Monday, February 17, 2014

On Top of the World

If you get anything from this post it will probably be this: The Swiss Alps are beautiful and Switzerland was one of the highlights of our trip! Spencer asked me about 17 times if we could move to Switzerland while we were there. He has also declared it the most beautiful place on Earth (but no big deal).  The real bummer about our visit to Switzerland was that we only had 2 days there.  It was the hardest part of our trip to plan (how do you narrow down a whole country to one place?), so it ended up getting the least amount of our time because we sort of gave up on planning it (lame, I know).  Our biggest regret is that we didn’t extend our time there and cut out a few days in Italy (Naples, maybe??). 
Riding trains is pretty fun!

Thursday we caught a train from Germany to Grindelwald. The journey took about 7 hours, so it ate up most of our day. It was fun to watch out the windows as we rose higher into the Alps, and to see all the little villages with their cottages and churches.  The worst part of the day was dragging our luggage up the icy hill, in the dark, to the hotel we couldn’t find.  Plus there were little rocks that kept getting caught in the wheels so the luggage wouldn’t roll.  I was a really happy camper for those 35 minutes ;).  That night we were supposed to be sleeping in a 16-man hostel room with bunk beds, but we got upgraded to a 2-man.  Still with bunk beds but certainly better.

 (Top left: A picture from inside the gondola, Top right: Giving you an idea of the poor visibility)


Friday morning we got up bright and early, walked into town, rented our ski and snowboard gear, and headed up to the ski resort.  We spent the whole day on the mountain, and survived ski day with no broken bones or concussions, but some really sore muscles.  We were hoping we'd get an awesome view of the Alps from the top of the ski lifts, but the clouds covered everything up. In fact, we spent most the day skiing through the clouds causing very low visibility, lots of snowflakes in our eyes, and difficulty perceiving what was snow ahead of us and what was sky.  We spent the day doing the "easy" runs because we didn't feel safe going too fast with our severely limited visibility. Doing the easy paths was fine with me though. The plus side of the bad weather was nobody else seemed as crazy or determined as us, so we had almost the entire mountain to ourselves with all the fresh, fluffy powder that fell throughout the day. 
Rosti for dinner - A traditional Swiss dish.  And yes, we did eat lots of Swiss chocolate here too ;)
That night we caught a train to one of the other mountain towns near Interlaken called Lauterbrunnen.  We had loaded the walking instructions to our hotel from Google Maps when we had Wi-Fi, and found the hotel was about a 30 minute walk from the train station.  This time we decided to catch a bus to our hotel rather than walk, but we had about an hour to kill until the next bus came.  So, we took our time getting dinner, then just sat at the bus stop.  While we were doing this, Spencer was fiddling with the GPS we’d brought.  He got it working just as we finally got on the bus.  As the bus was driving up the road, the GPS told us we were passing out hotel!  We looked out the window, and sure enough there was the Hotel Staubbach.  We pushed the button to get off, and hopped off at the next stop.  Turns out our hotel was actually about a 5 minute walk from town, so we sat in the cold for nothing.  Stupid Google Maps.  At this hotel, we got a budget room and were literally sleeping in the attic.  The funny thing is it was one of the nicest places we stayed!
Lauterbrunnen valley

Saturday, our hotel receptionist suggested we go hiking for the day. So, we rented hiking boots and took a ski lift up to the hiking trail.  Lauterbrunnen sits in a U-shaped valley between two sets of steep mountain cliffs.  The name Lauterbrunnen means “many springs” because of all the waterfalls that fall from the tops of the mountains into the valley.  To give you an idea of the place, JRR Tolkien created Rivendell based on Lauterbrunnen, so yeah it was pretty beautiful ;).  Sorry for the picture overload!




A little mountain train

Spencer drinking some crisp mountain water

One of the cabins in Gimmelwald
The Hotel Staubbach in Lauterbrunnen
The hike was only supposed to take a couple hours if you walked at a good pace, but we took our time taking pictures, soaking up the sun, and sitting on benches in awe of the mountains around us.  The final portion of our hike took us through a little Swiss village called Gimmelwald where the locals raise goats, the cows have bells around the necks, everyone makes their own cheese, and no cars are allowed in the village, even for the villagers! That day may be my favorite day we spent in Europe.  
 Top left: The Lauterbrunnen church was right outside our hotel, Top right: Staubbach falls
 I loved these Christmas lights in the church yard
Spencer took this picture in Interlaken while we were waiting for our train to Venice

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