Yodel ay di day

Hello dear family and friends.

Where to start? I could say that we were kidnapped the moment we stepped off the plane in Basel and I would be only half lying. Our friends Hanspeter and Maja took us to their home in Zeiningen for a refreshment welcome and general chit chat before we were allowed to go to bed. Next morning, new plans and were were whisked off to Grindelwald in the Alps, about the same height as Blackheath. Well, you've never seen such excited kids as we two. Although touching on spring, there is still plenty of snow about and their chalet is nestled beside some mighty Swiss mountains, chief of them, The Eiger. Our views from our bedroom, just stunning.

But, before Switzerland we must finish with England, not that I know where to start, as our last days there were hectic too. May I add before it is forgotten, we drove from Little Hampton on the south coast (not far from Brighton) to London to return our hire car. It took about 2 hours to get within 8 miles of London and nearly another 2 for the remainder, including crossing the Tower Bridge three times, the huge Elephant and Castle roundabout several times before we found our correct exit, several unusual U-turns, a very short wrong turn into the "congestion" zone, for which we were fined because they have cameras in the road for us unlucky creatures who cross over the line and returned the car with 30 minutes to spare and the empty light flashing on the dashboard (you are asked to return the cars empty but we almost took it too far). We also managed to pay our fine by phone from the airport. Non-payment and the fine doubles daily. It wasn't helpful that there seemed to be a full scale police action going on in the city that day as were were diverted once and sidelined more than once by screaming sirens flashing past (maybe it was an episode of "The Bill" being filmed but it all put us on edge).

I will halt there! Once again it is late at night and we have another busy day tomorrow. Each day in Switzerland has been go, go, go, so no full reports until we are on our own in Austria, settled in an hotel room all alone. We have sightseen. Been up the Jungfraujoch lookout. Hiked in snow in the surrounding mountains. Also visited Zermatt and hiked up near the Matterhorn and did I mention that Hanspeter and Maja have treated us like royalty? Without the hiking we both would have put on some serious weight!!

What I am doing is loading piles of photos.

Tip If you cannot access photos, highlight the link, copy and paste it into your URL bar at the top of your window (you may need to press "return"), to bring up the Picasa page. I also only recently realised that you can look at all of the photo albums (including old ones from home) once you are in, if you click on "my photos" you will get all the albums and can look at whichever.

Oh, an added excitement is that Howard has decided that I needed to see Rome, so we take a train trip on Sunday afternoon, arrive Monday morning, leave Wednesday night and return to Switzerland on Thursday evening to spend Easter with Hanspeter and Maja and their family. Goodbye until and when I/we have more time and internet connections to write up our diary. Meanwhile, please enjoy the photos, of which there are many xxx