We had such an amazing weekend in the Swiss Alps. Saturday night, we taught Andrew how to
play Texas Hold ‘Em and a few other card games, which was really fun. Yesterday, we took a gondola up to
First, a hiking area high in the Alps.
I think we were at about 7500 feet. It was raining when we left Grindelwald, but the weather
cleared up nicely. Surprisingly,
we’ve had warm weather the whole trip – about 80 degrees F during the day and
about 50 at night. We had lunch
at the only restaurant on First, overlooking the gorgeous, snow-capped
mountains. I can’t even describe
the absolute splendor of the area and pictures don’t do it justice.
Sean and Andrew wanted to do some
intense hiking, and Rob, Ashley, and I wanted to do easy hiking. The ride to the top of First made Rob
kind of queasy, but he felt better after lunch. Even though I bought 6 pairs of shoes to Europe, I only
brought my Sperry’s (boat shoes) on this trip! I didn’t think we’d be doing hiking. Luckily, on First, there is a LOWA
testing facility. LOWA is an outdoor
apparel brand. I was able to check
out hiking boots and try them out for the day with absolutely no cost or obligation. I really loved my boots and I
think I might invest in some when I get back to the US. (I kind of consider myself an avid
hiker now, haha.) Ashley, Rob, and
I hiked about 2 hours to Lake Bachalpsee, “alpine gem” that we read about in
our guidebooks. There were cows,
goats, badgers on the path. The
paths were super nice and extremely well traveled, almost like a road, although
it was steep in some parts.
We stayed at First until about 5 pm. It looked like it was about to rain and
we were getting hungry. Sean and
Andrew went hiking on their own and didn’t go down with us. We stopped at cool playground with a
trampoline on the way down to Grindelwald, then stopped at some of the shops in
Grindelwald before going back to the chalet. I was hoping to buy some cool souvenirs, but everything was
super extremely expensive. The
average t-shirt cost 30 CHF (about 30 USD) and chocolate bars are about 10
CHF. There are many watch and
jewelry stores, but the watches cost about 10,000 CHF. I think we were the only people in
Grindelwald under the age of 50 for a reason! There were a ton of Asians, so almost everything had a
Japanese/Chinese translation. We
really liked shopping in the Montbell outdoor store, which is the only one in
Europe.
Last night, Rob made us a delicious
and traditional Swiss meal of brat, peppers, and schpatzel (puffy, egg-like
noodles). So delicious. We then made a pot of coffee and did
homework the rest of the night. I
finished my design project, yay!
Our train from Grindelwald left and
10:00 this morning and now we are somewhere in Germany, heading towards
Frankfurt. I’ve written almost all
of my field trip report this weekend and on the train, so now I just have to
perfect it. We are supposed to get
back around 9:30 tonight. I can’t
believe we only have one more long weekend left!
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