For a time I was off the TomTom maps lost in Basel. This was a harrowing experience, because after cutting down a couple of side streets looking for a place to turn around, I found myself in the middle of this pedestranized triangular shaped intersection, with light rail trains coming / going in 3 directions, hundreds of people, bikes, construction workers pointing me to drive in a direction that was even more full of people. Ugh, somehow got turned around and back out of that place.
We were getting hungry, it was getting dark, went to a MacDonalds and they had no cash point, didn't take any form of credit or Euro, and didn't know where we could find a cash point. For the record, it can be very difficult to pay by credit card and to find a cash point/ATM in Switzerland! People knew what we were looking for, just didn't know where to find one. Do people work on a cash basis in this country?
At 7:00 it was dark and we were searching for our hostel. Our GPS took us to an intersection where we should find a small driveway. We followed this up the side of a large hill. We found the parking area we needed, but only a farmhouse nearby, no sign of the castle. After calling Thomas, the hostel keeper, he told us to search around for a small orange lit button. We found this button and it illuminated a path going up the hill through the forest. He assured me it was only 150 stairs and will see me in a little while, but first warned me to not bring too much luggage. Due to Megan's planning we had this night's clothes / supplies already packed into 1 duffel, so we started the ascent. About halfway up, the lights went out. We were in a pretty thick forest at this point, and there was no light. My daughter started flipping out but Megan soothed her with the glow of her mobile phone. The boy and I forged forward to the top of the hill, where we found another glowing orange button. Pushing this lit the way for another 10 minutes, plenty of time for the girls to finish the hike. Now we could see this old fortress, it was so cool! The kids were pretty sure this place was haunted, but they weren't too keen about going back into the forest either. So we entered through these thick, meideval looking doors, climed some more stairs, and were finally greeted by Thomas. He looked like he was in his mid-30's, shaved head, one of those evil looking goatees...but very nice and helpful. He took us up to the 3rd floor for our room. We settled in and made the beds, and then went back down to the dining hall to play some games and have a snack. You can see the scale of the main support timber to the left of Megan in this photo.
Eventually we settled in for bed. For some reason I woke up at about 3AM and walked over to one of the windows. There was not a cloud in the sky and I could see so many stars. I just looked and thought about things until I got too cold and went back to bed.
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