Meltingen to Grellingen

Today was a beautiful day for a hike! My friend and I decided to hike from Meltingen to Grellingen, the reverse of a previous planned hike that got detoured somehow. We both decided that it was much easier to follow the trail this direction. We hopped on the S3 train from Basel SBB to Laufen, then the 111 bus to the Meltingerbrücke stop. I think the whole trip took about 45 minutes to an hour. Then we just followed the wanderweg yellow diamonds and signs to Grellingen.

It was sunny and got up to about 18°C (65°F). The trail was a bit wet and muddy in some places but all in all was no problem to hike along. The bärlauch is still growing strong, and we could smell it as we passed by. There were a lot more flowers out, and many more of the trees are springing forth with little green leaves. We even saw a couple of butterflies. I was able to get a pretty good photograph of one of them. It landed in a patch of violets, which made a nice backdrop for the colors on its wings. This is definitely a hike to repeat.

Thar be dragons! Lucern and Mt. Pilatus

There are apparently a few legends about dragons on the slopes of Mt. Pilatus, which overlooks Lake Lucern. It was a beautiful day for an outing, and we enjoyed a relaxing day exploring the city of Lucern and strolling along the lake. We stopped at Restaurant Storchen for a tasty lunch - crostini with various toppings, roast beef platter, and warm asparagus salad. Next time we visit we'll have to head up to the mountain top on what is billed as the steepest cog railway. Lucern is a very clean city, and the walkway extends quite far around the lake, and is well maintained with pretty flowers and landscaping. It is possible you can walk all the way around the lake, but we didn't try that as it would likely have taken quite a few hours. It seemed like it would be a great place to live, and the view can't be beat. There were a lot of shops and restaurants, and we enjoyed walking along the old city wall where we enjoyed a spectacular view of the city, lake and mountains from the top of one of the towers.

Water tower with covered bridge and Hotel Gutsch




Old city wall and clock tower


Mountain Views




Mural and Spring flowers


Surprise! Highland cattle (they had an enclosure next to the old city wall)

Schauenberg Ruins

Saturday, March 29, 2008

We decided to try to hunt down another castle ruin today, and picked one outside of Pratteln called Schauenberg. We managed to find it, but it was closed! Apparently some of the ruins are actually falling down enough that the public can't be trusted around them. There was a little sign that said "Achtung, Steinschlag" and something else that we figured probably meant that it was closed (must remember to bring along our German dictionary!). We followed the trail around to the other side, and found an old wrought iron gate firmly locked.



I took a photo through the gate, but you couldn't see much. We were wondering about the little house that seemed to be built amongst the ruins. On the map it looked like there was another possible ruin, so we decided to head up that way. and up...and up...we ended up at the top of a big cliff, with a great birds-eye view of the ruin we had just visited. We decided that the 'little house' amongst the castle ruins was possibly a watch post or something like that, but haven't been able to find any further information about it. From there we continued back down and around to Munchenstein and hopped on a tram home.

Biel outing in the snow!

Monday, March 24, 2008

We took a trip with one of MrB's coworkers and his friend to Biel/Bienne. It was quite cold and snowy, so we didn't get to see much of the view across the lake, or much of the town, though we walked quite a ways up the hill. The town is dominated by a big Rolex factory/office building, and has a nice old part of town to wander around in. We went into an old church that had nice stained glass windows, and most importantly was warm! We warmed up in there for a few minutes before continuing on up the hill and back down and around to the lake where we watched a snow squall blow over the lake and turned into icicles. Then we headed back into the old town for a quick coffee and pastry to warm up before we hopped on the train back to Basel.

Snowy church door and stained glass



Rolex and old church clock tower

Snow squall and pretty purple flowers

Ruine Dorneck

Saturday, March 22, 2008

We had seen this ruin overlooking the town of Dornach when we were taking the train back from an earlier hike. We decided today was a good day to head out and see if we could find our way to it, even though the weather predicted was not very promising. We took tram number 10 out to Dornach, and without much help from the Swiss trail markers, managed to wind our way up the hill through the town to the ruins.

On the way up through the town we saw the strange monumental Goetheanum building. It was hailing and raining as we were walking up past it, so I didn't stop to pull out the camera and take any photographs.

Unfortunately, while you could walk around the outer area of the ruins, the inner area was closed. The sign said something about being open mid-March, but it was already past that, and it was still closed, so we'll have to go back and see what we missed at some point. Maybe it will be nice enough to take some photos of the Goetheanum building too.

Snowy ruins




Underpass