Switzerland

Day Three:

Today was a long travel day, but it went by pretty quickly thanks to a couple of movies, my book, and lots a stops along the way. Driving through the alps was amazing - seeing mountains everywhere you looked, and every so often a lake with the mountains in the background; beautiful. During our drive through Switzerland, our tour guide told us some interesting facts. Like how during the cold war they had enough supplies stored away in their tunnels that they could seal the tunnels off and live off of their supplies for 20 years, and that they were so paranoid about other countries attacking them that they camouflaged their airstrips and some houses, with grass. That way from the air, all you saw was grass, and not the houses or airports. Finally, we arrived at our quaint hotel in the Jungfrau region. We had dinner altogether with the rest of the bus, and then Emily, aunt Hennie, and I decided to take a walk, since we had been sitting all day. It was drizzling a little, so aunt Hennie and I took out our "I heart London" umbrellas. Since it was raining a little, we couldn't see to the top of the mountains, but it was still really cool as there were small waterfalls everywhere. I also got to see firsthand how organized and precise their woodpiles are. It felt so good to get out and walk. Great way to end the night.

Day Four:

We had the whole day free. About half the bus went up Jungfrau ("top of the world"), but Emily had done that during her last trip, and said it was too commercial, and she wished that she had gone with her parents, who had gone up to the top of a different mountain, and took their time hiking and seeing the waterfalls. So that was what I decided to do. We went with about 15-20 of us to Trummelbach falls; falls which were inside the mountain. It was really cool - and a bit cold once we were inside. There were 10 different cascades and it was amazing. Hard to put it into words. After that we were going to take a couple of cable cars up to the top of a mountain, however it was still drizzling and foggy, so there was no point, as we wouldn't be able to see anything. It was disappointing as I was looking forward to it, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. Instead, we headed back to the hotel, and stopped at another falls - Staubbach Falls. This one was the longest free-falling waterfall. We were able to climb some stairs and get really close to it. It was mostly mist, but cool to see through it at the town below. On our way back down, Emily and I took some jumping pictures, which turned out really great. It may have taken us awhile to get the perfect pictures, but so worth it. At the bottom, there was a fountain with the water from the falls there, so we each took turns getting a drink.

Then we had a little break at the hotel, to figure out what we wanted to do the rest of the day. We went through the town and decided to take one cable car up Grutschalph Mountain and then hiked back down. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to get down, but it was amazing to see how high we were, but then to realize that if the weather had been better, we would have had to take 4 more cable cars to get to the top of the mountain, so really we weren't that high. On our way down we met a couple of cows, saw some more super organized wood piles, different flowers, a couple of big slugs, and another waterfall. Even though we didn't get to do what we wanted to do, we still had a great day.

I just loved the natural beauty that was everywhere you looked. I think Switzerland would have been my favourite country of the tour, if the weather had been good. I felt like I didn't get the full experience of being in the Swiss Alps, as I didn't know just how tall and magnificant they were.