We left our apartment yesterday morning at 8:35 am to get ourselves to the Hauptbahnhof. We purchased tickets and took a train and S-bahn to get to Einsiedeln. At Einsiedeln we purchased a ticket package for the bus ride to the resort and unlimited rides on the gondola and chairlifts. The bus was full of other travelers on their way to hiking around the Sihlsee and our final destination. It's pretty easy to figure out what to do on adventures like this -- you just follow all of the other people.
We took the gondola from Weglosen (1035 m) up to Seebli (1465 m), and then the chairlift from Seebli up to Sternen (1811 m). These are the reasons why Little Geek Girl likes chair lifts: "You get to sit down. You can see the ground. There's nothing between you and the outside." From Sternen we had a nice view of the valley, but we decided to go up to the viewpoint to see what was on the other side of the ridge.
We started up the path towards Kleine Sternen and there we were stunned by the view of the Alps, most notably Tödi (3614 m). Unfortunately in our rush out the door we had forgotten the camera, but the sun angle was wrong anyways, so no pictures of the mountains. You'll have to go see them yourselves. At first I wanted to keep going up the path, but then I realized that it was a series of false summits, the trail was pretty muddy, and it was best probably to turn back. However, we decided to watch a group of paragliders launch, and it took a while to convince LGG to leave. We stopped off at a bench to have our picnic lunch.
We then went for a nice walk along the ridge towards Spirstock. At one point Zürich Daddy Geek scrambled up to a peak, but it was mostly cross country and pretty muddy, so LGG and I kept going. She is such a good hiker. She also talks a lot while she's hiking, but I'd rather have her talking and hiking, than not hiking. We got to the base of the Spirstock and at first we decided to walk around it, but LGG wanted to climb up it, so up the many stairs we went to the Spirstock (1771 m). Here we took a break for a snack and a family portrait with the iPhone:
LGG was ready to take the chairlift down the mountain, but we wanted to get a little more walking in, so we convinced her to continue on and that we would take another chairlift down. The route we walked down alternated between boring service road and interesting detours throught the forest. Unfortunately at one point I slipped on the gravel road and skinned my knee and tore my jeans. We found our way to Laucheren (1483 m) and stopped at the restaurant for refreshment. ZDG and I had coffee and LGG had cold milk. They were out of apple strudel, so we tried the spice cake. LGG is a strictly chocolate girl, so after a bite of spice cake she asked for more Pringles. She then jumped on the trampoline for a little bit and then we took the chairlift down to the bottom to catch the bus back the train station.
Earlier in the day, as we were drving through Einsiedeln, ZDG and I both noticed a beautiful building -- the monastery (I also noticed that there were a number of bakeries open on a Sunday!). On our return, there were many people in the city. It turns out that Einsiedeln is the most important place of pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary in Switzerland. It's supposed to also have a pretty good Christmas Market, so we may be returning soon.
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