Our First Visitors in Basel Arrive (and now maybe the last....)

We had anxiously been awaiting the date of May 21st for weeks!  We were so excited to have Sarah and her family coming to visit.  So we got rid of some extra dust, made sure the bed was all comfy, bought a bed and high chair for Katelyn, and got a few extras ready just for them (including some chocolate)!



Katelyn's Swiss bag and her St. Bernard were tied to our front door waiting for her arrival!



Goodies waiting for the kids in the guestroom!


Since they had had a very long day and night and day so to speak we visited for a little while, but headed for bed not too long after they arrived.  We had to get up early and head for Bern where we were having stake conference (special meeting for church); from there we were headed to Lucerne.  Because we had to have our bags packed and theirs re-packed on a smaller scale, we needed to get up rather early to get ready and hit the road.

We enjoyed conference and had a lovely drive to Lucerne.  As usual we had a hard time finding our hotel (could we possibly have left the address at home again?), but part of the reason was because it was located in Old Town where there's no through traffic.  We finally found it after we parked at a large parking lot a few blocks away and took a stroll!  And none too soon, a major storm came rolling through right after we checked in.



We both had rooms up on the top floor.

One of my most favorite memories of this trip will be opening up the windows of our top-story room (remember no screens in Europe) and watching, feeling, and smelling the rain (and the hail).  It was doubly fun because though Sarah and Israel's room faced the front of the hotel (see that dormer on the left side on top), our room faced the back side and for as far as we could see there were roof tops and chimneys.  I so wanted to get out and do a Mary Poppin's routine while singing "Chim Chiminey, Chim Chimeny, Chim, Chim Cheree...".   I resisted the urge (might have something to do with old age and lack of agility) and once the rain quit, we all went on a nice long Sunday afternoon walk.  Since I have posted pictures of previous trips to Lucerne (Luzern) here, I'll try and just post those that are perhaps a little different.

One of the things we hadn't done before, was go to the edge of "old town" and follow the old city wall:


The wall is visible in the right of this picture.



There are eight tall watchtowers along the city wall (we didn't do all of them).  There are several of them that you can go inside and climb to the top.



 

Coming down off the wall!



This gated tower is at the end of the wall near the river's edge.




"A view from the top" of one of the watch towers!



Katelyn and Grammy at the top of one of the towers!



Walking along the city wall and not wanting my picture taken!!.

Some random shots as we walked through old town:



A different angle of Chapel Bridge



Of course, we had to have some river time, for various reasons:

 

First, to show the Arciniegas how aqua the water was and secondly to see how much more water was coming through the "needles" than the last time we were there---there was some serious water coming through there.

Secondly, we wanted to go where the water was more calm so Katelyn could have some time with... 

 

this, and....



this and a few dozen others!


Somewhere in the middle of all this we stopped for dinner at a cafe on the river's edge:

We also strolled back and forth across the river via several of the bridges:

After paying more attention to these paintings on the Spreuerbrucke, I realized that each of them had at least one skeleton---not liking them so much anymore!

And...of course, I had to snap a few shots of the more unusual ones of these:

But, by far, the neatest thing we saw all day was this:

Our baby Kate---we're so glad she got to come with her mommy and daddy to visit us!