wengen

BA flies pregnant women till week 36 and i wasn't about to waste a single day of precious freedom. decided to impose once again on the gracious S and M whose holiday home in wengen i'd crashed in summer. without realising that it was 5 (!!!) trains to get from zermatt to wengen :P took the train from zermatt to visp to spietz to interlaken ost to lauterbrunnen to wengen. phew! made all the connections and rocked up late at night to S' cooking fried rice. perfection! the trains were retro and more than a little spooky when empty. 

had a full day in wengen with S and M and we went for a 10km walk, part of which was the lauberhorn ski race route! the views were spectacular and they were great guides, familiar with the route like the back of their hands and appropriately but not overly concerned about my fitness ;) because, hm, as a grumpy pregnant woman aside, what really gets my (mountain) goat is unsolicited advice and people being patronising / condescending. sure they (mostly) mean well but being pregnant is physiological and not a disability. i like to think that i listen to my body but seriously there were so many people tsk-ing that i was flying  / traipsing around mountains / some distance from tertiary medical care etc so late in pregnancy. there was defo some passive aggression on fb when i posted pics of being out and about doing stuff heh. but oh well, to each his own and i'm a strong believer in maternal choice. if the prof whose care i'm under hadn't given me the green light, if i hadn't felt up to it, then of course i wouldn't have gone. but he did, and i did :)

coffee schnapps ;)

and the day after we did 10km, kept going uphill for the views (and waterfall in the distance!)

zum see

another cool mountain resto was zum see, which was so good we went two days in a row. got a little lost the first day and accidentally walked halfway up a ski slope (!!!) before realising the correct path wasn't 1. covered in snow 2. sorta parallel to the ski run. because i didn't fancy walking down an icy slope, we found a little path through the woods, went back to the gondola base and tried to get a cab. but the cabbie refused to take us cos, well, there was no road. which meant a 30min uphill hike from base camp. and anxiety about being late for our friends. half the lunch party ski-ed and part of the other half that was going by foot abandoned ship halfway cos it was too treacherous a hike, but for those who made it, the reward was the world's bes millefeuille. home made - crisp, crunchy, flakey with subtly sweetened fresh cream and reason enough to make multiple return trips. 

 

it was a really pretty walk to get there, too.

more lamb's lettuce salad

the millefeuille of dreams

the slopes

at 36 weeks pregnant, there was no skiing for me but i managed to walk the ski runs instead. in retrospect, just how wise it was to walk down (then up) the runs while the skiers whizzed past is probably questionable. but hey, carpe the diem and all that jazz. plus i figured walking is probably good for me and baby. met the skiers at a few choice places that i could access on foot (and ski lift!) and generally didn't feel too left out. the views were incredible and we got lucky with the weather. i mean, check out those gorgeous blue skies! shame about the lack of snow in the village but the matterhorn is (part of?) a glacier anyway so there was plenty snow up the mountain.

walking on a ski run - not for the faint hearted!

relaxing back at the hotel. funny story - we'd a bunch of singaporean friends in town at the same time and while the kids were skiing, the "adults" visited us for coffee. with their help, we managed to find the yummiest roast chicken and snuck it back to our hotel where the staff very kindly warmed and plated it for me. i mean, that's pretty shameless, no? but they didn't bat an eyelid and were so classy about it (then probably judged me for being cheap haha)

schwarzsee was one such cafe and as if the matterhorn view need any further selling, the service was incredible. took the cable car up and reached on time, only for the skiers to have gotten lost in italy (in addition to having a cheeky pre-lunch pasta!) so we ended up eating rounds one then two when they arrived. beer didn't get warm ;)

also i went crazy for the lamb's lettuce and had it every opportunity.

and here's one of the pool in the morning, although photo credits to N cos i wasn't awake early enough to catch it the day we got snowed in!

zermatt

after a day in zurich, it was off to the mountains! 3.5h train ride to zermatt but just one change. zurich main station to visp then visp to zermatt. zermatt is car-free but thankfully there was an electric car from the hotel that met us at the train station.

tried not to scare the other guests into thinking i was after a water birth ;)

cool bat cave like entrance

beautiful balconies

pool by day

a ski holiday might not be the most pregnancy friendly of trips but because of global warming or what have you, there wasn't much snow in zermatt itself and i got lots of walking in :)

zurich

hopped to switzerland for one last burst of fire pre-baby. got clearance to fly (BA flies till week 36!) and it was all systems go. short flight (90min to zurich) and was feeling atypically energetic. flew outta london city which i much prefer to heathrow because it's smaller, more efficient, shorter queues if there's even one at immigration and less hanging about. kinda equidistant by public transport too. zurich is always good, had a bonus night there in august (?) after a missed flight heh so had been recently but jumped at the chance to stay in old town and go to bellvue christmas market.

funny story there - literally walked into A, a travel journalist i'd met in ecuador april 2013! we'd stayed at mashpi lodge in the cloud forest at the same time and hit it off. he was there on assignment writing about the cocoa industry and we tried to meet up when he was in singers but missed each other. hadn't seen him since ecuador nor communicated in years but when i saw him it kinda clicked. then i thought about how he'd said his husband was swiss and they were based in zurich so it suddenly all made sense and i said hello. he was surprised but remembered me (or pretended to at least haha) and we caught up briefly. small world and hm funny what the brain remembers ie a face from years ago vs what i ate for breakfast yesterday.

enjoyed the market so much we went back the next day in daylight for more ethnic goodies

wengen

in my final semester of lawsch, i took a "take home" final exam to danang, vietnam to complete at a friend's birthday party. definitely one of my (few) proud moments, although the prof for that module was unimpressed by my lack of self-control. note to self: don't post gloaty holiday photos when you're in the middle of a 72h take home, at least not without restricting the audience first. but if i hadn't gone to danang, i'd never have met S who has become a dear friend over the years. visited her at her home near luzern a couple of christmases ago, she's come for tea at mine in london while looking at universities for her daughter and more recently, has been very generously extending an open invitation to her home in the mountains. 

jumped at the chance to escape the big smoke yet again and didn't need to have my rubber arm twisted. her cabin is in wengen, car-free and accessible only by cogwheel train (!!!). bonus - i love trains and even more so when i'm not on godawful virgineastcoast up and down the country. as luck would have it, found a weekend other friends (puerto rican lawyers based in NYC and their college-aged sons) from the same danang party (all connected through E&P our danang bday hosts) were going to be visiting and made a pre-party of it. was resigned to massive FOMO because they were pre-gaming prior to E's 60th birthday extravaganza in berlin which i very sadly couldn't attend because, well, work. but hey, a bonus weekend in the alps? sign me up.

the alpine cabin was what it said on the tin and when i told another friend of my weekend plans, he got very excited and thought it would be all bond baddie alpine lair stylez a la blofeld's lair from on her majesty's secret service with hot chickies in lycra. uh, think again. gimme S' swiss hospitality anytime :)

spent two glorious days walking in the mountains. S and her husband knew the paths like the back of their hands, walking in summer, skiing in winter and it was like living in a technicolour ricola advertisement, if you get what i mean. was feeling incredibly smug about my pseudo-mountaineering ability at 18 weeks gestation until i suspected they'd probably picked the easiest walks for us to do.

M would wake early and procure us fresh yoghurt, bread and cheese from the lone grocer. breakfast was a simple yet hearty affair and i could eat it forever and ever. the milk! the glorious fat in it! the butter! all the dairy products my lactose-intolerant constitution could stomach!

S even had the brainwave of doing a hot chocolate blind tasting! so we'd plenty of energy to use against gravity on the mountains.

alas i might've underestimated the summer sunshine and ended up lobster red. silly :( also missed my flight from zurich to london because of sunday traffic. but hey who's really complaining about an extra night in switzerland? had redeemed BA miles for the flight anyhow so took the first flight out monday morning and made it to the ward in time to prep for ward round. never mind it was walk of shame-ish cos i had to be gross and wear the same clothes i'd left the ward in on friday cos i'd gone straight to heathrow after work.  #winning