Get Busy Living!

I knew this weekend would be a crazy adventure, but I was pleasantly surprised by everything Interlaken had to offer. I was excited to see more of Switzerland because Lugano is basically like living in Italy and Interlaken proved to be different yet still awesome.

The weekend started out Friday morning with the first glimpses of snow! It rained super hard Thursday night (we had to run to dinner during a downpour and all showed up soaked) and so the next morning all the mountains in the distance were covered in snow. Even on the train to Interlaken I fell asleep and when I woke up (no idea where we were) everything was covered in snow! One of the perks of traveling through the Alps this time of year!

We got to Interlaken in the afternoon and I immediately knew I loved the place. The air was so crisp and although we expected to have rain all weekend, the weather turned out to be perfect. We started out with some shopping on our way to the hostel. I finally found the present for my dad I had been searching everywhere for and we all bought some chocolates from a Swiss chocolate store, it was so good! We spent most of the day walking around, taking pictures, just figuring out the town until dinner.   We got Thai food from a restaurant a few buildings down from our hostel, which was awesome because I've been really homesick for food and I'm obsessed with Thai food.

That night we went to a club called "Metro," which was a converted metro station that was located underneath our hostel. There weren't a lot of people there that night, so it was basically just us, but we just danced and had a good time with each other. We didn't stay out too late because we had canyoning (and some people had skydiving) in the morning!

Canyoning was absolutely insane! It was freezing, but totally worth it. The group that went was me, Christine, Brooke, Anna, and Graham. We wore a wet suit, two wet suit jackets, wet suit shoes, and a life vest and I couldn't feel my body afterwards. We canyoned for about 2 hours, but even though I was freezing, I could have continued all day. We jumped off rocks, repelled down a 30 foot cliff, swung on ropes, went under ice cold waterfalls, and slid down rapids. All of us are pretty athletic so we didn't really have any problems, but some people in our guide group were struggling a bit, but it was pretty intense. I banged into rocks a few time, so I have some good bruises. Graham took his GoPro, so I can't wait to see the footage. I really want to try to find canyoning in the States or at least do similar stuff like white water rafting with everyone again. The motto of Outdoor Interlaken (the company we went through) is "get busy living" and that's definitely what we're doing throughout this trip.

Our canyoning group at the very end 

It took me forever to warm up after (and I think I'm getting sick again ugh), but after a few hours I could finally feel every part of my body again. We went to dinner at an Irish pub and then went to the same club again. There were a lot more people there that night, including our canyoning guide. 

The next day a lot of people went home early, but some of us (me, Megan, Anna, Lyndsea, Graham, Brooke, Christine, and Ali) stuck around to go to Gimmelwald (which is apparently listed as a place everyone needs to go before they die).  We took a train to Lauterbrunnen, which was a cute town up in the mountains. We ate at this comfy cafe, where I got the best tomato soup of my life before we started the walk towards Gimmelwald. The walk was gorgeous. There were waterfalls, sheep, cows, the cutest houses, fields, and the snowy mountains in the distance. It has been a while since I've seen so much grass (there really isn't a lot of grass in Europe) so that was super nice. A few of us took a little nap in a field and it was just so relaxing. It took us about 2 hours to walk a 30 minute trail, but we finally made it to the cable car that would take us up to Gimmelwald. 

Lauterbrunnen

When we got to the top of Gimmelwald, the view took my breath away. No words.

We ate outside overlooking the mountains - fondue!! So good. I wish we could've just sat up there all day, but we stayed as long as we could until it started to get a lot cooler as the sun set behind the mountains. 

Interlaken is now tied for my #1 favorite place with Cinque Terre. Both places were so relaxing - there was no rush, no pressure to see a bunch of touristy things - we could just take our time and inhale everything around us.