13 march 2011 - interlaken

hello faithful readers :) after a weekend of extreme fun i can honestly say that interlaken might be the most beautiful place i have ever been. a bit dramatic maybe, but i'm seriously obsessed. after a harrowing night in the london gatwick airport (construction noise involved) rob and i met up for our flight to zurich. the zurich airport also gets an honorable mention as the most efficient airport i've ever been in (should we accredit this to switzerland's impeccable infrastructure, suz?). we promptly hopped on a train to interlaken and arrived in the early afternoon. first stop? a little bakery with delicious smiley cookies (so what if they were targeting the under 8 crowd...). after killing time at the bakery and then a "latino" bar it was finally time to check in to our hostel, the lazy falken.

yeah. can't turn that down.

after making our beds (shady), naps and showers, we headed to the train station to pick up ms kate connelly and mr ted snook. we invaded a little ristorante and caught up over subpar bolognese. we returned to the hostel and stayed up late playing cards and enjoying the only beer served in interlaken? rugen brau. this beer shared the same logo as the interlaken region: a licking goat. casual.

normally, these guys had little tongues as well.

on friday morning we woke up early (kind of) and made our way to grindelwald to ski! no sign of dark wizards anywhere thankfully (harry potter reference). after renting skis and making our way to the top of the mountain by gondola we finally skiied our first slope at around 1... typical ski team but it was so worth the wait. i can't describe how incredible the mountains were so i'll leave it to the pictures :) suz also joined us on friday night after a train ride from rome!


after the lifts closed we made our way to one of the food areas and casually sat on the edge of a snowy cliff overlooking a vast valley with gorgeous mountains rising into the sky. as if the view wasn't enough, they provided lounge chairs and the sun was shining like a champ. it actually felt kind of good to have a sunburn haha. it's been THAT long since i've seen real sun. after basking for a while we rode the gondola back down to grindelwald and ate dinner at a little restaurant. said restaurant was attached to a bakery... they had smiley cookies... that happened again.

we had another casual night at the hostel bar and woke up a little earlier on saturday to get some more ski time in. it was a little colder and visibility was poor but we still had a fantastic time. highlights include snowball fights, ted getting stuck in a lift turnstile and end of the day beers in the aforementioned lounge chairs. after a brief nap, we headed out in search of raclette and/or fondue. 
unfortunately we only found cheese fondue so i decided to get something else. unfortunately the menu was not in english and our waitress only knew a few words (chicken nuggets, shhhteak and bread) so i ended up picking a random item from the menu. it turned out to be an amazing piece of pork with veggies and little tater tot like items called croquettes. the night included (you guessed it) hostel bar action, cards and foosball :)

plaid lovers

rob and i woke up at the crack of dawn to make it back to zurich for our flight and the sun rising over the mountains yet again assured me that i will be returning to interlaken. hopefully sooner than later :)
after a busy day of traveling i am soooo ready for bed! feeling a little melancholy about leaving interlaken and fellow ski teamers but i will thankfully be seeing a few of them in barcelona in a couple of weeks! just living the dream haha.

ski team takes the alps :)

xoxo