We got up early and it was pouring with rain, I still wanted to walk up the Alm to see where Heidi lived but R decided that it was sensible to stay in Vanley to keep him warm. We parked at the Heidi Hotel and donning his brand new Italian coat (the only clothing purchased in Italy) Sunny and I walked up to Heidihof. It wasn’t far but the cows were very pretty and their bells were tinkling and being Switzerland there was a poo bin every 100 metres just in case. We arrived at Heidi’s house and I purchased a ticket, the woman looked at me a little strangely when I asked for only one ticket but sold it to me anyway. While I was in the ticket office I had tied Sunny in his fancy new red coat outside, when I returned he was surrounded by Chinese tourists taking his photograph, he was loving the attention, I dragged him away and tied him up outside Heidi’s house.
Inside it was as though my childhood imagination had come to life, the attention to detail was brilliant and Clara’s chair was sitting empty on the second floor. I loved it. I wandered up to the top of the mountain in the rain where there was a little wooden cabin, supposedly the Alm Uncles house but it was brand new and had a video with instructions on how to make raclette, I’m pretty sure Heidi only ate goats cheese but who am I to upset an industry. When I got back to Vanley I decided to do an internet search about the village and found out that it had been converted especially for the Chinese and Korean tourists, perhaps I should have been more circumspect when deciding to take the dog.
We up sticks and drove to Lucerne.