Kronberg

First off, this week has been pretty nice and sunny, though summer is officially over and it's been in the 60's and will probably continue to get cooler. Thursday I had off because Andrea and Ryan went to the Zurich zoo with his godmother. They invited to take me to Zurich so I could explore on my own, but since I wasn't invited to the zoo (she wanted it to be kinda one on one time with his godmother) I didn't really feel like taking another long train ride and was kinda pooped from Lausanne. So I decided to stay here and take the opportunity to explore Appenzell. The nice part about it is the only 10 minute train ride. So I wandered around the town for a little while and bought a few little souvenirs, like the infamous cow bells and postcards and whatnot. Appenzell has quite a few specialties that I'll have to bring home, but I'll have to buy those later. For one, the beer, which they keep a pretty good supply here in the cellar and I've sampled, so I'm sure dad would enjoy that. Another is of course the cheese, which I love and luckily mom found at Whole Foods. Then there is something called a Biber (meaning beaver in german, and why it's called that no one knows) that is like this little round cake with sort of a gingerbread flavor and a hazelnut filling, and they are also good. And then a schnaps called Appenzeller Bitter which I haven't tried, but I bought like an airplane sized little bottle to bring home because I probably won't like it.

There's already snow on the mountains!

The cathedral in Appenzell

Inside was quite pretty

Appenzeller Bitter factory, though I didn't go in

Old Town

Appenzeller Cheese! The factory is in a different town and I have yet to visit it.

Then yesterday Urs wanted to go hiking again, so we went up a different mountain I guess you could call it, though it's more like a really, really tall hill. According to the brochure it's 1663 meters high. At the top is a very nice view of the mountains on one side and the valley on the other. We walked down back into the town again, but thankfully this time it wasn't endless stairs killing my knees. At one point near the top is a cute little chapel and a little farther on is a restaurant that we stopped and ate and saw a giant bear of a dog. I think that dog wanted some of my french fries too. Then we continued on and some of the parts were a bit steeo, but luckily there were some more leveled out places that helped balance it out. At one point we're walking across a farm and all the cows were out, so we were dodging cow patties all over the place and a cow was even blocking our path so we had to make our way around it. But overall the scenery was really nice, and of course today I'm just going to be completely lazy.

Gais seemed to be having some sort of antique car thing going on when we left.

Our destination

View of Saentis at the top, though the clouds are covering the summit

Valley on the other side

A lady jumping off the top

Cute chapel

Nice view, Ebenalp is up there.

Giant bear of a dog, though I liked him.

Cows in our way

Where we hiked down from in the background

Nice little waterfall