A great Easter holiday

Making a mess with peanut butter

Despite Switzerland not being an overly-religious country, they love to take public holidays around all kinds of religious events, with the most recent obviously being Easter. Some people in the US get time off, but in Switzerland Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays, and sometime companies throw Thursday in there as well as a "bridge" day.

A four day weekend at home with BK? We'll take it.

I can honestly say we had a really great Easter weekend. It's funny because BK and I kept commenting to one another what a great weekend it was, which would make it seem like others aren't so great, which is not the case, but this past weekend was just really good.

We debated on what to do for the weekend, and ended up just kind of exploring around. Friday we went to Vallorbe to check out some caves we read about online. The Vallorbe Caves are some of the biggest in the region and are near the French border. The caves were really cool and something different that you don't see every day. As always Baby K was along for, and enjoyed the ride.

BK and Baby K in the cave

Straw formations in the cave

Cathedral room in the cave

After the cave, we drove around in the region a bit, stopping in Yverdon-Les-Bains. It's a bigger city than I realized, but most stuff was closed, as it was Good Friday. Yverdon-Les-Bains is on Lake Neuchatel though, so you do get some great mountain and lake views.

Lake Neuchatel

We then journeyed further north and went to Creux de Van, which is a big canyon with great views of the countryside. It was a bit cloudy and there was still snow on the ground, but it was a nice little climb to the lookout. There was quite a bit of snow at the entrance to the park, including a car that was stuck, so we parked the car and got out for a 10ish minute walk. I was not prepared with the right shoes for snow (neither was BK) so we didn't do much more than hike up and then come back down. I'll be interested to go back during the summer.

View from Creux de Van

Snow...a little reminder that we are still in Switzerland

Saturday was what a typical Friday is for me. We headed to Villeneuve for some shopping and home improvement stuff, had lunch out, then came back home for everyone (including the parents!) to nap for a few hours. The whole nap deal was probably why it was a good day...our happy little Baby K makes the day pretty good too :)

Of course Sunday was Easter, and after two years of being in Switzerland we finally tried a new church. It just felt kind of weird to not go to church on Easter, so we went with one in Vevey that I had seen an "English Church" sign for. And it was exactly that- a Church of England church, and we really liked it. The people were really welcoming, the message was great, and Baby K met some other kids too. We will definitely go back.

Baby K's Easter outfit...couldn't do a dress in 45 degrees!

Sunday and Monday included more relaxing, having lunch out together, and enjoying the outdoors when we could. Maybe it was just nice to have a weekend with no real agenda at home; it will be a while until we have another one. As much as we love to travel, it's always nice to have a little time at home too. Until next time!