First Day in Switzerland

I found Mark and Steve! They had some crazy adventures in Florence involving lost Eurail passes and hour long bus rides, but they finally made it to Cinque Terre and we had a lovely dinner at a cafe overlooking the water and had a traditional Italian 2 hour long relaxing dinner. The next day I had to change hostels into Riomaggiore (my hostel would not let me check out before 7am and our train left on the 4th at 6am) and then we started with what was supposed to be a 15 min hike up to a Monastary to have lunch. The guidebooks lied! It was a one hour 15 min hike straight up the mountainside with broken stairs and in the hot, humid Italian weather. Thank goodness we found a cafe along the way so we could buy more water. When we finally got to the Monastary it was closed, but we were exhasuted anyways. Although I do feel rather accomplished. We then took a differnt path back which was 100 times easier; only 40 mins and no stairs. We did the easy walks between Riomaggiore and Manarola (about 20 mins) and Manarola to Corniglia (about 1 hr). We then took the train to explore Vernazza and Monterosso. We had dinner in Monterosso, which is a beachy town (a beach with sand!) that reminds me a lot of Florida. We split a bottle of local wine, which was delicious as usual. While walking around we happened upon a live concert with lots of townspeople dancing so we hung around listening to the music. Monterosso is the place to be in Cinque Terre at night.

We woke up super early today and caught the 6am train to Genoa, then a train to Milan, and then a train to Interlocken (well, 2 trains and a bus, but who's counting!). And by chance we were on the same trail as Angela and Adam; even in the same car. So now we are in Switzerland and get to use to Swiss Franc which is about equal to the dollar but everything here is ridiculously expensive! We got 2 10 inch pizzas and it cost 28 dollars! So we stopped at a coop to get some food while we are here. I also picked up some chocolate :) We didn't get into town until about 4pm so we have just been wandering around checking out to great view of the Alps. We took a ferry to get from Spiez to Interlocken and it was a beautiful ride, and free with our Eurail passes! It's a nice small town, not very touristy. The main things I love here are that it's not incredibly hot and humid like Italy was, the water is an amazing shade of aquamarine, and you can see the Alps anywhere you look. There are also a lot of flowers planted all around town which makes the city very pretty. I have seen tons of peoples backyards filled with vegetable gardens and it makes me jealous; at home the deer would destroy anything like these gardens.

Tomorrow I am going to hike in the Alps for a bit, but am only going to do some of the shorter hikes. My legs still hurt from making it to that monastary! I think Angel and Adam are going to hike all the way to the Schilthorn, which is a 8 to 9 round trip strenous hike. I admire their bravery. I want to do some hanggliding here, but the prices start at 160 Francs. Everywhere you look in the skies you can see people paragliding, sometimes they do flips and tricks. Probably next update will be in a few days in Bern, and I have no idea when I will next be able to upload pictures.