Smilestones

We didn't think that our niece and nephew could handle a trip to the mountains right after they arrived in Switzerland. They spent almost 11 hours on road, came late in the evening and had a short night as they were not sleeping in their own beds. We decided that it would be better to do something fun around our home instead. We still had a couple of days ahead of us, so we had enough time to go to the mountains, and we wanted them to get some rest before. Of course, we went down to the Rhine falls as it's a must when we have visitors, but we also wanted to do something inside, and **Smilestones** was the right choice. It's a miniature world showcasing many important landmarks of Switzerland. Their work goes into crazy details, and I could spend hours and hours looking at the models. There are countless houses, trees, trains, cars and more than 20,000.00 tiny people doing various activities. Actually, there is so much more and I hope that you will like what I'm about to show you. **Let's start!** Honestly, I couldn't decide which photo I should choose as cover image for this post. In the end, I decided to go with the market square of **Stein am Rhein** as it's in fact one of my favourite places in Switzerland. The scale of models is 1:87, so all these people are about 2 cm tall. Imagine the precision and the hand steadiness of their creators. There are lights in the houses too and every now and then the room goes dark and the scenery changes into night. I love this project as you can see many places in Switzerland in a short time, and decide if you want to visit them in real life too.  ---- The Swiss are proud of their railway system, so it isn't a surprise that there are over 120 tiny models of trains going up and down the landscape. In addition, there are even more models that are in a glass vitrine. I think our nephew likes these the most.  ---- We recognized so many places when we walked around. Here we have **Grindelwald** that we visited last year with our family on the way to Jungfraujoch. We parked in the parking garage next to the train station. You can see both of them here!  ----- There were many buttons that you could press and see what would happen. One of them made this helicopter fly away. I guess it's picking up a wounded tourist. I hope they had a travel insurance as you wouldn't want to pay for this in Switzerland 😊  ---- Not all details reflect reality as there should be some fun part too. Who can see the genie from Aladdin?  ---- **Interlaken** is another place from where you can start your trip to Jungfraujoch like we did two year ago. There is a bar on top floor of that high-rise building where we had a drink one night.  ---- Victoria-Jungfrau hotel is one of the most expensive hotels in Interlaken. No, we didn't stay there, but we did treat ourselves to dinner at one of their fancy restaurants.  ---- And this is what I mean when I say that the scenery changed to night. You can see the street lamps too! It really looks like the city at night. ![8 […]