Switzerland!: Matt

Hey everyone we are currently in Gimmelwald, Switzerland! It's a remote town located about an hour from Interlaken. We had to take a cable car/gondola to get up here and have enjoyed the quiet relaxing atmosphere. Switzerland as a whole has been a great change of pace and we have been treating this part more like a vacation. We have been relaxing more, enjoying each other more and of course spending more (although Switzerland is more expensive anyway...)! Canyoning in Interlaken was a lot of fun but of course I managed to fall on my knee which hurt a lot! I am still recovering from that one but I am well enough now to enjoy some casual hiking.

Yesterday we arrived in Gimmelwald and it was a fairly clear day so we decided to take the gondola up to the top of the Schilthorn. The Schilthorn is located at an elevation of 2970 meters (just shy of 10,000 feet). The Schilthorn is also famous for being the site where a good portion of a James Bond film called "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was filmed. They play that fact up quite a bit...something that is definitely cool but in my opinion that movie was the worst Bond film of all time...by far! But the Schilthorn has a gorgeous view of the Swiss Alps which we were lucky enough to see thanks to the nice weather. I took my recently purchased Swiss flag up there as well.


We took the cable car/gondola ride to the top which took about 30 minutes and was a bit high at parts... Once up there we walked around and enjoyed the view, took lots of pictures, and watched some scenes from the James Bond movie in one of the rooms. The Schilthorn also has a rotating restaurant which also happens to be the highest rotating restaurant in the world. We actually paid an enormous amount just to sit back and enjoy lunch with an insanely beautiful view. The hot chocolate at the end was a great addition as well because it was quite cold up there (5 degrees Celsius or so).


Last night we also met some awesome travelers from Seattle and Portland. We had a lot of fun sharing Toblerone with them and talking late into the night...well by the Mountain Hostel standards (like midnight.). It has been fun making connections with people that live close to us back home (and work like 100 yards from where we did). Anyway we took a picture outside the hostel as they were leaving...they are somewhere cool now like the Matterhorn (don't get me wrong Gimmelwald is cool too!).


Today we hiked up past the town of Murren to see what kind of views we could see just from hiking around (but my main objective was to find some photogenic cows!). We saw beautiful views, had fun hiking around (tons and tons of great hikes around here!) and saw some creeks and waterfalls. We drank some water straight out of the creek (could be a bad idea...but I think it's fresh) and it was the best water I have ever tasted in my life. I could seriously live off it and no other beverage, forever! We also found some cows (thanks to those ingenious bells they have around their necks) just hanging around. One of the cows walked over to us and was really friendly...it was licking us up and down actually. We discovered that a cow's tongue feels like sand paper. Cows in the Alps are great, partly because their bells sound exactly like wind chimes which reminds me of relaxing on my favorite porch in the world (...Cape Cod).

Being here has definitely reminded me a lot about our grandparents who made this trip possible via handing money down to my mom when they passed away. The sites (swiss flags, antique swiss things) and smells (like farm smells...) remind me of going to our grandparents house in Oregon. I miss them, but being here reminds me that I will never forget them.