For those of you who are Aida Mireille Hasson fans: last night was quite a fiasco when half way on our hour drive to the hotel from dinner Aida remembered she left her retainer on a plate in the restaurant. After recovering from a minor heart attack we calmly called the restaurant who said they would look for it. After 15 minutes of imagining how to have the orthodontist make her a new one we called back and heard the miraculous news that they found it! Ronnie and I settled everyone into the hotel and Hannah and Teta were in charge of showering everyone and getting everyone to bed while Ronnie and I drove 45 min each way at 10:00 pm to pick it up. Although the restaurant was already closed after knocking on windows and waiting 15 minutes for them to close the doors because of the tight security we managed to get a hold of it! Oh wait- who could forget that we thought we locked the key in the car before we went to get the retainer when I remembered I left it upstairs! This was retainer incident #2- write back with messages to the blog taking bets on how many more incidents there will be before it's gone for good and if we will end up with it at the end of this trip! Post your comments in the message section- we'd love to hear your reactions.
This morning was almost equally as stressful rounding everyone up bright and early to get to a 6:30 am breakfast to make it to the hour drive to our boat trip do we wouldn't miss our train ride to the gondola to the chairlift- otherwise known as : "the square of nausea" by Aida.
New words of the day:
Altstadt- old town
Fahrt- ride
Eingang-entrance
Ausgang- exit
Ausgenommen- no outlet
Parkhaus- parking lot
Hof at the end of a word means court as in "Pilatushof"
Einfahrt- entranceway
We arrived at the boat in the nick of time and enjoyed a surprisingly calm beautiful non nauseating boat ride to the train. We watched the view, shooed away lots of bees and Aida caught up on some sleep. After disembarking we got on the cog reel railway where Hannah prepared a very informative presentation on the history and building of it and quizzed us to make sure we were listening! It was built first as a steam engine and later turned over to electric. It was built in the 1800's and took 600 people 400 days to build it. It was a 45 minute ride and and although very steep it too was surprisingly not nauseating! So far so good on the square of nausea! Two modes of transportation, two more to go! We exited to the cool sound of the alpine horn and watched a Swiss dressed musician playing it. We got separated from Emma and Teta for a while because of the distracting view and walked up to the tippy top of the mountain- Olivia joined me on a windy dragon trail that was steep and scary. We all walked together on the dragon trail through the caves dripping with water and read fun myths about how mountain dwellers in the 1300s fought dragons. Next we went down a level in the elevator to the flower trail. We too literally over 100 pictures with the spectacular view behind us, the sound of the alpine horn on the background and Teta shouting "dachilek! Go slowly- stay to the left or you will fall off the mountain!"at the end Ronnie and I did a romantic quick cave walk and met the others at the gondola entrance. The gondola ride was quicker than we expected and fun and we stopped for lunch at the mountain lodge. Spaghetti and sauce, some giant latke topped with veggies and salad rounded out our menu. We are getting some energy for the ropes course and alpine slide next!

We decided to try the fun looking ropes course and alpine slide in the afternoon which is halfway up the mountain. We got fitted with harnesses gloves and helmets and began being trained on how and when to hook and unhook the caribeiners and pully so we could climb and jump safely. We started out on easy climbs and zip lines and quickly ended up on expert ones. Emma decided to go back to the practice ropes after hesitating on the zip line and Aida and Hannah moved on to the expert ones. They climbed over gorgeous scenery on ladders single ropes and other cool obstacles. Aida attempted to climb the extra high advanced ropes in the trees to the dragon jump and convinced Hannah to follow. When they got to the 39 meter walk straight off platform Aida convinced Hannah to go first. They switched carabiners and Hannah happily stepped off the platform. Aida on the other hand contemplated the jump for about 10 minutes before she insisted she didn't want to do it! Eventually an instructor came up to help her and she climbed down the other way. Unfortunately a replay of the Crested Butte platform! Maybe next time Aida!

Next we pushed Ronnie up a very steep very long very rocky hill to get to the alpine slide . After convincing Ronnie to go down we all followed while Teta relaxed watching us with the unbelievable view in front of her. I teamed up with Oli and had a fun but cautious ride. Olivia was my navigator telling me when to break. We all got pulled back up by the rope tow which was almost a better ride than the slide because of the spectacular view, cows and goats on the way. After Aida Hannah and Emma did a second super quick race up the mountain we navigated Ronnie down the steep rocky terrain with the girl train ( in place of four wheel beeb) and took the final gondola ride to the base of Krien. There we stopped for ice cream, walked to the bus stop, took a bus to the car parked in the parking lot and are about to start our 45 minute drive to the hotel in time for shabbat. Everyone had an awesome day, exhausting and fun!!!! Can't wait to sleep late and enjoy the pool tomorrow.