A couple of weekends ago, Nicole, Janelle, and I took a “Bus2Alps” trip (basically a tour company that organizes bus trips out of Florence to destinations throughout Europe) to Interlaken, Switzerland. Interlaken is the outdoor activities capitol of Switzerland, near Grindelwald. I think this was my favorite trip so far and I basically would like to move to Switzerland asap! The people there are so friendly and so relaxed and you basically feel like your looking at a postcard all weekend, the vistas are that spectacular! So, we arrived in Interlaken, after our 7 hour bus ride – yuck, at about 4:00am on a Friday morning. We woke up the next day at 8 to get our rentals and then head to the slopes of the Alps. The first run and a half of the day was great… and then I fell and incurred my first snow (skiing/snowboarding) related accident. Somehow – hard to do in a snowboard, I know, I have no idea how it happened – sprained my ankle. So then I was stuck at the lodge the rest of the day while Janelle and Nicole enjoyed the sunny, great skiing weather. Awesome. So after our trek back to the hostel, Balmer’s Herberge, and I say trek because I couldn’t put any weight on my ankle and I was hobbling, we grabbed some dinner and then headed down to the bar that’s under our hostel – it was actually pretty fun and our friend (fellow CSU KKG), Jess Johnson, met us there, as she was also in Interlaken for the weekend to skydive! The next day we decided that it was be a really great idea to go canyon diving aka jump off a 180ft. cliff. It actually turned out to be a ton of fun, although a little scary right before the jump – but the adrenaline rush was so worth it! While on this adventure, we met our new friend Chris Lincoln, a native Californian, who was on an extended business trip for his company in San Francisco a few towns over. We ended up hanging out with him the rest of the time and we were able to drive up to some amazing views to see the two lakes that are one either side of Interlaken as well as to the town of Grindelwald the next morning. Also on Saturday night, the four of us went out to have our first traditional Swiss meal (or at least Janelle’s and my first traditional Swiss meal, as we had never had fondue before); it was a little different, but a lot of fun. On our way back we stopped at a bar called Buddy’s, where I met my Swiss boyfriend – he didn’t really speak English but he took a lot of pictures with me and then introduced me to his friend as an international firefighter? Not really sure. I should also tell you that this guy was in a full blown ski racer suit… needless to say, we didn’t exchange contact info – haha. Unfortunately we had to leave the following afternoon, everyone was extremely exhausted from the action packed weekend but was not ready to leave this beautiful country… We all decided that moving there would be a very wise idea… But as always, as our bus pulled into the Florence train station, I was happy to be home!
March 6 - 9, 2008
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