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Lindt Chocolate Factory in Zurich

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Switzerland is the home of Lindt Chocolate. The Swiss chocolatier and confectionery company was founded in 1845. The Headquarters and Factory are in Kilchberg which is a municipality of Zurich. We left Wengen and arrived in Zurich around noon.. but more on Zurich later. We had wanted to go to the Lindt Chocolate Factory.. a cousin of mine had gone earlier and done a chocolate making course and that is what we were most interested in doing. We had made our own chocolate bars at the Hershey Factory  in Pennsylvania many many years ago. But the Lindt experience promised to be more hands on.  We were not going to be in Zurich for many days and they were nearly sold out but luckily we were able to find a few spots on our day of arrival. We took a bus from Zurich Lake to Kilchberg. The Lindt Home of Chocolate welcomes visitors with an impressive chocolate fountain, standing over thirty feet tall. The seemingly weightless construction holds 900 pounds of real chocolate. Mmm.. the whole place

Two Days in the Jungfrau Region

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We left Lucerne early in the morning and headed to the Jungfrau Region. It is a region of the Bernese Oberland, at the foot of the Bernese Alps. It consists of two valleys south of Interlaken: that of Grindelwald and that of Lauterbrunnen. The Jungfrau Region is named after the highest mountain in the area, the Jungfrau.  As I have said and will say many more times.. the Swiss transportation system is amazing. The whole process is so smooth. We once again took our free bus to the train station and then got on our free train, all thanks to the Swiss Travel Pass to Interlaken. With the pass you don't need to make any seat reservations or buy tickets.. you just get on, find a seat and sit down. It was an early morning so we sat in the dining car so we could have some breakfast. This was by far the most scenic train ride. The water so jaw droppingly blue. It was a two hour journey that just flew by. From Interlaken OST we hopped onto another train to Lauterbrunnen which was quick 20 mi

Mount Pilatus

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After our lovely first day in Lucerne we spent the second on Mount Pilatus, overlooking Lucerne. Pilatus is composed of several peaks, of which the highest (2,128.5 m [6,983 ft]) is named Tomlishorn. There are two popular ways to get to Mount Pilatus, the golden route and the silver. The golden route enables you to go from Lucerne to Alpnachstad by boat (black line) then up to the peak using the cog wheel train (red line) and down to Kriens via the cable cars (green line) then lastly you take a bus back to Lucerne (yellow line). The silver route omits the boat ride and instead you take the train back to Lucerne.  Knowing that a 40 min boat ride would not appeal to the boys we opted for the quicker method, the silver route. But before I get to that, every blog I read it mentioned to check the weather of the peak.. it could be vastly different from the weather in the town. Make sure you go on a clear day.. again could differ from the town. So we checked the weather and it should it to b

One Day in Lucerne, Switzerland

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Hello! Hope you are all having a nice summer and my fellow Americans' are enjoying a lovely 4th of July weekend.   As most of you know we were on vacation.. those who follow me on Instagram  know that we were in Switzerland. We had a wonderful time.. so absolutely beautiful.  We left on a Friday evening, I am a big fan of taking red eye flights. We try to get as much rest as we can on the plane, keep the first day light and make an early night out of it. It, to me, is better than wasting a day on travelling.  So we landed in Zurich bright and early Saturday morning. From the airport we walked to the train station next door, bought our Swiss Travel Passes and headed to Lucerne.  First a word about the Swiss Travel Pass . It's not for everyone but if you are doing a lot of travelling within the country then it might be just the thing for you. Before we left I calculated approximately how many trains, buses and cable cars we would have to take throughout the trip vs the cost and d