Interlaken 2.0

What a fabulous weekend. Fabulous enough that I must post about it right away, because this week promises to be a very hectic one at work (so probably no new posts until the end of the week). Jill and I went to Interlaken this weekend! And I name this post Interlaken 2.0 only because it was my second time visiting Interlaken, not because it was superior to my visit last year with Melanie. Speaking of my trip with Melanie last year... turns out that our 2011 canyoning adventure is famous! I stayed at the same hostel --- Balmer's Herberge, aka the oldest private hostel in Switzerland --- again this year, and on Friday night, Jill and I went to check out the bar downstairs and there was video being projected on the wall of all the different adventure sports that you can do in Interlaken. And Melanie and I were in the video! It was just a few quick shots of us canyoning, but it was definitely us. Got this weekend off to a fun and exciting start!

Jill and I had originally planned to do our adventure sports Saturday and hiking on Sunday, but we ended up switching the days around since the weather wasn't as great on Saturday. But we ended up having a really fabulous hike instead!

If you can make out the picture I took of my hiking map, on Saturday morning, we took a train from Interlaken up to Lauterbrunnen and from there we took a gondola to Grütschalp that looked like this:

But the view in Grütschalp looked like this:

 We had an incredible, lovely hike with amazing views of the mountains from Grütschalp to a cute little town called Mürren, where we ate some super yummy caprese salads (sorry there's no picture, Mom) before taking another gondola to Gimmelwald and walking down the mountain to Stechelberg. Great names, right?

Some more photos along the hike:

Saturday night we had traditional Swiss fare --- raclette, or melted cheese with other stuff (in this case, potatoes, pickles, and onions:

Then today (Sunday) was the most incredible experience of my life --- I went paragliding!! Took a van to the top of a mountain above Interlaken (about 2,500 feet), got strapped to a parachute with a very experienced guide attached (Michael, who has been paragliding since the year I was born), take a few running strides and then glided on the air for about 15 minutes before coming to a safe landing. It was such a rush and such a blast! I would do it again in a heartbeat. I took several photos myself while up there, but I also paid for Michael to take some so you can see me up there!

So here are a few pictures that I took:

And here are the super amazing professional ones:

To sum up: I highly recommend paragliding if you get the chance. I had a wonderful weekend and I am so glad I went back to Interlaken a second time. I am now completely exhausted, it is almost midnight, and I am going to bed!