The lunch menu did not look particularly appetizing and we decided to try our luck at Kanchi restaurant back at Luzerne which we had heard about (the only South Indian restaurant near Zurich). Unfortunately by the time we reached the restaurant it was2:45 and it was shut! Could not get over this, mostof the restuarants back in Bombay have their peak lunch time crowd at 3 p.m. Anyway we spent another half an hour looking for restaurants, but most of them shut around 2-2:30 so we had to grab a quick lunch at the Migros take away (which was not that great). We drove to Engelberg , which is a mountain town and reached there around 5:30 p.m. Our room had a balcony and had a lovely view of the mountains and after hurriedly preparing and feeding their kids their dal rice we sat back and enjoyed the view. The town was pretty quiet and the kids played in the central park for sometime after which we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, which finally had some spicy food.
View of the mountains from the hotel room
The next morning we drove to the Titlis base station and started our journey up Mt. Titlis. The first stretch is a cable car ride and we had the car to ourselves. A fell asleep for the whole ride and S was thrilled to see pigs (her current favourite, obviously because of their colour) in the farm over which the cable car was moving. We saw cows with bells, making lots of noise while grazing and a farm barn with a trampoline outside and spent many a minute giggling with S imagining pigs jumping on the trampoline. As you can see our conversations hardly border on the intellectual :)
The cable car ride up, the farm barn with the trampoline
The second leg of the climb up Mt Titlis was much more crowded and was on a 360 degree
rotating cabin (Rotair). The concept is nice, you can see the snow covered mountains in front andas the circle rotates around you can see the valley and the field you are leaving behind. But unfortunately it was peak tourist season and we were pressed like sardines in the closed cabin. I was worried for the children, making sure that they were comfortable and only too happy to get out at the second post. The third leg was a faster cable car, but much bigger with room for about 50-60 people on it, and we reached the top pretty fast. The top of Mt Titlis was breathtaking, snow covered mountains all around and lots of snow for S to play in. A was a bit overwhelmed by the snow and sat on my lap and refused to get up and walk around/play in the snow. S had a ball, making snowballs and throwing them at us, sliding down the slopes with the hubby/me and generally running around. It was very cold, and we decided to skip the snow fun activities. Actually I decided to skip it, since S and A are too young for it, and the hubby is not a fan of any activity involving height and speed. Next time.
The children got a bit cranky with the cold and we rushed to the open air cafeteria and fortified them with hot fries. As I mentioned it was peak tourist season and the main tourists are Indians (courtesy Yash Chopra films, can you imagine there was a cut out of Kajol-SRK in a DDLJ still on top of Mt. Titlis and many people taking photographs with it!) and Chinese. And in the table we were sitting, the others had brought their own Farsaan and were enjoying it with hot chai (pity they did not offer us any).
We had lunch in the self service restaurant mid way. They had a special Indian pizza which we tried, but just turned out to be the normal Margerita pizza with some carrots and haldi!!
Good trip, but too overcrowded. It was not fun standing and being squashed most of the way up and down, while carrying two kids. By the time we reached the base, we were exhausted and were pleasantly surprised to see a vendor selling samosas/vada paz, pav bhaji and masala chai. We hogged on the samosas and chai and was it ever so yummy. We then drove back to Zurich, reaching home around 6 p.m.
View from Mt. Titlis
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