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Shan and Megan came to stay with us this week after a while visiting Megans family in Turkey. The original plan for them to sleep at our apartment was scuppered when our hot water ceased to work (it’s fixed now) just over a week ago, so they stayed at a Travelodge in Canary Wharf.

We’ve spent a couple of days chilling out and not doing too much but also had a few trips around the city to see the sights.

The other day they started having a play with my Macbook and the Photo Booth software (much like Karen did) and we had plenty of giggles making them look as ugly as possible.

They’ve walked the length of the Thames to see Big Ben, Parliment, Buckingham Palace, Harrods, Tower Bridge the Tower of London as well as all the other stuff on the way. We saw them off yesterday by walking them to the Heathrow Tube at Green Park. The last view we had of them they were squeezed like sardines onto a train that wasn’t going anywhere. Hopefully they are in Singapore by now.

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After doing everything there seems to be to do in Zurich yesterday, today we find we’re just trying to find things to fill time before we get our flight home.

Flight times to London City mean we leave Switzerland at 6pm, quite late. We’re at that stage where we just want to be on our way home now.

We’re hoping to find an internet cafe for lunch, so you may be reading this before we get home.

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Despite the trams we both slept quite well last night and were pleased to wake up to nice blue sunny skies this morning.

Breakfast came as a culture shock. After a week of five star food we had to downgrade to Cornflakes and a bap. The coffee hit the spot though.

So we spent the day walking around Zurich, it is a very pretty place, not big and so is easy to walk around the streets without a map or getting lost. The lake itself is stunning and it seems that most of the locals use it for recreation.

In the afternoon we did a bit of clothes shopping (so cheap compared to the UK).

As usual we took a few photos and made a video.

PS: We were just watching CNN and it seems Austria is suffering from extremely bad floods and a lot of rivers have burst their banks, just as happened in the UK earlier in the year. In this case, being high up in the Alps and getting snow must have helped us.

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After a hearty breakfast at The Klosterbrau and a very rushed good-bye to Alois (who was having his hair cut) and Romina (who was working on reception), we hopped on the train to Innsbruck to catch our connection to Zurich in Switzerland.

At least that was the plan.

The train to Zurich was delayed for just over 30 minutes when we arrived at Innsbruck, which wasn’t too bad, but the scrum than ensued when we boarded the train was something to experience.

Whether it was overbooked or we just picked a particularly busy time, people were everywhere, the seats corridors and toilets were jam packed. After about 10 minutes walking the length of the train we found some seats. We lasted about 30 seconds before 2 men appeared saying they had reserved them. Fair enough.

As luck would have it a couple of Austrian ladies told us that it had been announced that the train company had stuck two extra carriages at the back of the train to accommodate everyone. We were pleased but this also meant trying to walk all the way back through all the carriages, the restaurant (one table of which I had relieved of a table cloth and cutlery with my suitcase on the way through) and First Class.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too bad and we discovered a virtually empty brand new carriage being tugged along at the very back of the train. We could even see out of the back window.

An hour or so later the ticket conductor came around and informed us that the back two carriages would be un-hooked a bit later in the journey. So a bit later we upped sticks and moved ourselves further back into the train. (Back through the restaurant car of course).

We finally arrived in Zurich, Switzerland at 4.45pm and soon found our hotel following a short walk (up some very steep hills).

Dropping our bags in reception and slightly out of breath we attempted to check in.

‘We have a problem’ the lady on reception told us. Apparently they had a party of three rooms who had a sick child in a nearby hospital and needed to stay for an extra few nights.

Needless to say us two muggins were the arrivals who’d been ‘bumped’ to another hotel. It’s called the Astoria and is actually a bit further into the city (which is very pretty by the way) but is also like stepping into a 1970’s episode of The Young Doctors with staff and decor that could almost be marketed as a novelty hotel.

We’re also right on the street with trams trundling past. Quite a contrast to 5 star Alpine views. Tsk.

It sounds awful, but it’s quite hard to reconcile in our heads how we had to end up at a hotel that is nothing like the one we booked (very funky, XBox in each room, spent hours picking the right one) because of someone else’s problems. We know their kid is sick, but the hotel we are in is the same distance from the hospital. It just feels like they’ve transferred their problems onto us, so we now have to spend 2 nights of our holiday somewhere we don’t want to be.

The hotel has free wireless access but it’s not working at the moment, so you’ll most likely get the next few days entries in one big lump when we get home - or if we find an internet cafe.

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It snowed all day yesterday so we didn’t even leave the hotel and spent the day by the pool, in the Spa and in our room. Okay, but a little strange for summer. I took a short video of how it looks from outside our room window.

This morning we bumped into Alois over breakfast. He invited us with him to a meeting to see a new Hotel and Spa in Germany called Schloss Elmau.

After a short drive into Germany, we expected to be wandering around the area by ourselves, but the owner kindly invited us on the tour too. It was the most incredible place, brand new and costing €40 million it was a huge health resort in the mountains. The owner was very friendly and fascinating to listen too.

We wish we could have taken photos, but it was a little inappropriate.

After the visit we suggested to Alois that we went out with him and Romina for lunch (something we’ve been trying to organise for years) when we returned to Seefeld. We ate at Restaurant Meilerhof and enjoyed a lovely lunch with a glass of wine.

Today is the last day we are in Seefeld as we travel to Zurich for a couple of days tomorrow. We’re not sure whether we’ll have an internet connection there so the blog may go quiet for a short while.

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Snow! Snow? SNOW?

Opening the curtains this morning heralded a rather white surprise. As you can see from the picture above it has been snowing overnight. (It’s still coming down now and shows no sign of stopping yet).

It’s quite a surreal sight, with all the colourful summer flowers covered in snow, it’s in the minuses outside so it looks like we’ll be spending the day indoors by the pool.

We can’t see all the flowers surviving this for very long.

So we reckon the weather patterns world over are now officially arse over tit. When we came here in winter it was warmer than now. It is 25c colder than it should be at this time of year and we’ve had to panic-buy a warm jumper as all we packed were light T-shirts.

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Global warming? Pah! Global bloody freezing more like. The weather, (as it seems to be this year) has taken a turn for the worse so that it’s actually colder now than it was when we came in winter. It dropped to 0c (from a lovely 21c yesterday) today and snowed. In summer.

We’d already reserved ourselves a trip out to Neuschwanstein Castle and Obergammau for today so we thought we’d better go.

The castle is where Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was filmed and is apparently the place that Walt Disney based his company logo on.

It was freezing cold and pouring with rain but we braved the walk up the steep hill to the top. It was nice but the wet weather didn’t help things.

Next on the list was Obergammau, a small village in Bavaria where they hold ‘The Passion’ every ten years. It began hundreds of years ago when they prayed to be saved from the Great Plague if they promised to perform the play every ten years.

Returning back to Seefeld the snow started to fall. Unheard of for this time of year but we’re used to this by now.

After a quick meal out we returned to our room to find it ‘turned down’ as usual. We did like the way the housekeepers has re-arranged my shorts and t-shirt on my bed though. :o)

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Alois is evil. He plied us with alcohol and food until we could no longer say no.

Starting with beer, then Champagne, Red Wine, Schnapps, Gin, Vodka, Vodka and more vodka we left the hotel and journeyed down to Innsbruck.

Returning at 6am, it was delightful to be in bed for all of 5 minutes when a ruddy great canon started firing very loudly. (Apparently on Sundays they fire the canon in the direction of the church. Seems a little cruel).

Thus, today is a write off.

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