Milano -> Zürich

I shared a room with my boys last night. While it was incredibly easy to get them to sleep after marching them across Milan, they were also, as always, too early to rise.

This morning I woke up to see Joey's big blue eyes peering into mine while he measured my nose with the span of his thumb and forefinger, giggling softly.  I raised my eyebrow at him, and he he told me his verdict, "Big!" before bursting into laughter.

And that woke up Alex, who had gone to sleep last night with his bag of chocolate from the Milan candy store on the bed next to him. With his eyes only half-open, the first thing he muttered was "Can-I-eat-my-candy-now?"

After our breakfast, we made the short drive to Lugano, crossing, finally, back to Switzerland. Last night, after the boys went to bed, I spent my free time researching Smurfs, hoping to find something to satisfy the constant stream of questions from the kids, and found that season 1 was available on iTunes.  So I downloaded a little surprise for the kids.

I have to say, it was actually really fun to go back and listen to the show as an adult.  For one thing, I didn't remember the constant classical music playing behind the dialogue, and it was kind of fun to play Name that Tune. And of course it's always nice to go back and watch a show from your youth, resharpening very hazy memories.

There was one exchange that Dennis and I both remembered, (and you probably remember, too) which seemed somewhat timely:

Getting an education in pop culture

Brainy: Is it much further Papa Smurf?
Papa: Not much further my little smurfs.
Jokey: Is it much further Papa Smurf?
Papa: Not much further my little smurfs
Grouchy: Is it much further papa smurf?
Papa: Yes it is! 

Something I didn't remember was the more colorful uses of the word "smurf." For example, apparently acceptable uses of the word include "Are you smurfing with me?" and "Go smurf off!" I think I'll add these to my list of substitute swear words, which now also includes the name of a tram stop between our house and downtown ("Stauffacher!")  By the by, apparently, "Scheibenkleister!" or "wallpaper paste!" which my uncle's boss used to say on occasion at work, is another favorite explicative of parents with small kids.

Anyway, we smurfed our way to Lugano, where we finally smurfed a place we'd been wanting to smurf for months, Swissminiatur.

Back in 2002, while I was pregnant with Ella, Dennis got to attend a conference in the Saint-Émilion, a wonderful little walled city in Bordeaux.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to enjoy all of the wine tastings that they offered in the evenings, but I mightily appreciated the hot chocolate and bread that appeared at my doorstep each morning, like magic, and did wonders to soothe my morning sickness. Along with the conference, we stole a few days to drive around the Loire Valley, to see some of the French chateaux, and along the way we visited Mini Chateaux, a park with a few dozen scale models of the castles of the Loire.  We remembered having as a wonderful time there: for whatever reason, we were totally charmed.

And so, when we heard that there was a similar Switzerland-themed park in Lugano, Dennis and I were pretty excited. We insisted on adding this to the itinerary, and Brie and Geoff gamely agreed.

The park was small enough, and walled, so we let Ella and Alex run off on their own and explore things for themselves, which of course makes them feel very grown-up and proud.  Funnily, the thing that Ella found most exciting was the model of the Milan Duomo.  "You can actually go inside the church, Mom!" she gasped.  Which I found especially funny, considering how unenthusiastic she was about visiting the real Duomo only yesterday.

Under attack by giant lizards!

Someone obviously had a whole lot of fun putting together this park, with all of the little trains running around the buildings, not to mention the cog trains and gondolas and the little motorized cars on the roadways, and even a motorized bobsled run in the mountain region.  It was all very cunning, and incredibly appealing to the little boys, especially.

Joey hunkers down to appreciate the castles

Alex, reporting back on his discoveries

Call me corny if you want, but I thought it was totally fun to see the landmarks that we'd visited, and we were able to get a better sense of what we might want to see in our last few months here. It seems like most of the things we want to see are back west towards Lausanne.

Chateaux Chillon

And it's tiny replica

Tour buses started to pile into the park a little after we arrived, and as we were getting our lunch, Brie and Geoff commented on the tourist-trap prices of the cafeteria. But we had to correct them: tourist trap that this might be, those prices were Swiss standard, I'm afraid.  

After lunch, some of the giant monster birds that were invading the Swiss castles also swarmed in and shamelessly started attacking our leftovers. As I was waving my arm to shoo them away from our spaghetti, my camera slipped out of my hand, and now I have a long crack running across the lcd screen. Stauffacher!

They've clearly never heard the phrase "eat like a bird."

But I think everything, even the screen, still works properly, and, as proof, here's a little video from our visit.

I won't say much about the rest of the ride home apart from the fact that it was entirely too long.  The same mountain pass that gave us so much trouble on the way out, the Gotthard tunnel, held us up for about two hours on the way home.  But the kids were in absolute heaven in the back seat, gorging themselves on cartoons.

Again, it was a beautiful place to be stuck in traffic, with pretty waterfalls streaming down the mountains.

By the time we got home, all of their imaginations were fueled.  I watched Kael and my kiddos while everyone else left to return the cars and Brie and Geoff checked in at their hotel.  Free from the car and excited to be reunited with their toys, Ella and Alex covered our sidewalk with pictures of Smurf houses and Gargamel's castle, and then we ran around, I chasing them and doing my best grumpy old wizard impression. Joey did an excellent job of playing along ("I 'murf too! I Papa 'Murf!"). He pouted convincingly whenever I put him into my stew pot and conspired to liberate trapped smurfs until the rain chased Smurfs and Gargamel alike inside.

But the rain didn't dampen the kids' enthusiasm. Ella raided everyone's wardrobes and assembled little blue and white outfits for all, and then she cut out little smurf pictures for our front window.  She was quite content with her evening's work, telling me at bedtime, "We're all smurfed up!"