Day 11

Last day in Interlaken, so we decided to rent bikes and see the town and both lakes. We have always wanted to try out a tandem together and they had one last one to rent. So we did it! Here I am checking out the first lake of Interlaken with our Tandem.
As you stroll through the middle of town there is a large open park and green space where most of the tourists flock to watch the extreme sport enthusiasts land. Not sure how many we watched but you could tell that they had a ton of jumps under their belt as I can not imagine a softer landing.

Here we are on one of our breaks, Ashley has been without her bike for too long and at this point our rear ends are starting to feel the time off our bikes.

Have to get a picture of the two of us riding!

And now I think Ashley is pedaling less and less, she has discovered I have pretty good balance of the bike and she does not need to keep her hands on the handlebars. So she needed to document our trip while in action.The picture that gave her lackadaisical pedaling away!

Day 10

Today was our hike day, we headed out to get tickets up to Alpiglen but the train was not running there yet due to the snow still being around that area. They are still skiing at the higher altitudes so that limited what we could do for hikes. We decided to head back to Lauterbrunnen, which was at 800 meters, for our starting point for the day. From there we decided to try and hike up to Suls which has a beautiful mountain lake that would be a perfect endpoint for our hike. We planned on taking the bus to Isenfluh, which is at 1081 meters, but just missing the bus we decided to just hike to Isenfluh.
An hour later we took our first break in Isenfluh where we decided to take some pictures. We saw this Nordic Walker which was one of the hundreds that we saw throughout our time in Switzerland.
Here is a picture of the climb that we had to endure most of the hike. The picture truly does very little justice to the quad ripping incline.

As we neared the top of the hike we found our first alpine meadow where we could see all three of the major peaks Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. This picture was taken about the same time the fastest accent of Eiger occurred in a mere 2 hours and 28 minutes!

As you can see the snow was still in full force when we reached the 1901 meter mark. We were only 20 minutes away from our alpine lake and I made the difficult decision that we should head back down since we did not get an early start due to new plans being made the day of the hike.

So at this altitude we decided it was time for lunch of bread, apples, and Rugen Brau, the locally brewed beer.

As you can see the sun was starting to set on the top of the peaks putting us in the shade for most of our decent. Here Ashley got a great picture of me descending into one of the small meadows near the town of Isenfluh.

Day 9

Berner Oberland is one of the most beautiful regions in all of the world, at least in my eyes. Today Ashley and I took what we like to call a stroll through the Lauterbrunnen Valley seeing many of the Waterfalls that it had to offer. The first we came upon was Staubbach Falls. In a book, I recieved for christmas from my parents, it is one of the 501 must-visit natural wonders
so Ashley and I had to get a picture in front of it. We now have one checked, off only 500 left!

Here is a full picture of Staubbach Falls including the Staubbach Creek.

As you can see the valley is extremely amazing, unlike anything in the States. There are perfect little meadows filled with cattle with bells hanging from their necks. So as you walk down this amazing valley you hear bells ringing from the cows grazing nearby. Then you look to the side and hear the roar of a water falling upwards of 300 meters from the top of the cliff faces that surround this picturesque setting.

Trummelbache Falls, also one of the 501 must-visit natural wonders of the world, was very amazing. It is a waterfall that is made up of 10 smaller falls inside the valley wall. Here is just one of the pictures that I took during our visit. More to come when I can make a few crops and rotations on my desktop computer.

Here is Ashley as we escape the very cold cavern of Trummelbache Falls. I imagine when it is at full force you cannot emerge dry from the caves that expose each of the smaller falls.

As we normally do, we had cheese and bread for lunch on the trail.

Day 8

This was the last day at our Bed and Breakfast so we enjoyed a nice long French breakfast and enjoyed the morning views from the garden at our B&B. Also, I would like to note that as usual we ended up playing ping pong and let it be put on record that I beat Dustin (probably for the first time) in an amazing match of outdoor ping pong. He may try to claim unfair advantage due playing on foreign soil (we were keeping score in french) but, I won fair and square!

We thanked Marc the owner of the B&B for an amazing time and headed off to Avignon to leave for la Suisse (Switzerland). We wanted to post some pictures of our Bed and Breakfast because it was absolutely gorgeous and we had an amazing time here.

We spent the rest of the day traveling to Switzerland, anxiously anticipaiting the Swiss Alps!

Reservations are happening!

This past week has been a great one, less than two months away from my first abroad experience and reservations are happening. Today I booked our Hostel in Interlaken, its the Lazy Falken Backpacker. We are planning on staying there for four nights after our stay in Southern France at the La Mas Jorel, its a bed and breakfast in the Provence region.

Ashley will be MIA for the next couple of weeks. She is in the Alps getting to ski during one of her breaks that I think occur way too often (I'm just really jealous). She is staying with one of the teachers at her school who has a cabin/condo near the mountains. She was really excited to go and get her fix of skiing for the year. She will also be seeing a couple of different friends with short trips back and forth.

I will keep everyone informed of the latest happenings as they will be happening all to fast as we finish up the plans on our trip.

Switzerland

Having done a lot of research this past weekend, I have been looking in the Jungfrau Region, of Switzerland to spend our time in. An anonymous backpacker once wrote in a hostel guest book "If heaven isn't what it's cracked up to be, send me back to Gimmelwald." I feel like this place deserves some exploration. There are many different hiking trails that explore the surrounding towns of Murren and Stechelberg. From the sounds of it each is a great representation of storybook Switzerland.
Lauterbrunnen a town in a nearby valley that plays host to Trummelbach Falls which as you can see look amazing and is fed by alpine glaciers and snow deposits that melt during the warmer months and can range from a small trickle to 20,000 Liters per second!
The main attraction of the Jungfrau region is the 3 glacier covered monoliths, Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau (Ogre, Monk, and Virgin).
More to come...

Travel Plans

Naturally you have to have some sort of plan to take on Europe, because no matter how long you have you definitely can't see it all. Hopefully three weeks will be plenty of time to travel around Europe and still be able to make it back to the States with a job waiting for me when I return.

Ideas started out with Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Switzerland, and possibly Germany. With three weeks we finally decided that Germany was at the bottom of our list and would be cut. After even further debate on how we wanted to do our traveling we decided to include Southern France and cut Venice, this allowed us to stay at a more comfy Bed and Breakfast in Avignon and travel to smaller French towns and hopefully find some time to see the Mediterranean Sea! After many hours of debate our final decision is as follows.

Dustin arrives to Paris Wednesday April 13th and the catches a train to Troyes where Ashley will be awaiting since she has to teach class until the 15th. Enjoy all that Troyes has to offer and let myself get used to being "the weird foreigner."

On the 16th, catch an early train ride to Paris and proceed down to Avignon where we hope to stay at Clos des Saumanes, a Bed and Breakfast that one of Ashley's friends highly suggested.
Stay for 3 nights then catch the Eurail to Switzerland. Where we plan to stay in a hostel for cheap and do some hiking and possibly some other adventures since its the second best place for adventure sports in the world!

On the 22nd or 23rd return back to Paris and stay with some of Ashley's amazing friends and spend Easter Sunday worshiping God at Notre Dame Cathedral, attending the International Mass at 1130 (its the only one with English). After mass we will head back to Troyes to pack up Ashley from her humble little apartment.

We will then be in Troyes and the surrounding area until the morning of the 28th when we will take the Eurail again up to Amsterdam. During our days of "downtime" we plan on heading to the Fontainebleau Forest, home to hundreds of thousands of sandstone boulders. I just could not be this close to a world class bouldering area and not at least try to do some climbing. So if weather permits we plan to get a couple of days in climbing, if it does not provide conditions to climb I would still love to walk around this magical forest.

Then to Queen's Day, or koninginnedag! It is a festival celebrating national unity and consists of a festival-like atmosphere which includes, the only day of free market in the Netherlands, dancing, open air concerts, children's games, carnival floats, parades, street theatre, fireworks, DJ music, decorated canal boats, along with everyone dressing in the country's color of Orange! So if you have any great orange costume ideas let me know!

We plan to return to Paris on the 1st of May and explore until our flight back to the United States of America on the 3rd!