Interlaken, Switzerland

Well we started off the trip by someone losing their passport, which he never did find, but luckily he didn't need it since we stayed in Switzerland.  And someone forgetting their railpass, which they had to turn around and meet us in Interlaken.  But for the rest of us it was smooth sailing.  It was about a five hour train ride there.  We had to go to Zurich first which was a very crowded train station and then to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, which was a very pretty place to drive through, and was also very crowded.  The ride there was very nice.  We were constantly surrounded by the mountains of the alps and lakes too.

Interlaken was a very pretty town.  It had a main street which was very touristy and had expensive stores and restaurants.  Needless to say, we didn't eat dinner there that night.  However, there was a Hooters near the end of the town.  We were right in the middle of the mountains which were not snow capped but we could see some mountains that looked very close to us that were.

After we settled in our hostel Balmer's we decided to check out the night life there.  We didn't have to go very far for this because one of the bigger clubs in Interlaken was right under our hostel.  It also had a restaurant, a game room, and other things as well.  The hostel had everything and the people were very friendly.  Interlaken is a German Speaking town but it was amazing because everyone there spoke English.  

The next morning we had a canyoning trip booked for our group.  It was a great experience and I would definitely do it again.  The only downfall was doing it at 8:30 in the morning when the water was freezing.  The dry suits did help a lot though.  We did our trip through the company Alpin Raft.  They were amazing.  Most of the group was from New Zealand and they were the coolest people ever.  So relaxed about everything, loved to joke around, and you could just tell they loved their job.  A group of 5 of us went over at 8:20 in the morning to sign up to canyon with everyone else and they only thing they said to us was, "No problem."

The ride up the mountain was about 20 minutes.  Once we got there we hoped in the stream flowing through the mountain and followed it down.  Throughout the walk, there are natural rock water slides, jumps, and areas that we had to rapel down.  While we were doing this, one of the leaders was talking pictures the whole time which is where I got all of my pictures from. It was a lot of fun. 

They provided us with bread, cheese, and beer for lunch afterword. A true European lunch.  

After that excursion, 5 of us made our way to the woods to do the SeilCourse while others went canyon jumping, paragliding, and rafting.  The seilcourse was so much fun.  It was well worth the price to be suspended 20 m above the ground doing zip lines and obstacles that high above the ground.  There were 8 different courses and we could have stayed as long as we wanted and done all of the courses multiple times.  We were hooked into a harness and that's it, while we had to walk across logs suspended in the air and swing from ropes from one end to another.  I enjoyed that just as thoroughly as canyoning.  

Other than those events, we didn't eat anywhere spectacular so the other stuff is not really important.  We had a great time in Interlaken and can't wait to go back to the Alps later in the winter and hopefully see more snow caped mountains and go skiing.