Day 6 was pretty much a day spent on the roads. During breakfast, P’s good friend Raymond suddenly popped up behind us and told us to da bao bread as he was going to bring us to see ducks. We all went like “yay ducks” when secretly we all had the same thoughts in our minds: 1. “huh? Why is he telling us this? Should go tell the kids right?” 2. “Aww he must be trying to get into P’s good books.”
If you haven’t gathered from my tone, we don’t really like Raymond much. Our feud started way back before we even went on the trip. He also has a really irritating habit of popping up near us and giving us unwarranted advice. He also imitated and mocked me when I was jumping up and down in the snow. (hmmph)
So why is he P’s good friend? (And I think P herself must have forgotten this by now, but woe be to her, I remember) There was once when his tour group members were complaining about something and he had to eat humble pie and suck up to that guy, we girls knew his true bossy and needs to scold people self so we knew how he must be boiling mad inside. Poor P just happened to bump into him outside the toilet and he dragged her aside and poured out all his frustrations to her (hmm somehow that phrase seems abit strange). I don’t know, something in our dear P must have made him see a soulmate in her, that’s why he chose her to ‘chu4 xi1 tan2 xin1’ (=touch knees and talk).
Anyhow, we dropped by a lake and indeed there were ducks, but we didn’t do any feeding as our own tour guide, Judy, thinks feeding the ducks would disrupt the ecosystem. Also the bread I da baoed was for my own lunch, not enough to feed others. After that, we stopped by a nice town in Innsbruck where the old buildings all have pretty paintings on the walls and it was there that we shopped at the terribly tempting Swarovski Crystal House. I saw many many nice things but as I hardly have enough money to feed myself, all I could do was to take note of all the things I would want to buy if I just happen to return on my honeymoon (*cough*). The friendly uncle on the tour waved us over and showed us the gleaming jewellery set (that costs 300 euros) his wife was wearing, tog with a huge blissful grin on her face. We did our usual “aawww so sweeet”. (*ahem cough cough*)
Aside from the shopping I really enjoyed Innsbruck as it was so pretty. Imagine a small town with beautiful houses with the Alps in the backdrop. Sigh! I think I shall move there when I reitre.
We then spend a good part of the day on the tour bus, listening to sound of music, playing bridge and mahjong and feeling carsick (the last only applies to me). We had a brief insignificant stop at Liechtenstein, which is actually a country and is so small and pathetic it only has like 80 policemen. We decided to send postcards back home there as if we didn’t do that there would be nothing for us to do there. Wk and I decided to take a walk around and we finished the tour of the entire village (which is the capital city) in 10min.
After another long bus journey, we finally arrived in Lucerne, Switzerland. I’m not sure if it was the long bus ride or the frolicking in the snow in skirts yesterday but I fell sick and had a fever. So I didn’t really enjoy my rather expensive dinner of pork sausage nor was I very good company, esp to my roommate, P. But I’m very grateful to her for taking such good care of me and to all of you who were concerned.
Day 7
I woke up, feeling better than ever. Our first stop was at the Lion Monument, also the mourning lion. It was built in memory of the Swiss Army who lost some war. The lion has a rather sad look and there’s a spear in its back (did the Swiss Army get backstabbed or smth?), although, personally, I think the lion just looks like it’s sleeping, much to the disgust of everyone else.
After that, we went to Mt Titilees! Because the only coat I brought was the black leather jacket that I could even wear indoors and the Wen sisters brought so many jackets, they very kindly lent me one, thus I was bundled up like a ‘ba zhang’ (I wore 4 layers.) The ride up Mt Titilees was fun and very scenic, we saw cows with cow bells and if you listened carefully, you can actually hear them and it was quite melodious (the bells not the cows). We had to take 3 cable cars and I got cable car-sick on all 3 of them and was eating ‘seng bueh’ like crazy (yar lar I know I’m useless). But the trip was definitely worth it as the top of Mt Titilees was awesome!
Mt Titilees
I never had such close contact with snow before. We climbed to the top of snow hills, slid down them on our butts and took many many photos, but sadly, the lousy gloves I brought got soaked and my fingers and ears and nose started to hurt terribly so I was forced to remain indoors while the others went for the chairlift and slide. Wx was sweet and she accompanied me and we had a nice time chatting and drinking hot tea while admiring the snow-capped mountains right by our window. Quite romantic actually.
After the others all got horribly sun burnt we descended back to Lucerne, and it being the last day in Switzerland and us being girls, we shopped. And shopped. And shopped. I bought quite a lot of chocolates which I wanted to give to all of you my friends, but somehow they just ended up sitting in my fridge. (In fact ah I still have some, so I can still give you if you want). We had a really really nice cheese fondue dinner, where we had free flow bread and potatoes and it was definitely worth every last franc I spent on it.
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