Christmas in Liechtenstein

Darrell and I packed a lot in our 4-day Christmas adventure in lovely Liechtenstein. Europe's 4th smallest country, Liechtenstein is just over 62 square miles (160 square km), and has around 37,000 residents. If you are curious, there is a lot more information available via Wikipedia!

It took two trains and a bus to go the three hours from Bern to the capitol, Vaduz. We arrived on Sunday, December 23rd so we could go to the museum before the holiday closures.The museum was an interesting mixture of the old and new and was a good introduction to the history of the Principality. One of the favorite exhibits was plaid-clad deer heads in a stairwell.

Plaid deer in the Landesmuseum in Vaduz

It was already getting dark when we exited the museum, but we wandered the quiet streets in the rain, watching some ice skaters on the extra slippery ice!

Watching skaters in the rain

After buying groceries for the next three days, including our Christmas Eve dinner, we could see the castle on the hill and the bright lights in town while we waited for our bus to Triesenberg.

The Prince of Liechtenstein's castle on the hill above Vaduz

The next morning was rain, rain, rain but then it finally cleared around lunchtime so we headed up to Malbun, the highest elevation community and ski resort, and rented some snowshoes to play in the fresh snow!

Snowshoeing in fresh snow above Malbun

We had just enough energy after our snow play to make our Christmas Eve dinner and relax looking out at the views from our wonderful Airbnb.

 

View from our Airbnb to the Rhine and across to Switzerland

 On Christmas Day the sun came out and I took a partial dip in the pool - then we went for a walk in the woods around Triesenberg. It is a lovely community with a lot of trails to explore.

Trying to imitate one of Lucky's statues at her Triesenberg Airbnb

Quick partial dip after breaking ice on the top of the pool!

Lucky's Airbnb in Triesenberg is lovely - we had the apt on the bottom floor to ourselves

We found a nicely decorated Christmas tree and creche  in the woods

On our last day in Liechtenstein, Darrell decided it would be fun to go downhill skiing. Despite my trepidation I agreed and we took off for a half-day on the slopes. I managed to do one run and fell so many times, and was such a nervous Nelly I gave up and went for another walk. Darrell did great and skiied until the slopes were all in winter shadow. Then we grabbed our bags from our Airbnb, including a yummy bag of Christmas cookies from Lucky, and after several buses and two trains we were back in Bern!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are ready for an inspiring New Year!