Bernina gave us a trip of a lifetime. These are pictures of our first night out to dinner. We had dinner inside this beautiful nursery. We first had hors oerves and drinks in a room filled with every type of plant you can imagine, all planted in pots, some as big as four feet wide.

The atmosphere was perfect including music by this jazz band playing on their homemade instruments. You should have heard how good they were! It was the perfect setting to catch up with all of our Bernina friends.

After socializing, we moved to the dining room filled with beautiful candles and plants galore. We enjoyed this evening so much. The food was excellent. The picture shown below is just the appetizer!

We had a beautiful dinner and enjoyed the company of Nina McVeigh from Bernina at our table. Nina has done several educatioal videos on “The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims". In these videos, she demonstrates different feet and techniques to help make your sewing experience even better. It’s such a great learning tool. If you’d like to view these just go to this link http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/bernina_videos.php

Thank you Bernina for making our first evening so special… Stay tuned for more on our Bernina trip to Switzerland.

Happy Sewing,

Ron and Lisa

Ok, are you ready? Fasten your seatbelts as Lisa and Ron share their Switzerland experience with you. We hope to keep you on the edge of your seats as we were while there. We took over 1200 pictures with some of them through the glass windows of the bus or train and there is some glare but the pictures will still be worth it. We will save the best for last “The Matterhorn” so stay tuned. We will start with the bus ride from the airport to downtown Zurich. The buses are much narrower than ours as the roads in Switzerland are not as wide as in the USA. You really notice this in some of the windy roads and over cliffs WOW! is all we can say. With each bus we took, Bernina made sure we had a Swiss tour guide. It was very nice listening to them with their Swiss accent as we were informed of their culture and the many sites.

This next picture is from the bus on the way to Zurich from the airport which was only a 15 minute ride but already we got a peak of the countryside and its rolling hills and farms all within sight of the city in the background. Switzerland is all hills and mountains everywhere. It was difficult to find any amount of level ground.

In the next picture, you can see some of the beautiful architecture, it is just everywhere. Even simple homes have something to present. The Swiss are not flashy people by any means; in fact, they are just the opposite however they are very proud. There buildings are all built to last and in many respects are way ahead of us in many things they do. More on that later. This building is next to the train station in Zurich next to our hotel. It just greets you in awe.

The trains are a very important mode of transportation in Switzerland and someone had the foresight to see this 100 years ago. They have a huge infrastructure throughout the country. This picture is just to show the bicyles that people bring to the train station while they ride the rail. Notice how they hang them from the ceiling to save space and take full advantage of all of it.

This is just our arrival but after a very long flight of 8 hours and a 6 hour time loss we are headed to our room to get a bit of rest. Next up will be our first evening and a special treat from Bernina with dinner at a beautiful greenhouse restaurant with some dear Bernina friends…