Raclette, Chocolate & Gluhwein --- Welcome to Switzerland

What a fabulous first day of my holiday! Julie made her way in from Basel and my dear friends, Carlos and Katia Korb, met us at the Zurich Airport for a personal escort to our hotel.  After a quick costume change and freshening up, we were off to explore Zurich!

The Zurich Marriott is in a terric spot for touring the city.  We are about 4 blocks from the train station, Bahnhofstrasse (Zurich's main downtown street) and old town.  

For lunch, we had a traditional Swiss dish...Raclette.  A semi-hard cow's cheese, Raclette is served heated and then scrapped onto potatoes, meats and vegetables.

When you think about it, the Swiss are a smart people when it comes to cuisine. We paid for food that WE cooked!  Oh and don't forget...fondue.  You have to cook that dish too!

Later we saw a Christmas Market vendor selling Raclette on potatoes.  The cheese is heated to almost bubbling and then scrapped onto the potatoes.  You can sprinkle a little nutmeg or paprika on it for a little extra flavor.

The Grossmunster is a Protestant Church designed in the Romanesque style.  Once inside, the church is smaller than the outside would lead one to believe. The true beauty inside is the stained glass windows. They were absolutely magnificant but unfortunately photography was not allowed.

One of the must sees on my list for Zurich were the Marc Chagall windows at the Fraumunster.  The church itself was built on the remains of a former abbey for aristocratic women.  Again another lovely church and sadly photography was not allowed here either...at least I have my memories of the windows.  The windows were amazing and each tells a specific story in Christianity.  

It wouldn't be Christmas without a singing Christmas tree and we stumbled upon one next to as fate would have it a Gluhwein stand.  Gluhwein is a warm mulled wine and each Christmas market typically has a signature mug for a few extra Euro or Francs.  My Zurich mug will be a nice addition to my German Christmas market mug collection.

Not sure who thought it would be a good idea to put a Christmas market inside a very busy train station but alas there is one inside Zurich Hauptbahnhof. It was absolutely crazy but there was a moment of calm while looking at the Swarovski Christmas tree.

While we were visiting Grossmunster today, we noticed they were hosting Handel's Messiah tonight at 7:30 so after a short respite at the hotel, Julie and I hopped in an Uber and headed back over to the church.  Unfortunately there was a lot of traffic and we were 10 minutes late.  Apparently the Swiss take timing seriously (hence their reputation of being masters of time pieces) and we were not allowed into the performance.  So another Uber back to the hotel followed by a stop in the executive lounge for a night cap and off to bed...while I got 5 hours of sleep on the flight (gotta love the lay flat seats), I was a bit tired.  Time for some rest in preparation for tomorrow's adventures.

Turndown Service Swiss Style

Next Stop...Zurich

It's been a long, crazy year and I'm in great need of this holiday.  The original plan was for my friend, Julie, and I to meet up at JFK for the flight to Zurich. However, a week before our trip, she found out she had to go to Basel, Switzerland to meet with a client a few days before our vacation so our transatlantic flights were solo.  After a 5.5 hour layover at JFK, I'm Zurich Bound.  There are some benefits to all the travel I do for work and I was fortunate enough to have the miles to fly first class.

Over the next two weeks, we'll spend time in Zurich, Venice, Milan and Monaco.  Another advantage to all the work travel both Julie and I do is we'll only be paying for three nights...the rest is all on points! 

Biltmore Estate at Christmas

My parents and I spent the day at Biltmore Estates (aka our mountain home) to see it decorated for Christmas.  In early September, my dad turned 70 and completed 9 weeks of radiation therapy for cancer and this is how he wanted to celebrate.  Here's a few pictures from our day...

 

 

 

Garden of the Gods

Had the chance on my current trip visiting hotels in Colorado for a client event to drive through the Garden of the Gods en route from one hotel to the next.  It was quite beautiful and the folks at the Trading Post as you enter the park were super nice and helpful. Tip: They give free samples of some amazing fudge...Elijah is very generous with the samples he cuts...just saying.

The Garden of the Gods is a free park for all and will forever remain that way. Charles Elliott Perkins built a home here and upon his death in 1907 his children gave the park to the City of Colorado Springs with the stipulation it be a free park.  

The sun was pretty bright even at 5PM so my pics don't do it much justice...at least I have the memories. Here are a few pics from my drive.

It was a 44 oz of wine kind of day!

You can't be this close to Pinot Noir country and not get out and explore wine country so off we went with Back Country Wine Tours!  Not ones for big tour groups, this was the perfect company for us to use to see wine country as they have a max of six people on the tour.  We got really lucky as there were only two other folks on our tour and they were great fun!

Our guide, Dillon, was very knowledgable and passionate about wine.   The cool thing about Dillon is he didn't pre-select the wineries we'd visit until he met all of us and got to know us on the hour drive out to the wineries.  Then he listened to us as we discussed the wines at the first vineyard to plan the rest of our day.

We visited four wineries but had wine from eight wineries as one of the stops was a wine maker collective so we got to try five wineries at one stop.  Each tasting consisted of five wines and two of the stops gave us a bonus pour so a total of 22 tastings.  The wineries use 2 ounce measured pours for a total of 44 ounces of wine consumed!!

First stop was Eminent Domaine. As the name would suggest, there was an interesting story behind the name.  The owner and winemaker lost some property to the state under eminent domaine so he thought it was the appropriate name for the winery.  We had a nice Chardonnay followed by four lovely Pinot Noirs.  The view from the tasting room was spectacular!

Our second stop of the day was at another small winery, Roots. This winery is definitey a family affair as Chris' mom was our hostess in the tasting room which was located next to their home.  The vineyard was first planted by Chris' parents and then Chris and his wife Hilary (Editor of Oregon Wine Press) took over management in 2000 with their first harvest in 2002.  We had a Pinot Gris, Melon de Bourgogne and three nice Pinot Noirs.  Dian offered us an extra pour of their special reserve, Racine.  That wine was named after the town of Racine where Chris was born and ironically racine is French for roots.

Next stop was the Carlton Winemakers Studio. This is a wine collective which is very common in Europe and slowly growing in popularity in the United States.  A wine collective allows the small winemaker to utilize a shared production space without all the costly overhead of a full vineyard.  The collective also serves as the retailer for the wine and allows visitors to sample a variety of wines from multiple vineyards versus a single vineyard.  We had the option of a flight of reds or wines.  Julie and I opted for the reds and they were all so tasty.  Dillon popped over to The Horse Radish and picked up lunch for everyone for us to enjoy with the tasting.

Our final stop of the day was Colene Clemens.  The vineyards and winery is named after the owners mother and all three of their pinots are named for women in the family.  The other two people on our tour were from Cleveland and our tasting room hostess is a huge Cleveland sports fan so there was a lot of sports talk...and those of you that know me well know sports is not one of my favorite subjects.  Though I will admit there was some advantage to it as we received an extra pour from their private reserve so maybe there is something to this sports thing.

We made our way back to town and took a little nap before meeting my friend, Christa, and her husband, AJ, for dinner at Imperial...another excellent meal.  Tomorrow brings work for me and flight back to Atlanta for Julie.  Another great AOH trip in the books.