Interlaken

Interlaken was even more than I expected it to be! When we arrived at the train station, we took a bus that was only about a 10 minute ride to the Balmers tent village. We got our tent, named Mexico City, and walked down the street to a pub to get dinner. We were so excited to get out of Paris where every meal was over 10 dollars, but we were disappointed to see that every single restaurant in Interlaken was the same if not more expensive than Paris. We tried our best while we were there to shop at the grocery store across the street and eat wisely. That night they had a band in front of our tent. It was so relaxing to sit on the lawn chairs in the cool, mountain air and listen to the music. The temperature drops about 30 degrees every night. The days get up to about 85, but at night its about 55. The tent is not very good at keeping us warm but thankfully they gave us a lot of blankets.

Seilpark

The next morning, we went to Seilpark, a high ropes course. I had never done something like that before and it was terrifying but fun! They gave us a harness and gloves, and a quick tutorial on how to use all the equipment. Basically, we were up really high in trees and used the clip things
On our harness to attach us to ropes when we crossed wires. There were also a bunch of zip lines that we attached ourselves too, which were my favorite part. It was really fun and forced me to forget about any fear of heights that I had. After that, we walked what seemed like all the way around Interlaken. We sat in the hammocks the rest of the day and night and read.

Cayoning!

On Wednesday we woke up early and went Cayoning! It was so much fun and involved so much adrenaline. So much of Interlaken reminded me of camp/Cashiers. There was a group of about 8 of us taken by 2 guides up a mountain in a van. Our gear included, two wetsuits, a harness, a live vest, a helmet and shoes. We reached the waterfall/stream/river where we were going to jump/slide/walk down. The water was the coldest I've ever felt. We had to slide down rocks and jump from rocks from super high (like turtle falls high) into TINY deep areas with rockers all around us. One of the guides would always do it first to make sure it was deep enough. We just had no margin for error! The experience was thrilling and I want to do it again! They gave us two free beers when we got back to the Outdoor Interlaken shop. One of the guides had a camera on his helmet the whole time videoing us. They offered us a personalized video of all of it, which now I really wished I had gotten. At the time, I didn't want to spend an extra 30 francs, but the experience was so cool I wish I had had this to remember it by. Oh we!ll!
Interlaken houses all of the extreme sports. Almost everything you can think of they have. I really wanted to go parasailing or skydiving, but it was
More expensive than cayoning, which definitely was a bang for the buck. After cayoning, we got really good cheap and huge kabobs by our hostel and went back to read for a little. We were really hitting it right on our independence days, because it was Swiss day that day! It was so hot reading so we went down to anothe hotel's pool where we were allowed to go and uses their pool. They had this awesome slide that was so fun and a DJ. I think I would have never gone

Warning Sign for Slide!

On the slide if I hadn't been on the high ropes course and cayoning previously. I am so glad I did! I did it 3 times!

That night they had a big fireworks display for Swiss day. I think that the Swiss are very fond of their fireworks, because we heard them going off non stop all four days we were there. They had so many kinds I had never seen before! Also, before and after the show, it was a free for all on setting off the fireworks. Everyone was around this huge grassy square, and so everyone was setting them off all around it. It was kind of frightening, because they would come out of no where. We met some people from South Carolina who both go to mUSC. We sat with them the whole fireworks show. We walked back to the hostel just in time to miss a giant thunderstorm. The weather had been perfect since we had gotten there, but it was relaxing to go to sleep in the tent to the sound of rain.

Swiss Day 

Thursday we woke up and rented some bikes with some friends we had met. We took our bikes on the bus up a mountain. We cruised all the way down, which was a very scary experience for me. It was SO steep and I was scared the whole time that my breaks were going to give out because I had to use them so much! But the view the way down was beautiful, overlooking a huge lake of turquoise water. We stopped at a restaurant that was recommended to us by a guy who works at the tent village. It was overlooking the mountain, and the food was so good!! We went back to the hostel and showered, getting ready to make the train. The night train was not the most ideal situation. Thank goodness two of the girls in our 6 person cabin were normal Americans are age from Raleigh. Sleeping was impossible due to a German man also in our cabin, who snored and took up all the bed space that was created by the 6 chairs pulling out strait. Next time I will go for something above the lowest class night train seat... All in all Interlaken was awesome and I could stay there for ever! There was so many activities to do! It was a great transition into traveling outside of Paris.