroni salad (with pickles, which was awesome), Slovenian wine which has a strong cherry flavor and is quite good, an apple tort (another Swiss specialty) and of course delectable cakes from Sprüngli. Sprüngli makes a really boozy cake ... it has a cherry on top so you think it's a cherry cake but it's actually completely saturated with cherry schnapps (not American schnapps but European schnapps which have a much higher alcohol content). You can barely eat a bite of it it's so boozy and I can't believe they don't sell it with a warning but whatever.

Anyway, here are a few pics. All the guests this year were guys who work with Martin at the ETH (and some of their girlfriends).

Expovina

For two weeks every November in Zürich there is a wine expo. It takes place on 12 ferry boats in Lake Zürich and each boat is filled with booths that are manned by wine importers. Each booth has anywhere from 10 to 40 different wines for you to try and anything is possible - dessert wine, port, champagne, red/white/rose, etc. When you enter the expo you are given a book containing all the importers and which wines they have and it is literally an inch thick. We were pretty overwhelmed for awhile before we came up with a plan of attack. We tried to limit ourselves to trying wines from interesting countries like Hungary or from countries where we knew we enjoyed the wine like Chile and Portugal or from Switzerland as we are trying to determine which Swiss wines we really like. But after two hours we just couldn't handle drinking any more wine though we had only made it through about 4 of the boats. We didn't make it to the rioja boat, which was special for this year and where you could learn all about rioja. I hope it comes back next year.

The expo also has restaurants, for example an entire boat is dedicated to cheese fondue and raclette (cheese is always a good idea after heavy drinking) and another is a restaurant for fish and meat delicacies. I would guess that these restaurants are not cheap ... Martin and I got ourselves some döner kebabs at a kebab stand when we were done and we thought that was the perfect way to end the evening.

I didn't take many pictures because it was crowded on the boats but here are the few I took. Here are the boats all lined up (they're one behind the other so it's hard to see that there are 12 there but you get the idea):





Here is one of the booths. The Hungarian wines. You can get an idea of how crowded it was in this pic, though this booth was on the third level of the boat which was tight to begin with:

Fall in Zürich

Just a few fall pics from around my apartment. This fall has not been very pretty here. There are a bunch of these trees though which turn a fun orange:



Of course I have no idea what kind of tree it is. Here we are walking in the forest to the gym. The forest isn't even trying to look nice this year. Greens, yellows, and browns:





And here are some berries that look a lot like grapes:



Here is one of many green trees on the science campus at the ETH:



I never manage to get a pic of this tree in full color with all of its leaves. It's always a brilliant yellow in the fall and since it's surrounded by ugly buildings it always stands out. It's a maple and when I grow up and have my own house I'm going to plant all maple trees to get awesome fall colors:



The real reason why I took some fall pics this year is because I love the ivy that grows on some buildings here - it turns bright red and is really pretty.











And this is my favorite tree. It's at the end of our street so I see it all the time and it changed color back in August and stayed pretty for 2 full months before dropping its leaves. It really stands out though you can't tell that from this picture.

Hiking Around Flims

Yesterday was cold but sunny so we decided to fit in one last hike for the season. It was more of a walk in the woods as we had to stay pretty low (below tree line) to avoid snow and below-freezing temperatures.

There is a gorge in Flims that was created by the Rhine river and it's supposedly the "grand canyon" of Switzerland. Well we didn't find it all that impressive or even very pretty. We actually haven't found anything about Flims as impressive or beautiful as other places in Switzerland and we've been there 3 times already. But there were a few nice views on our hike, just nothing like what we've seen on our other hikes. Maybe we've just become picky.

It started out pretty cold. We took a break for a snack and Martin warmed himself in the sun:



The forest around us was about 90% evergreen trees and those that weren't evergreen were either still green or yellow or brown but I found a little baby tree growing all by itself that was pretty! Can you see it here:



A little closer:



Really close:



Martin patiently waiting while I admire my little tree:



Here's a nice view of the gorge and some mountains in the background:



There is a gourmet restaurant up in these woods called Conn. We just sat and had a drink on the patio of it, basking in the warm sunshine. You need a reservation to be able to sit and eat on the patio (well you could sit and eat inside without a reservation but that's not much fun). Next time.

There is a really pretty, clear lake called Lag la Cauma. You can swim in it in the summer time but when it's fall it's just for admiring:







And another pretty view on our way back down to the bus stop:

Fall Balconies

I couldn't help myself, I bought some more plants for our balcony. I bought different types of heather which seems to be what people here plant in the fall. It might last all winter it seems to be a sort of evergreen. Anyway, I took some pics of it. I also took a few pics of our new woodpile on our smaller balcony. It's not the biggest woodpile ever but it'll make us a few nice fires this winter.