Friday, July 9
Last night we discovered that we forgot to pack our alarm clock. That's a major problem when you have morning trains to catch. Fortunately one of the hotel workers agreed to knock on our door at 6:15. Once on the train, I was feeling really sick. My head was dizzy and my stomach was unhappy, but I didn't really think that much of it. I took a Dramamine about an hour into the trip. Two minutes later I ran to the bathroom and threw up! That was really a surprise, mainly because I haven't thrown up in like ten years. To top that all off, my throat hurt so much worse after that and we only had a tiny bottle of water. :-( Somehow, I survived the rest of the ride, I guess.
Once in Interlaken we walked to the hostel we'd reserved places at. There they told us that they don't do check-in until four in the afternoon! I thought that was really inconvienent. But they let us leave our stuff there, so we went shopping for awhile. All I really wanted was a sweatshirt, but they didn't have much to choose from. We found a place to eat that had a variety on the menu. I ordered some spaghetti in a cream sauce that was good, but I didn't really feel like finishing much of it. Greg had some sort of fish. Then we went back to the hostel so that Greg could change into his swim trunks for his canyoning thing. There were maybe twelve people in the group, and they went swimming, slid down waterfalls, rappeling, diving, and I don't know what else. I would have loved it if it had been in warm water. When he got back, the first thing he said was that it was ~cold.~ The cost was about $60 for the three-hour excursion, which I thought was pretty high. While he was doing that, I mostly stayed in the hostel trying to rest and let my stomach get better. There was a tv with CNN that was entertaining while it wasn't repeating itself. For dinner we ate at an Italian pizzeria. It was great pizza, and it was relatively cheap. We bought some postcards as we walked back through the streets.
The scenery here is just unbelieveable. The whole town is in a valley with lakes on each side and the mountains are so big and less than a mile away. The water in the lakes was this unreal blue; I really thought it must be dyed somehow, but it's natural. The town is great too, because it's not too big. There were lots of tourists, but somehow that wasn't a bad thing because most of them were other Europeans, not Americans. Greg and I want to come back sometime for a ski trip. You know, when we actually can afford it and are too old to really ski. ;-)
Well, tomorrow's train leaves the station at 6:30. The lady downstairs loaned us an alarm clock--yea!--that actually goes off 7 hours later than the time it's set for. Figure that one out!
--Angelique