EA : Wengen, Switzerland!

This picture describes Switzerland and the differences between this place and the other two. After hustling and bustling the first week, it was the grandest idea to save Switzerland for last - and have it be the place where we spent the majority of our time, in the peace and quiet, lazy, go with the flow kind of life. We arrived in Geneva (via train again) and then quickly boarded a few more to get to where our "chalet" was (mountain retreat!) in the Alps area in a "village" (as I would like to call it) called Wengen. This time it was time for older sis's German to kick in :)

We stayed up a hill, in a "chalet/house" yet, we had other guests in it as well - we each had our own floor. Everything is IKEA and modern. So, some pictures of our chalet and floor!

Sort of the main room/dining room/kitchen

My room! Boy did I win the grandest room I think. Windows everywhere, book nook, a place to do makeup,my own little patio...

How would you like to wake up to this view?!

And now the surrounding views!

No I didn't mess with any artwork to color those mountains...that is how white they are! So majestic.

Moon coming out

So when we weren't laying around, playing games and drinking hot chocolate, we did venture to some neighboring mountain cities. We usually began our day walking down the hill (about twenty minutes) back down to the "main part" of town, which had a small grocery store and our favorite....a Swiss chocolate shop! Not only did they have chocolate but they were a bakery too, so they had bread and delicious pretzels and sandwiches.

Yay, I'm bringing home six packages with me! No joke.

And a slab of one of those...

Our first full day started with rain (Europe must have totally known we were coming, because we saw a lot of rain!) Then we went to our first city, Grindelwald, one of the major "shopping" and hotel areas. We love how Switzerland chalets had such cute shutters and flower planters, and everyone has gardens! So super envious :( They're beautiful.

Okay so back to the food...one of the staples there too is cheese fondue. O-M-G. The cheese fondue. We're shaking and sweating going through those withdrawls, let me tell you! SO good. Apparently it's more of a "winter" food for them we heard, but heck the weather there was like winter for us, haha!

How many times do I need to ask for the "eat this picture" button?!

Our next full day, we saw that the weather report showed a day full of sun so we took advantage of it and headed up to Jungfrau, otherwise known as the Top of Europe mountain. It took almost two hours to reach that point, so it took most of the day. Our timing was perfect - we arrived right around lunchtime/early afternoon. Once the sun shifted later, it became cloudy.

Dude, what's this white stuff?

And because we were feeling adventureous...ziplining!

All fun and games until you do rolls landing in the snow

Swissters!

Ice sculptures

Now really at the "Top of Europe"

Then we hit the mountain city called Interlaken. Another good shopping place. But perhaps most importantly, it was the site of our next adventure...

Paragliding!

Seriously, whose idea was this?! Someone must have slipped me a paper signing my life away when I was drunk off the heavy white wine'd cheese fondue :) No but seriously...I thought..."WTH, you live once, how many times will I be able to do this, yatta yatta".  Totally the idea of running,jumping and flying off a perfectly good, not collapsing mountain freaked me out. But I'm here, alive and uninjured (thank the heavens) to tell you about it!

Pre-takeoff. Kinda scary because once we started running, you couldn't see at which point you jumped off. It was all downhill like. Not that I know, I closed my eyes, ran, and the next thing I knew we were up in the air. Couldn't even witness my feet leaving the ground!

So my guide announced that we were the highest ones. Yikes! I held onto those ropes for dear life. But on the other hand, when I wasn't scared crapless for my life, the views were amazing. Like I knew they would be! 

We were up in the air for about 15-20 minutes. Towards our landing spot my guide asked about doing tricks, so then he started to spin us and dip us...oh that was not good. I quickly tried to get his attention to stop so I didn't puke on someone's head down below. Our landing was very good...he nailed it head on and we even stopped right in place - a perfect 10.0 by Olympic standards!

Happy landers! Brother-in-law did it...

Young sis too...

Thank goodness the ground and I have reunited!

Perhaps someday I'll be ready for it again, but for now I'm good with ground activities :)

Generally we walked around, visited Grindelwald once again to shop some more, and on our last full day we journeyed to another city called First.

Loved the roaming cows (and creamy ice cream they provided!)

Betsy photobombed all our pictures

Don't want to leave the poor goats out...poor sissy fed some and found out she was allergic to whatever grass/leaves she was handling

After five glorious nights, we traveled to Zurich to catch our flight home the following day. Nothing exciting about Zurich - city life. We're all just experiencing the blues after waking up to such wonderful, take your breath away views for a week and coming home...to view our dull walls. No comparison.

Switzerland, until we meet again....and we WILL meet again....