Interlaken and Sci Sci

So our next journey began on a night train to Interlaken, Switzerland.  We hopped on a train around 8 and ended up in Interlaken around 6:30 a.m.  We were happily greeted with snow. We found our way to the hotel from the train station without a map and checked into our hotel, Hirschen.  After checking into the hotel we put on our ski pants and jackets and decided to explore the town for the day.

We went ice-skating at a skating rink and ended up going to a very interesting restaurant where everyone was wearing cow print pants.  The rest of the day we spent seeing the town and shopping.  We had an early night so we could get plenty of rest for day 2.

We woke up the next morning, got dressed quickly, grabbed breakfast, and literally ran to the train station to catch a train up the mountain.  The views were spectacular and everything was freshly covered in snow.  

When we got to the mountain town of Grindelwald we found a place to rent skis and made our way up to the lifts.  The skiing was completely different from the states for two main reasons.  First of all the snow was perfect and everything was powder, no ice, and second everyone was amazing at skiing.  We were the only people who fell and when we frequently did, everyone else just zoomed by.  Something else that was new for us was the runs they skied.  We found a good trail that ended up taking us over roads and past houses and straight into town.  Our first time down the mountain took us a while because we stopped frequently to get pictures and just take in the scenery.  

We skied the whole day and then went back to our hotel, showered, and grabbed a delicious meal.  At dinner Cody and Claire got ravioli and Rachel and I got something called Roesti which is the name of a Swiss potato dish that has fried potatoes, ham, cheese, onions, and bacon.  It was an amazing dinner and to top it off we got chocolate fondue and apple strudel for dessert.  On day three we split up.  Cody and Claire decided to ski for a half day before we left on the train and Rachel and I decided to explore the town of Grindelwald.  We took the train up to the mountain town and looked around for about an hour before all the stores decided to close for lunch.  We were thoroughly disappointed but this changed fairly quickly.  After making it down the mountain we went to a convenient store and you will never guess what we found.  DR. PEPPER!!!  We were so excited that we bought several cans.  The funny thing was we were out of Swiss Franks and you had to make a minimum purchase of 10 Franks to use a credit card.  So I was running around the store grabbing random things just so we could have a few Dr. Peppers.  After that we met up with Cody and Claire at the train station.  While we were waiting for our train we had a very interesting homeless man talk to us about all kind of random things.  He was so weird but very funny and took quite a liking to the girls.  We escaped his constant chatter on our train and made our way back home to Paderno!