We watched the Amazing Race right after getting home from Harry Potter. It was one of the better episodes, as the teams were bunched together the whole time, and it went to a couple of places my wife and I have been – the Rheinfalls, and Grindelwald. Before kids, we had the opportunity to take a tour in Europe, and we did. We started in London, crossed the channel to Belgium, took a cruise down the Rhine river, visited the Rheinfalls, spent a couple of days in Lucerne, got off the bus and spent a week in Interlaken, Switzerland, got back on the bus and went to Paris, returned to London and flew home. So it was a lot of fun to see the teams at the Rheinfalls, get our photo album out, and show the kids that their parents did some fun things when they were young. The first day in Interlaken we went to the Jungfraujoch which is a railway station on top of the Jungfrau, the mountain two over from the Eiger. On the train ride up, you stop and look out a window in the Eiger. Here is a picture of the two Murphy Fearless Leaders atop the observatory atop the Jungfrau:
After we went up the Jungfrau, we came back down to Grindalwald, which sits at the foot of the Eiger, and spent a delightful afternoon. It was neat to see the contestants running through Grindalwald, and when they were going down the main street all crowded with shops, it brought back happy memories. As the contestants ran past, I recognized the hotel where we sat out on the terrace and ate soup while relaxing and admiring the view; they surely went past the little shop where I bought the deer leather dress shoes. One thing the show hasn’t portrayed is how unstandardized the plumbing is in Europe. By that I mean in the US, when it’s time to flush, the handle is obvious and located in the same spot every time. In Europe, the handle was rarely obvious and never in the same place twice. More than once I had to walk away from an unflushed urinal because I couldn’t figure out how to flush it. It’s the simple things in life.
OK, time for a snarky comment – what’s Flo thinking? She’s annoying, whiny, complaining, Zach puts up with her for no apparent reason, but Drew gets her all hot? Honey, you’ll see the difference the first time you come between Drew and his mirror.
