June 9th

We woke up early and headed out to Schynige Platte. We had been told to go there by the tourist office lady and had seen that they had an alpine garden there, but hadn't heard much else about it. We took the train to Wilderswil where we got onto the old style train up to the Platte. It was a really cool looking train with wood seats and was pretty neat. The train chugged its way seemingly vertical up the mountainside for about 40 minutes with picturesque views around every turn. We took a lot of pictures along the train ride, not knowing what would be coming up! When we got to the station, we were blown away by the view and how gorgeous everything was. We went a little down the trail to get away from all the people and eat our lunch. I ran to the top of a ridge toward the mountains and when I got to the top of the hill, it was just like in the Sound of Music when Maria does the same thing and the view just explodes into amazingness. So I started singing and spinning around like they do in the movie. Very fitting :P We went on the otherside of that little hill and sat looking out at the view to eat our lunch. Then we took a lot of silly jumping pictures and they turned out so great! On our way back up the trail to the train station, we found these huge snails all along the hillside and I found one of the huge shells empty so I took it as a souvenir :P I liked the snails a lot - Ryan says I spent an hour with them, but I didn't. We went to the Alpine garden and I took pictures of all the flower label signs for the flowers I'd pictured before, then we found a trail that looked like it went to a great view. Well we got there and the view was truly great, so we decided to follow some other people even higher to get an even better view. After a few more times of this, we made it to the very tip top of a big boulder/jutted up rock and it was AMAZING. I look photoshopped into the pictures it was so great! Mountain range on one side, gorgeous blue lakes on the other - PERFECT. We climbed back down and hiked along the ridgeline back to the train station. Ryan made me slide down the little kids slide (that was actually pretty long) and that was just torturous and not fun at all (kidding - LOVED it). Then we jumped back on the train and went back to Lauterbrunnen. Once there, we splurged for our nice dinner of traditional swiss cheese fondue. That is a LOT of cheese. TOO MUCH cheese. You swirl bread around in the cheese that has white wine in it and then you can put garlic pieces or cumin seeds on it. It was ok and worth trying, but not really amazing or anything. I would have much rather had chocolate fondue :) After dinner we did some laundry and headed to bed.

June 10th

This morning we used our last day of the railpass to move to Interlaken and go up to Harder Kulm. We checked into Heidi's hostel (which was creepy old and kinda strange, but ok for a night) and Heidi (old lady, probably 70-80, very nice) gave us chocolate that was awesome. She also gave us tourist passes which let us ride the Interlaken bus around for free which was nice and came in handy! We decided to go up to Harder Kulm, and found it rather disappointing after the spectacular views of the mountains from the day before. We had seen pictures of the Harder Kulm restaurant taken from above it with a great view and decided to hike up a trail near the place to see if we could get to that. It was a nice shady trail and was a nice hike, but it didn't go where we'd wanted, so we took the cable car back down to Interlaken. At the base of the cable car route is a teeny wildlife park that had a gopher thing and a herd of mountain goats complete with little baby ones and old ones with great big horns. It was free and pretty cool. Then we walked along the canal that runs through the city and noticed really strange water flows near the bridge. I have pictures and video of it, but basically the water churns unpredictably and in some parts flows backward - really weird. We walked back to the hostel to regroup and then headed out in search of the lake (Thunersee) and maybe a beach. We took the bus as far as we could and walked a decent way down a lightly used road. Somehow we missed the turn on the map toward the nature trail along the lake, but we ended up at a REALLY REALLY cool castle! No one was there and it was really quiet. The castle is really well preserved and you can climb up the tower to the top. The castle used to be on an island that's now part of the mainland. It was like finding a treasure hidden in the woods and very very cool to see. So we turned back and found the nature trail which runs through the nature reserve with marshlands on one side and the beautiful lake with mountain backdrop on the other. There were little beaches along the way and the trail was nicely shaded. It was a really relaxing walk and certainly good. We made it to the end of the trail to the more public "beach" which was small, but there's a little watersports place and marina there too. We looked up prices of taking a boat ride over to Thun or a dinner cruise on the lake but it was pretty expensive. We caught a bus from here back to the city and went to Hooters for dinner because we were starving for some greasy, big and unhealthy good ole American food. We walked around Interlaken a little after trying to book trains to Milan online at the hostel (but couldn't because we were late) and then headed to bed.

** This day was also Cole puppy's FIRST BIRTHDAY!!!! Happy Birthday Cole! :) We love our cute little puppy!!

June 11th

This morning, I woke up before Ryan and walked to the train station and bought tickets to Milan (they were $50 less than they were online - SCORE!) and then we packed up and headed out of Interlaken. When we got to Milan, we were supposed to be ending at Centrale station, but somehow ended up at some other station. Now, at all the other places we've been to, when you hop off the train, there's a little sign that has an "i". This is very helpful and the people there speak English and can give you directions and maps. This was non-existent at this station. The ticket sellers couldn't and wouldn't try to understand or help us so we found a large city map on a wall and figured out where we were. Luckily, I drew out the map to our hostel somewhat on a scrap paper and we used this to find directions to the hostel. I took pictures of the map so we could zoom in on it and read the road names later. So we thought we were good and went out of the station. EVERYTHING was a construction site! No road names ANYWHERE. We of course have our packs and it's 84 degrees and there is no shade, so we wander a little ways looking for road signs until I realize that we have a tool in our bags that we haven't used yet. A Compass!!!! Yay. So I whip out my good ole girl scout orienteering skills and we start following roads north, just praying that the map we had pictures of had north at the top and wasn't turned. We eventually found a bus stop for the #70 bus which the hostel directions said would get us there. We didn't have tickets and the bus driver didn't want to talk to me, so we basically illegally rode to the hostel. The hostel was really nice, the reception spoke better English than anyone we'd met so far, and our double room was just like a hotel so we were happy, but the area was kind of creepy. Luckily the hostel had a big locked gate outside and good security inside so we felt safe. We had no cash so we went out in search of an ATM. Unfortunately, the public bus system is called "ATM" and if we asked anyone anything, they just said something in Italian followed by "no" meaning they didn't understand English. So after lots of wandering, we stopped in a bookstore and the nice owner lady was very patient with us and after motioning some with a 5 euro note, the credit card and saying bank, she understood and pointed us toward the bank. Well, the bank was closed. So we were back to square one. We went back to the hostel and the nice receptionist pointed us in the same direction (which is not how we ended up going the first time) and we eventually found it. An ATM is a BANCOMAT. Good to know. Once paid and settled into the hostel, we asked the nice reception lady where to eat and proceeded to walk down the road to a nice local restaurant where literally everything was under 8 euro. BIG BIG pizzas were only 6 euro!! We had delicious white house wine and stuffed our faces. By the time we got to the restaurant, I had dug the Italian Phrase book for dummies out of my bag that Lisa let me borrow, realizing how important it was. So at the restaurant, we could at least look things up and explain to the waitress that "non capisco". After dinner we went back to the hotel and slept very well - what a day!

June 12th

This morning we went ahead and booked the room for another night and wandered to the metro to buy two-day metro passes. We took the metro to the Duomo which is the center of Milan. It was pretty neat there and we wandered around just to get our bearings. We went into the big fashion plaza which a beautiful building. In the center is a big Prada store, then Louis Vuitton, then McDonald's! We left this place and found a big statue of Leonardo Da Vinci. From here, Ryan needed water so we went in search of a supermarket and eventually found one. It was close to the Castle Sforza so we went there. What a big and wonderful place! It is SO COOL and just to walk around the courtyard is really fun and free! We found the ticket office and paid 3 euro each to get entrance to the Castle's four museums which were all neat. We checked out some museums and then grabbed lunch outside the castle in some sort of organic foods/sustainability fair thing in the piazza. The best museum was in the part of the castle that had frescos all over the ceiling and housed Madonna Lia, a painting by one of Da Vinci's students. That was neat and the ceilings were amazing.

We decided to go check out another hostel on my list that offers free breakfast and is closer to the city center and the metro. It was really nice so we made reservations for the next two nights. After all that, we came back to the hotel and then went out to dinner in the Navigli district by the "river" which is more of a canal. The atmosphere there is awesome because every place is a restaurant and there are all sorts of art dealers lined up along the river and everyone eats outside. We found a place with a TV and watched US and England tie over dinner. I got gnocchi pesto that was spectacular! Gnocchi is a completely different texture here and it was wonderful. After dinner, we got a few drinks to finish out the game at a bar and then went back to the hotel.

June 13th

This morning we woke up and moved to Hotel Emmy :) We dropped off our bags and headed out to visit Duomo and go inside. On the way, we stopped at the McDonald's by Louis Vuitton and had some delicious crunchy and salty fries and icy cold coke. Very refreshing. The Duomo is the third largest church in the WORLD and it's pretty amazing. The best part though was paying 5 euro each to climb to the roof and walk around. Everything is sculpted and completely astounding. There were great views of the city too and lots to explore (hard to believe on a ROOF). Really cool. When we went into the church at first, there was a service so lots of parts were blocked off, but after the roof, the service was over so we went in and explored more. Lots of cool things including a statue of a skinless man that was sort of disturbing. We left the church and went over to the statue of Leonardo hoping less people were there, and the spot Ryan wanted was open so he got a picture with his favorite ninja turtle :) Then we went in search of the Museum of Art and Science that supposedly has a big Da Vinci exhibit, but it was closed, but the gelato along the way was tasty! We decided then to go try to see Da Vinci's Last Supper which part of a church. When we got there, we were surprised to see very few people. Well there's a reason. They were booked out of tickets for TWO WEEKS because only 25 people can go in every 15 minutes in order to save the painting (which is in bad shape and very fragile). The sign said "booked out for two weeks, no cancellations today". Ryan being smart decided that we might want to ask if there are any cancellations for tomorrow, so we turned around and went back in. There were some people ahead of us with ticket reservation print outs who were getting their tickets. They were talking to the ticket lady in Italian for a LONG time and counting tickets and pointing and having some sort of issue. Ryan was getting restless and wanted to go, but I told him we should wait it out and WOW did that pay off!!! The problem was that they had two people in the group cancel on them, but because they didn't cancel the reservation, they had to buy all the tickets. Well they didn't want to pay for tix they weren't going to use, so the nice lady offered them to us to buy and OF COURSE we did!!! Happy happy! So anyway, the Last Supper is BIG. It takes up a whole wall and was kind of surreal to see in person. We sneakily listened in on the audio tour guide's explanations of the piece and enjoyed relaxing and just staring at it. Because Da Vinci painted it in a new style he wanted to try instead of painting it into wet plaster like usual, the painting was already in disrepair only a few years after he painted it. Then the church decided to make the door below it bigger (it sure didn't need to be) and cut out part of it (Jesus's feet). The painting deteriorated over time and in WW2 the church was bombed and a wall of the room was blown up, leaving the painting damaged and exposed to the air for a while. Luckily they restored it well in 1998 and it's much better now as shown in the comparison pictures. So if you're visiting and want to see it, book early!! We are now back at the hostel ready to go to dinner, but needed to sit and blog update for a while to rest our feet :) Off to more amazing pasta and pizza and wine!

- Sara