Alpine Adventures - Part 2

Tuesday we woke up to spectacular weather once again. I made us some bologna and cheese sandwiches (not your Oscar Mayer bologna, I assure you) and we got on the train again to go to Engleberg. Back in Miami when we were looking through our travel books, we saw that one could actually build an igloo and overnight in it. Somehow Elisa and I thought this was an especially fabulous idea. I think we underestimated the difficulty of this exercise.

Nonetheless, we met with our guide Nicole, scouted out our location and learned the fine art of digging snow trenches, cutting snow blocks with saws and setting the snow blocks together. Unfortunately our snow was too dry to stick properly and our igloo kept collapsing. Quite frustrating. Fortunately the igloo that someone built on Sunday was still standing and was solid so we were able to stay in that igloo overnight. I regret to advise that I chickened out and headed for the hotel, I had a really bad cold and no great desire to catch pneumonia, besides it was awfully handy for us to have a place where we could use a bathroom.

So after a whole lot of hard work we headed to the igloo village bar and hotel, an actual hotel made entirely out of snow and ice - very cool but really really cold inside. We had an apero of mulled wine, devoured the peanut chips and pretzels and had a delicious fondue dinner. After dinner the four of us, head lanterns on, trekked up the hill (actually up a ski run) to my hotel where we were able to thaw out a little bit. We had some hot chocolate and my friends headed off to their igloo for the night. I have to confess I was a bit nervous for them and was a bit afraid they would freeze but the next morning the troopers hiked up the hill intact.

The next morning the weather turned and after hiking through the snow and monster snowflakes to a chalet for breakfast, we headed back down to Luzern. The afternoon consisted of a massive acquisition of cheese and chocolate at the grocery store and another delicious dinner with Philipp and Radka, after which it was time for bed as we had to be down in the city at 4:45am the next day for our next adventure.