

5 of us decided to head to Switzerland for the weekend to see Interlaken and go canyoning. We headed out on Friday night taking the slow overnight trains (which are cheaper and we will get there earlier) for our 16 hour journey! We had switch and take 5 different trains…we had over an hour in Milan til the next train so went to get milkshakes at midnight while waiting…then we had a 5 hour gap from 1-6am in a little train station along the border of Italy and Switzerland. I actually slept really well on the floor, clinging to my backpack! We got up at 6 to catch the next trains and were to Interlaken before noon on Saturday!
Once there, we set off to find and checkin to the hostel we booked (called the ‘Funny Farm’ hostel). It didn’t take us too long and the place looked really nice but we couldn’t go to our rooms for a few hours so we stored our stuff in room there and went to look around the downtown area and find the chocolate factory place we heard of to take a tour. The town of Interlaken is very touristy and mainly about the outdoor adventure sport things they offer (hiking, skydiving, white-water rafting, canyoning, etc.) so there are lots of hotels, restaurants, and souvenir-type shops. We looked at some of the shops and found the chocolate place but tours only ran at 5 or 6pm. The other 3 we traveled with went back for the tour while Rachel and I went canyoning. It was such a crazy change in temperature for us when we were there! Cloudy and only in the 60’s compared to temps over 100 and humid in Italy! I really enjoyed the break from heat and seeing all the mountains around in Switzerland. So as we looked around, I bought some Swiss chocolate to bring home and then headed back to find our room and change to go canyoning. We were informed that our rooms were not in the main hotel/hostel building we saw….we had to walk outside, around back through a business/storage place with wetsuits, boats, etc and then got to our place…the ‘barn style hostel rooms’. It was funny! Our room was teeny with 4 bunk beds, the showers were downstairs.
So at 4 Rachel and I went to meet our group for canyoning! I had registered us earlier online so we were ready to go. We met our guides who were both Australian—they rushed us to change and then get into our wetsuit things, boots, life jackets, harnesses, and a helmet (each had a random name on it that they called us…mine was ‘Pee Wee’). They took us on a 5 minute drive to the place, then a 10 minute hike up to the beginning of the canyon place. We then started to crawl through the
raging water on rocks, up a little to big rock cliff things, sometimes they helped us repel down, other times they made us jump straight off the rocks into the water below! (It was super scary and they always gave us all these specific instructions like jump to land on your side in superman pose so you don’t hit the rocky edge, etc.). Other times we got to lay down and slide down the slope-y waterfall rocks! That was fun until I went underwater for a but and swallowed a bunch. Overall I’m glad I did it but it was pretty scary since I just learned how to swim a few months ago. Afterwards we went back and got hot showers (the water was really cold since it came down from the mountains and it was cloudy and 60degrees!), a free drink, and got to see the pictures of the trip. They were super expensive so I didn’t get any. Later all 5 of us went out to eat and got burgers and fries, then went to sleep in our barn hostel.
We got up on Sunday to go hiking by the mountains nearby. We took a train to Lautterbrunnen, a few minutes away where we hear there was a trail we could walk to the mountains and behind a waterfall! It was so pretty there and nice out, even a little sunny. We walked and took tons of pictures…then we found Trumelbachfalles where we paid a couple franc (Swiss money, 1franc=about 1$) to go on a lift up into the mountain (instead of walking over 600 stairs), there we could walk through paths and stairs to see the waterfall that ran through the middle of the mountain. Afterwards, we walked back and caught the train back to Interlaken, got some food at a grocery store, andcaught the train heading back at 3. We had a few issues getting back because we had to switch trains a lot again…one train was
We headed out on the bus and then had to walk for about a half hour up this hill (Monte Berico) to get to the outlook and restaurant area. It was really pretty to see the town from way up above and I got pizza at the restaurant (Sette Santi)!
Sunday-We headed out at 6am from base to go to the beach in Slovenia. The trip was through the Outdoor Rec company on base so we took a pretty full charter bus. I was surprised it was only about a 3-hour drive to get to Slovenia! The town we went to is called Portorose which is along the coast, a ‘resort area’, and famous for the beaches and I guess the casinos!
It was really pretty of course and we could look around and swim or do whatever we wanted until 5pm when we had to meet the bus again. We looked around the shops, ate lunch, swam, and relaxed/read books. The beach was kindof weird because the sand area where people sat didn’t slope down into the water—there was sand, then a sidewalk and cement wall thing you had to go over to get into the water, which was not to cold but had a lot of grass floating in it. We still enjoyed swimming around though. We were back to Vicenza early (because traffic wasn’t bad) by 9pm.
Once we got to Munich in the morning @ 6, we took awhile to figure out the Metro tickets to get to our hotel. Kristine’s dad has some sweet connections in the hotel business and got us cheap rooms and half off food in a really nice hotel in Munich. We found it, dropped our stuff,
The plan for Monday was to go to Neushwanstein castle (like the Disney logo). We found out that it would be nearly impossible to get the right trains and busses to get there and back to Vicenza by night. L So we scratched that off the plan and went to hang out in Garmisch (a city in the mountains) for a few hours since we had to go through there on the trains to get back to Italy anyways. Garmisch is fairly touristy so we looked at the shops, got food, and then
headed on the train back home. The trainride home was one of my favorites because it was through the mountains so it was beautiful! I could actually see everything since it was daylight and even got some good pictures! We had to switch trains 3 times to get home—one time we only had 4 minutes at the station to switch and some Slavakian guy told us our first train was delayed so we would only have 1 minute to catch the next one! We had a pep talk and the 8 of us dead sprinted from platform 21 to 3, yelled to the conductor who was blowing the whistle and shutting the last door. Luckily he let us on or we would’ve been stuck in Austria for hours!
We have a short 4 day work week. I am figuring the kids out and it is more fun now. Some of the infants are starting to walk and crawl. One baby tried to eat a bee the other day though and it stung his lip so it puffed up! His mom works at the center so it was ok. One of our pre-toddler kids is moving up to the toddler room so we are transitioning him and are sad to see him go.
Last weekend 3 of us went to Rome. We had to take the night train from Vicenza to Rome Friday night and left around 10pm. We left right after Rachel got off work though so we could get to the station by 8 when the ticket windows close (she had to get her train pass stamped). The buses took forever and we were crazy and ran into the station at 7:58! The guy was flipping the sign ‘chuiso’ (closed) but we barged up there and persuaded him to stamp the pass which only took 2 seconds! Woo that was close! Hahaha We had seat reservations on the train and were planning to sleep and get there at 6:10am. That unfortunately didn’t happen because our seats were next to crazy people! The train had little cabins with 6 seats—we had 3 seats, an older Italian guy in one, a middle-aged talkative Italian in one, and an empty seat. They were trying to talk to us but we couldn’t understand much…I tried using my Italian Jiffy Phrasebook but could only say basic things. Suddenly the crazy talkativeguy got up and brought back another guy who he figured spoke some English…then made him translate his life story to us. It was interesting but we didn’t really care and the translator kept saying I don’t know why he is telling us this…I don’t know him! He was funny and we talked to him awhile and found out he was from Rome but in the Italian Army in Verona-going home for the weekend to visit family. He was interested in the U.S. base we work on and talked about the army in Italy. He also taught us some Italian words and placesto go in Rome! So we didn’t really sleep but I felt pretty excited and hyper when we got to Rome at 6:09am!
We had some breakfast, bought a map, and reserved our seats for the way home right away before heading out. Since we were there and going so early, we got a pass for the double-decker tourbus and had to wait for it to start running at 8:30. It took us to all the main attractions where we could get off and then back on since a different bus came around the route every 10-15 minutes. We saw the Collosseum, walked around Palantine ruins, and then up to a huge palace
We didn’t get to the hostel until about 11pm—it was really big and we had 3 bunk beds in a room with 10 people. It wasn’t too bad and we could lock our stuff up at night. I am not sure, but I woke up somewhat sleepwalking looking under beds because I was having a dream that the kids I work with (infants) were there and climbing on and under all the beds!!! I hope nobody woke up and saw me crawling around-that would be freaky! We got up around 9 and had breakfast at the hotel (only 1 Euro and nothing great). We took the city bus back to sightsee more and found out our hostel was really close to the edge of Rome and the Olympic Statium complex! During the day we saw the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. Our train left at 2:30 that afternoon and we played cards/slept on the 7 hour way home.
Wow I wrote a lot! Sorry! I will try to keep it more brief next time.