swiss made

I’ve just returned from a trip to Switzerland, a country that I’d never previously visited. As a result of this visit, I have a few things to write about, but I’m still finding it difficult to sit in front of a computer for extended periods (see my previous post), so this post is merely a trailer for what will appear on this blog after I return to Hong Kong, currently scheduled for next week.

One of the main highlights of our trip was a visit to St. Gallen old town, which is a world heritage site. The street architecture here is fascinating, and we were able to go inside a very impressive church:

This is the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of St. Gallen. I couldn’t identify the architectural style, although it obviously isn’t Gothic. However, when we entered the church, I saw immediately from the flamboyant décor that the style was Baroque, even though I’d never previously been inside a Baroque church:

According to a leaflet that we picked up as we entered the church, it was built between 1755 and 1766. I will be posting more photos of the interior next month, together with photos taken in the streets around the church, like this one:

Another place that we visited was the Walensee, a large lake in the mountains south of where we were staying. I’d actually commented on the absence of mountains in the area where we were staying, so it was good to see something of the Alps up close. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to walk far, but I like this photo of a narrow waterfall that cascaded down the side of the valley containing the lake:

…and this is a view of the Walensee taken from a similar position to the previous photo:

We also visited Lake Konstanz, where I took this photo of a pair of swans:

As a Cumbrian, this lake reminded me of the Solway Firth, viewed from a small village like Allonby. In other words, the lake is so large that the opposite side is so far away that it reminded me of the experience of just being able to make out the shore of Galloway in the far distance from Allonby.

I also plan to write a separate feature about the guest house where we stayed:

The reasoning behind wanting to write about this place in detail is the sheer number of quirky ‘installations’ here, like this one in the corridor outside our room:

And then there were the rabbits! I took a lot of photos of these outsized rodents, which had quite a large grassy area to cavort around, although I was more likely to see them lolling around, as they were in this photo:

In addition to writing up more detailed accounts of what I’ve described above, I will be finishing an account of a bike ride south of Penrith that Paula and I did in early July, before my accident, and a collection of my favourite photos from this ill-starred summer (I took almost 1,200 photos before this unfortunate event).