Scion

Scion is the capital city of the canton of Valais, Switzerland, and when you arrive there the first thing you'll see is the large fortified church overlooking the town, perched on a hill. I needed to go check it out!

As I walked up the steady incline, I found there was another hill with a big castle-ruin on the top, aslo see the little church:




The church is undergoing an extensive rennovation, which is scheduled to be completed next year. You see all the scaffolding on the side.:



Looking down on the town:







Inside part of the church is a new museum showing articles from different periods of Valais history,

even into the prehistoric:

Spiez

Cool views from a town called Spiez, about 40 mins south of us. I once again was doing a little traveling by train on a day off, and I stopped here to check out the charming little castle on the lake front.








Little boat houses on the lake front:

Road food: Horse sausages, Alp cheese, mustard, Rivella, and bread. MMMMmmm!

Samedan

I had been off work (part time layoff type of thing) so I had made a couple of short trips just around. This town is called Samedan; it is a mountian resort town in Graubunden, the big mountainous part of Switzerland to the southeast. It was pretty much off season for them, so most of the stuff was closed, but it didn't matter to me, I was just looking around and riding the train and watching the mountains through the window!



Do to the obviously cold climate here the walls of houses are traditionally very thick, as can be seen by how far the windows are recessed back. I read that while modern technology makes faring the winter much easier, traditionally the windows are kept small and recessed like this so that they could be insulated when necessary. See the notably small windows in the upper levels of the house in the pic below. Also sometimes animals were let into the basements for warmth.





Cool decorative themes are drawn onto the houses:

Train Pics

Pictures taken from the train window

Konstanz

Konstanz, Germany is right on the Swiss border. We were just tooling around with day passes on the train, and when we walked across the border we realized we did not have any Euros, and we had to find a bank!



Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, pioneer of the rigid airship, was from here:


During WWII the town left their lights on, fooling Allied bombers into thinking it was part of Switzerland, and so they were not bombed, leaving the old town intact.






The Rhine river flows into, and then exits Lake Konztanz (Constance).

Pumpkin Pizza!

Wine for the trip home:

Schaffausen and Rheinfall

We went to Schaffausen to see the Rheinfall (Rhine river waterfall), but first we took a look around town!:



See between the buildings, through the fog, the lookout tower?

Cool old painted building:



Walking up the many stairs to the lookout tower. There were grapes all the way up the hill!




Halfway up...

It was super foggy, but in a cool way.


That is the Rhein river flowing through the town.


Me and Roo hangin out on a canon at the top:

Shelly and Roo inside the defensive structure:


And the Rheinfall, the largest waterfall in Switzerland. It was a healthy walk from the town... well actually we just took the bus. My camera really didn’t do it justice.


We had a little picnic right here alongside the falls. BLTs and wine.

Zurich

Some pics of downtown Zurich. I was headed to the eastern side of Switzerland so I got off here and did some walking around, and had a coffee at a little cafe.


Cool riverfront/lakefront.