And in other news...

We went up Rothorn on a rack railway from Brienz. Look at that turquoise water. It's so pretty. I don't understand why nobody ever mentioned it before. I know about chocolate, watches, cuckoo clocks - all of which we saw. Why didn't I know about the water?

It was really quite high up at the top.

This weekend, Daughter 2 came to visit us and Cassie. Cassie quite liked the new hairstyle. Grandson, however, was so surprised that when he saw Daughter 2, he hid behind the door, giggling in a slightly panicky way, and had to be persuaded to come out and see that it was just his auntie in disguise.

Then he carefully decorated Daughter 1's belated birthday cake. One or two chocolate buttons didn't quite make it to the cake.

Another day, Mr Life and I walked in Princes Street Gardens and I took a few photos to compare Edinburgh to Switzerland.

I was right. It's different.

We do have a floral clock, though. Does Switzerland? It's even got a working cuckoo.

Yesterday, Daughter 1 and I took the children to the Botanics. Grandson admired the new aeolian harp. Disappointingly, it wasn't making any noise. It's not often that Edinburgh is windless.

Granddaughter enjoyed her first Botanics toddle.

And Grandson posed in front of these gentians. Now, why didn't I see any of them in Switzerland? You'd have thought there would be lots, wouldn't you?

I got out my cot quilt tonight and looked at it. I haven't had time... or courage... or something... to do anything to it for ages, and now I now I need to do the binding and can't quite remember how I did it the last time. (Well, the only time.) Still, it's a start. Have to work up to these things gradually. Maybe tomorrow.

Some of the many lovely things about Switzerland

1) The flowers! The Swiss are very good at their window boxes and other containers with flowers. If I have a tiny criticism, it's that they seem to think that scarlet and pink go together, which I don't. However, there was such general floriferous whoofing that it hardly mattered. This is Murten. Hint for future wealth: take out shares in Swiss geranium farms.

2) The roofs. I do like red roofs in beautifully random shapes. (Daughter 2 points out my inconsistency in that I'm not very keen on red bricks. Which is true. But I might, if they were in such lovely cluttered patterns. And it's a mellow red.) This is also Murten.

3) The turquoise water. It's really that colour. Something to do with minerals dissolved in them. My brother will no doubt give me the scientific explanation but it's very pretty, whatever the reason. This is Bern. We in Edinburgh tend to pride ourselves on our beautiful town centre but I have to admit that Bern's is - well - pinker and bluer and greener. We tend to go for grey, stern and lowering. (Lowering as in threatening, overcast, rather than bringing down.)

4) Mountains. We too have mountains, but not quite so everywhere and not with pretty pink and white towns so close by. Our mountains are magnificent but you wouldn't go there to increase your social life. We go more for isolated derelict cottages and occasional villages with grey roofs. And sheep.

5) Cute little churches - mainly at the highest points of already quite high villages. As one of our party remarked, you'd need to be really keen to pant up the hill to these churches.

6) Smooth hillsides. These fascinated me. Though the chalets on the hillsides usually didn't have fenced-off gardens, it looked from the trains as if the grass in between them was smoothly mown. Which didn't seem very likely: rather hard work. The landscape looked like a painting, with the flat grass, the shadowed trees and the musical-box houses. As we travelled around, however, we often saw people cutting the grass (which wasn't actually quite as short as it looked from a distance) and then raking it up, presumably to use as animal feed. Is this right? Does anyone know?

7) Red. They are very fond of red, on their flags, tourist souvenirs and yes, more flowers. These are begonias. Our growing season isn't long enough to achieve this effect.

8) More mountains. This is the early morning view from our balcony in Thun. Rather impressive.

9) The lots and lots of views, such as this one from a rack railway up to the...

... Reichenbach Falls, where Sherlock Holmes fell to his death (or didn't). They were a bit unimpressive, actually. Mr L thinks that they've been somewhat diverted for the sake of hydroelectricity. Niagara they're not.

Look what Daughter 2 did while we were away. It's the first time she's had short hair since - well, since she was 1.

Another pretty picture

This is Basel. We were standing on the bridge over the Rhine, generally admiring the scene and particularly admiring the tiles on the church roof, when we noticed some people swimming. 

Can you see them? Little heads bobbing about in this fast-flowing river which has big ships forging their way up it? This - presumably - very cold river?

We were surprised.

The Swiss are amazing linguists, which is just as well because if you've ever heard Swiss German, you'll know that it doesn't sound anything like the German one learnt at school. And then in some places the language is French (fairly normal-sounding French) or, occasionally, Rumantsch. So I'm in awe of the ability of everyone - from the ticket collectors to the chaps selling you a sandwich - to speak good English.

Well, almost everyone. Maybe not the person who wrote this for one of our hotels:

Welcome at the hotel Holiday. You are our guest! About you is going everything. The whole year. See the region of the Lake Thun in all its beauty, enrich cultural or just enjoy. Because we know, the most beautiful moments results not by random.

It is possible for the washing and ironing of the guest laundry.

Little sew we finish off patching's within 24 hours - price after expense.

I'm not really criticising this person because his/her English is about as good as my German. (I may be flattering myself.) But if I were going to write a notice in German and put it in every hotel room, I think I might just get someone to check it.

Stunning view number one

Well, you know what it's like. You spend a fortnight sitting on trains, looking idly at beautiful bits of Switzerland (well, actually it's almost all beautiful) and then you get home and you have so many million things to do that you don't have time to blog.

But anyway: we were on 49 trains and a bus. Some of our party were really quite train-geeky. "Oh look!" would go the cry. "This is 39.8 coupling! And it's joining a Federal wagon to a Confederate!" (Or words to that effect.)

And people would crowd round, exclaiming, "I've only ever seen that on the Geneva line!" and write things down in their little notebooks.

Meanwhile I'd be examining the window boxes and wondering how they get their geraniums to bloom so prolifically.

Must get on.

(We didn't fall off a cliff, by the way.)