We had one leisurely day in Lake Como in which we toured the Villa Carlotta and its amazing gardens, and otherwise had a wonderful and relaxing time doing nothing and enjoying the lake.
The next day we were off for the Swiss Alps. We spent most of the day enroute, but the scenery was well worth it. We stayed in a little town call Lauterbrunnen, which is a 20 minute train ride from Interlaken. The valley that our apartment was in has 72 waterfalls, and I think we could see at least 15, including one that was a 10 minute walk away. The mountains and cliffs soared all around us, and we could see the snow-covered Jungfrau at one end of the valley.
The green hills and valley were dotted with cute Swiss chalets with cows and windowboxes and tidy gardens. It was beautiful! It unfortunately had a tendancy to rain all the time while we were there, which put a damper (hehe) on some of our plans. We did visit a chocolate school one rainy afternoon, and we also hiked up to Trömmelbach Falls, which are enourmous waterfalls that pour through caverns in the mountain that are draining from three different glaciers. The falls were super cool because you got to go into the caverns in the mountain where the huge waterfalls were; if you were in the valley you would have no idea that such a huge waterfall is there because it is mostly in the mountain. We did not do any other big activities, but it was so nice to relax and to walk around the village and valley.
It was also interesting because the Swiss are my kind of people- neat and tidy and on time. Compared the other other places that we have visited, everything was so tidy- the yards and the houses, and everything was super on time. In Spain a train left on time if it was out within 5 or so minutes of the posted time. In Switzerland, if the train left more than 5 seconds after the posted time you wondered what was going on.
We left our parents and Marie yesterday; they are heading home, and we have three more weeks left for our European adventures. We took a train to Colmar, France, which is a super cute small town with half-timbered houses. On the way, we decided to skip going to the South of France (because the tours we wanted to go on were cancelled), and instead head to Munich to see the Disney Castle, and then head to Paris a few days early to make sure that we see everything we want to.
Hence, I am posting from an internet cafe in Munich. We have been up since 4 AM to make our trains, and in Munich we have seen free concerts and protests about lab animals (complete with a coffin and pallbearers and people in animal costumes) and lots of beer gardens. Tomorrow we will tour the Neuschwanstein Castle, and then who knows?
We will keep you posted and hopefully will get pictures up sometime. Hope you all had a great 4th of July!
