SWITZERLAND!!!

I went to SWITZERLAND and went PARAGLIDING. Yep.... I jumped off of a mountain and glided down.
   So there are really no words to describe the beauty in Switzerland. So I think I will let the pictures do the talking and try to comment on them.

  But just to preface... I have never seen mountains before. So I think the Swiss Alps are a really good place to see them for the first time. I have never been in a gondola... so I think the Swiss Alps are a really good place to ride one. I have never been hiking. So I think the Swiss Alps are a really good place to hike for the first time.

   Here come the pictures.... sooo many.

 This is where we stayed. The famous Balmers hostel. It was my first hostel experience. It was actually pretty nice and clean. Except with hostels you share a room with strangers and on the second night the other girls in our room decided it would be a great idea to smoke weed! yea.... not. 

   This is my bed. Bed number 9. That ladder is skinner than it looks and really hurts your feet. But exactly when I thought a place in Switzerland would look like.

And this was my first look at mountains. Interlaken is in a valley completely surrounded by mountains. This is the smaller of the mountains. 

 Another view of the smaller mountain. 

This is Maddy and Natalie swinging in the park when we were on our way to paragliding. 

This is just cute so I took of picture of it. It was automatically better because it was in Switzerland. 

 The cute little town of Interlaken. These are the bigger mountains. 

  A cute little man and his cute little horse. 

 Interlaken is also between two lakes. So we decided to take a little hike out to the closer one. We were hiking for 2 hours and barely touched the tip of the lake because it was so huge. This is a picture of a boat. 

 Bushes we saw on the way to the lake. 

A cute little village on the way to the lake. 

 A lonely boat on the way to the lake. 

 A lab who thought it was a great idea to get in the freezing water..on the way to the lake. 

 And the tip of the lake. Finally.

A close up of the lake water. This is the water, not the sky. The water was glacier water and was a Caribbean blue. It was so clear that even fish had a hard time surviving, according to a native. 

 Cute little boat house on the lake. 

Then the next day we decided to take a train up to the mountain for a hike. This is the view from our train. 

 View from the gondola. We rode the gondola up the mountain and hiked down. It was really pretty. 

Another view from the gondola ride. 

Natalie and Maddy in the gondola. 

Me in the ALPS! 

Beer we stopped to drink on the mountain. 

Maddy and Natalie hiking down the mountain. 

Our view on the way down the mountain. It was a short hike. Only like 2 hours but towards the end I was getting nervous we wouldnt make it down the mountain by nightfall. But we did. 

On the way we went through a few little villages. At this one we saw a few cows and a refrigerator on the side of the road. I think this was a rode for only hikers and there was a note on the fridge. Naturally we read it and it said "Help yourself, put the money in the box." We opened it and we found THIS! 

A fridge full of sausage and Swiss cheese! By the way, real Swiss cheese does not have holes in it. But cow are a really big part of the economy I guess because there are cow things EVERYWHERE! 

Switzerland was really fun and I cant wait until I go back from spring break but it takes forever to upload these pics with this crappy Italian internet and I am tired. I am headed to VENICE for CARNIVALE tomorrow! I will post about paragliding when I get home and of course about Venice.

  

    Wish me luck! ;)