The End of the Road

Well, I'm down to my last hour in Europe.  I'm a bit bored hanging out in the Dublin airport, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to bring everyone up to date on the last few days of my trip.

So we'll start with...

This was a great idea.  Candace and I had a blast on this trip.  Luckily, it was the nicest day I had in Interlaken.  Beautiful, sunny, and (thankfully) warm.  So we started the trip by being picked up at our hostel.  We were taken to the Outdoor Interlaken base and got to watch some video clips before we headed out for our trip.  The ride out was, of course, beautiful:

Once we got there, we changed (do you know how hard it is to put on a wetsuit?!) and walked up to our starting point.

Which was down this wall:

(This was one of our guides by the way...he was a lot of fun and made the video I'll post at the bottom)

Unfortunately, the name on my original helmet said "J-Wow", which I obviously wouldn't stand for, so I change helmets and that's how I became "Miss Piggy"

Once we rappelled our way down the canyon wall, we got into the canyon for some sliding, jumping, and climbing.  The pictures and video say more than words could, so I'll just post those for now.

Ready to go down the first slide:

 This jump was a bit intimidating.  You had to make sure you jumped out far enough to avoid the rocks.

 A good shot of part of the group

 The whole group, getting the scoop on the next part of the canyon:

 Me, being pushed down another slide:

 Zipline!

 Sliding again:

 A beautiful day in the Swiss mountains!

 The still shot looks funny...it worked better in the movie:

Since I couldn't take my camera on this trip, all of these pictures are still shots out of the movie.  Here's the link to that so you can get a better idea of how the trip went.  (=

Canyoning Grimsel!

Next, it was off to Venice for me.  I had a very distinct plan for Venice: walk around, take pictures, eat food. And I must say, I did an excellent job of sticking to that plan.

I was a little worried at first, because it was so cloudy.

Also, because this demonstration was going on right outside my hostel door:

Apparently, this demonstration for the Italian Labor Union.  I have no idea what they were marching about, but there were all over town.  At least they were peaceful.

On my picture taking journey of Venice, I did notice that traffic jams here are quite different than in the states:

I also saw some guys get arrested into the back of a boat:

And a water ambulance run:

 And the Venice version of a trash truck (boat)

And I did eventually get some decent shots of the city (in between all of the food eating of course)

I even got myself in one:

And so ends my trip to Europe.  As much fun as I had, I must say that I am exceptionally excited to be heading home today.  Granted, I will likely be too tired to care by the time I get there, but for now, I'm excited.

That's all folks!

KT

The Cold Side of the Mountain...

...is the inside.

So last night, I made a new friend.  We are staying in the same room at the hostel and she offered to share her dinner with me.  Obviously, this calls for instant friendship.  I would tell you her name, but she's Korean and I can't remember how to pronounce it, or spell it for that matter.  So instead, here's a picture:

Anyway, she told me she was going to Jungfrau today and asked if I would like to join her.  So I decided it might be more fun to go to the Top of Europe and have someone to talk to all day.  (I was right by the way)

So, we left this morning around 10, heading for the train station.  The train took us as far as Lauterbrunnen, where we had to switch to a cog train.  From here on out, the view on the way up was simply stunning.  The whole trip takes about 2 1/2 hours all the way up, but it didn't seem that long at all.  Here are a few shots we took:

Here's a cog train with the mountains in the background

 And a picture of pretty much how I pictured Switzerland

 The mountain still looks huge here, although we are nowhere near the ground anymore

 I like this one because the sky is so blue and you can see for so far

 This one is a picture of a crazy biker who was going ridiculously slow (granted, I would've given up long before this)

 And another shot of us before we got to the top.

The last part of the journey was through a tunnel that went directly through the mountain and took about half an hour to pass through.  We stopped at a few observation areas, but didn't stay for long.  Then, we finally arrived at Jungfraujoch, the highest train station in Europe.  It's somewhere above 11,000 ft high, but I don't remember how high exactly.  And here was the view from there:

 Absolutely beautiful

And, of course, we had to go play in the snow a bit

Warm and snowy, it was perfect.  However, this was where we discovered that the cold side of a mountain is the inside.  You have to take a tunnel (on foot) from the station to get out to this area and the tunnel was freezing.  People would put their coats on just to go inside and walk through the tunnel.  Seriously cold.

Then, we decided to go up to the highest observation deck for a look around:

Apparently, you can see parts of Switzerland (obviously), Spain, Germany, and Italy from here, but I have no idea which one was where:

There was also this.  It says "The Jungfraujoch - Top of Europe Welcomes to Switzerland the first group from China under the "Approved Destination Status" agreement - 6 September 2004".  Kind of cool...and so recent.  By the way...those are all locks.

We had also heard tell of an Ice Palace, so we knew we had to go check that out.  We definitely were not disappointed.  Although I might have been a bit over-excited about a "palace" carved out of glacier ice:

The whole thing was really cool though (haha...bad joke).  There were ice sculptures everywhere.  I particularly liked the seals

 And of course an ice photo booth

 And a random blue ice passage

 This passage was very small, but kind of long.  Of course, after I got halfway through, I ran into somebody and had to retreat because there was no room to pass.

 And here I am again, overexcited about life.  (=

All in all, it was a wonderful day.  I love the mountains and these are some of the best in the world.  But soon enough, it was time to head back down to Interlaken:

Tomorrow I'm going canyoning with Candace, so there will likely be stories and hopefully a video.  No pictures though since my camera isn't water proof.

Until then,
KT

It Couldn't Wait...

I was going to wait and write one big post about Switzerland, but this morning was honestly just too great.  It deserves its own post.

So this morning at 10:30, I was picked up in front of my hostel to go hang-gliding.  The only other passenger was a guy from South Carolina and of course our pilots.  The driver promptly informed us that the most dangerous part is the drive up the mountain...and then we took off.  On the way up, the view just kept getting better and better.  And we kept driving higher and higher.  We finally stopped and Ed and Bernie (pilots) let us know that we were at the launch point...unless of course we'd rather start from a higher one.  That was obviously not even a question, so we drove further up the mountain to the high takeoff point.  Much better.  Here's a before picture where we got out of the van:

Then we grabbed the gear and had about a 10 minute hike to where we actually took off.  The views from up here were absolutely stunning.  I asked our pilots how far up we were and they said it was just over 800m (2600ft) above the landing zone.  Not too shabby of a drop if you ask me.  We went through some basic instructions on takeoff, flying, and landing.  Learned the two most important things to remember: don't stop running (for takeoff) and look good for the camera.  And then we were off:

Thumbs up for a good takeoff.  Then, Ed went crazy taking a bunch of pictures and turning the glider through the air to get every angle we could.  He did get quite a few good pictures though.

Superwoman:

 I can fly!!

 That's Interlaken behind us.  It's also conveniently written right above the city on the glider.

 Love the no hands pictures.  And this lake is beautiful.

 Of course...I was happy to land safely.

Now just seeing the pictures clearly isn't enough, so here is the video clip they threw in for free as well.  Or a link to it at least.
Hang-Gliding!  (note: there's a lot of wind in this video...turn down the volume)

Ed (my pilot) made this clip at the end of the flight and did some tricks while he was making it.  I had no idea he was about to do these tricks, but it definitely made the end of the ride thrilling.  There was one point where he "stalled" the glider and we just completely stopped in midair, pointing up, before switching and doing a nose dive at the trees.  The landing was a lot faster than expected, but really easy nonetheless.

I have to say, I'm definitely glad I decided to spend the money on this.  Worth every penny.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to Trummelbach Falls and Schilthorn.  Then canyoning on Saturday.  You will definitely hear from me on those.

Until then,
KT