Switzerland

I am so excited to go through my pictures, I figured I'd just post my favorites on the blog as I go through them. I have a feeling there will be ALOT! Switzerland is so incredibly beautiful. We had such a great time even though it's the same old story.....2 of the kids were sick. I seriously can't remember our last getaway without a sick kid. Blake ended up with a fever the first night and I think he was even hallucinating some. I was up quite a bit with him and he was saying some wild things! The rest of the trip, he didn't have much of a voice. Avery started complaining that her neck hurt and was quite miserable for most of the trip, even threw up yesterday. She complained (and I don't blame her) when we were hiking but was absolutely fine when we were doing the "fun" stuff.

On to the pictures! Where we stayed........we stayed way up in the mountains in a little village called Greich. We could drive up to the edge of the village, but then we would have to walk to the end of the road down to our chalet. There is also a cable car, but it was shut down for maintenance while we were there. The views from our place were stunning!!

The road up to our chalet

Our chalet

Village church

View from our balcony

Our early riser getting her writing in for the day out on the balcony.

More views from the village

This was the barn right behind our chalet. Adorned with sheep skulls. Kinda creepy.

Village from afar (taken on one of our hikes)

Fun on the village playground. This was the coolest zipline. Super fast going down the mountain!

{Day 1 -- Lucerne}

We flew into Basel and drove straight to Lucerne. It started out as a beautiful day but right before we got to Lucerne it started raining. We knew it was in the forecast but still not a great start to our vacation. Because of the rain we didn't wander around as much as we (or I) would have liked.

Once we got over to the other side of the mountain (where our chalet was) the weather was perfect and it was about 10 degrees warmer. We found that to be the norm each time we traveled back and forth over the mountain.

{Day 2 -- Zermatt/Matterhorn}

Took the train to Zermatt. Cool ski town. If only we had known that you can ski/snowboard 365 days of the year there!! We wanted to take the cable car up to a good view point of Matterhorn but it was so expensive (everything was) and there was a lot of cloud coverage that day so we skipped it.

Train ride

Zermatt

Allie helping her tired brother out

So excited to find some snow

Matterhorn

We hiked to a gorge and then once we got there found out it was closed. We had passed a ropes course on the way so we went back to try that out. Blake chickened out and I was supposed to go with him so we didn't get to do it, but Derek and the girls did. It was a 3+ hour ordeal! The girls were so scared (I don't blame them) but it was also pretty comical.

Getting geared up

Then Derek did some harder courses on his own.

{Day 3 -- Bettmeralp}

We had a hard time deciding what we were going to do this day. We ended up deciding on taking a cable car up to the Aletsch Glacier. We got there and access to the glacier was closed. Go figure! We decided to go ahead and take the cable car up to the ski village of Bettmeralp because we saw a lot of people getting on and off so we figured it must be a neat place. We get up there and have no idea where all the people went or were coming from because the place was practically deserted! We hiked to a lake, found some snow to play in and just took in the amazing views.

Since they survived the hike to the lake they were rewarded with a Kinder egg.

Filling up our water bottles. Hey, we didn't die so I guess it was okay!

Forgot, before heading up we had a picnic lunch at a park (turned out to be a school playground).

{Day 4 -- Oeschinensee}

I think this day ended up being everyone's favorite! Toboggan runs, hike to a beautiful lake and waterfall, picnic lunch. Just perfect!

Cable car ride up