Great Adventure: Thursday: Temple & Interlaken

 Thursday we got up and out the door by 7:30 and drove the 45 minutes to the Bern Temple.  It had dusted snow the night before and was so pretty!

 See, just a bit of snow. And you can barely see the Temple behind the tree there.

 Ah, a better shot of me and Mom and the Temple.

 I'm quite proud of this selfie!

We made the 9am session no problem.  Sue and Steve met us there and it was lovely to be there with them.  The session was in German and I had to wear headphones to hear it in English.  Fun stuff!

Then we headed back to our hotel for lunch and to change clothes.  We drove out to Spiez and then onto Interlaken. 

A beautiful church in Spiez.  The cemetery was so cool!  The headstones were all kind of the same shape, but very different.  Some were pretty awesome.

 We meandered around, looking for a particular castle.  We found this nifty tree along the way!

And the view...!  Oh, the view!  So gorgeous!  I am madly in love with Switzerland!

We did find the castle, but everything was closed till April.  No worries, we continued our meandering and strolled around, soaking up the gorgeousness of it all.

Have I told you how incredibly beautiful it all is?

Yes, I had to take lots of scenery pictures.  None of them really do justice to how it truly is.  

 We wanted to drive to a certain town.  I'm not sure where the gps thought it was taking us, but we never got where we intended to go.  I had a massive headache and ended up napping most of the drive.  That was both a good and bad thing.  The drive was quite picturesque, and definitely NOT on main roads.  They were pretty much one way roads and kept getting narrower and narrower. 

See, fun roads.  By sleeping, I didn't stress out over it!

But I missed some fun stuff like this little tunnel.

While we did not end up where we had planned, it was a lot of fun to see the countryside and see it for reals- not from the freeway.  It was so pretty!  We made it home around 4:30 and had time to relax.  Sue and Steve cam over for dinner again.  That was fabulous, because Sue treated us to another traditional Swiss meal!

Here we are, enjoying wust, red cabbage, reshti (yummy potatoes with onions), and salad.  I know, you wish you had an awesome Aunt Sue too!

Great Adventure: Wednesday : Chocolate & Cheese Factories, Bern

We stayed Tuesday night in a delightful top floor of a converted farmhouse.  It is old, charming and unique. We stayed on the third floor, which had a little 4th floor attic room.  Since it was the only room with a bigger bed, that's where Me and Dan slept.  We let the older folks have the single beds. Heh heh heh.

This was my morning view out of the window on one side!

This was the view out the other window.  I love the Alps!

I had native granola for breakfast and it was yummy.

I went out for a run and it was COLD!  I ran around the block a few times so I wouldn't get lost.  However, it was uphill, then downhill and that uphill was a killer!  So I got brave and ran straight and ended up here.  It was a lovely run, but between the altitude and that big hill, I got a workout.  

We went out to visit the Chocolate factory.  We thought we should be on main roads, but the GPS apparently is set for "Scenic" because it took us all over these little windy roads!  Look at this! It was definitely more interesting and fun going that route.

We drove through the prettiest scenery.  Switzerland is so amazingly beautiful!

 Here we are, all excited to go see the Chocolate Factory. 

Check it out!  Nestle originally began here!

At the end of the tour, you could sample pretty much any of the chocolates made at the factory.  They just had them on trays and you could gobble down whatever you wanted and however much you could cram in your pie hole.

And I stuffed a LOT of chocolate in my pie hole.

See, they just had trays of the stuff.  Lots and lots of trays.

Like this tray.  Some of them told you what was on it, some, not so much.  This was a guessing one.

And after you got all you could eat, you got to the shopping part.  Look at this wall of chocolate bars!  Yummy!

I was so jet-lagged.  We are 7 hours ahead of home and I was so zonked.  I sacked out on the way to the cheese factory.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I zonked out every time we got in the car.

We got to learn how they make this! It was interesting, but a lot smaller (The facility, not the cheese!  The cheeses were 75 pounds!) than I had expected.  They also weren't running everything when we were there.  So there was less to see.

They sure made a ton of cheese.  Perhaps next time I will go to a factory that makes cheese I like.  This was a rather stinky cheese.

They did give us a sample.  Actually 3 samples.  You could taste a slice that had aged 6 months, one that aged 8 months and one that aged 10 months. I thought I'd be smart and start with the oldest one.  Ick! It was potent! the 6 month was pretty good, especially with bread, but I would not get anything older!

After the cheese factory, we went back to Bern and met up with aunt Sue and Uncle Steve.  They gave us the grand tour of Bern.  It was neat!  Nicer had it not started raining halfway through, but still a great experience.

Me, my mom, Aunt Sue and Dan.

We got to ride the bus!  We rented a car this trip, so this was the only bus/tram ride we got to take.

They have some pretty churches.  The churches are supported and kept up by tax payer money and the government.  It is interesting.

Dan is photobombing my selfie!

And check out this toilet! If you are a girl (or need to sit down) you pull the seat down.

And here are some more things, just for funsies:

 The houses here are so pretty!

We drove by this castle on a hill.  And then, that song was stuck in my head.

Check this out!  This is what we're driving!  It is super fun, except for all the annoying beeping whenever you get within 5 feet of anything. And we did not know that this car stops when you stop.  So we kept stopping at lights and the car would turn off.  As you would expect, we were a bit grumpy about this situation. Having to restart the car every time we stopped was quite frustrating.  Imagine our chagrin when we discovered the car is suppose to do this and all you have to do is take your foot off the brake and hit the accelerator and the car comes back to life.

 This was a fun statue.  I'm not sure who the guy there is, but I loved the back here.  The little bear is playing with the guy's helmet.

We found a Rameumpton!  Well, we found a "Speaker Fountain" where you can climb up on top of the fountain and speak.  There were even some benches for your audience to sit and listen.

Great Adventure: The Beginning

 I know, I didn't post Mardi Gras pictures.  that will have to wait!  I have something much more exciting to post about!  Yep, a super fun adventure, to somewhere I never visited before!  Dan was in Germany and it seemed silly for him to have all the fun.  So it was decided I would join him for fun and adventures when his work ended.  there was fun, and there was adventure!

Sunday after church Rylee and I drove to my brother's house.  His lovely wife had offered to watch Rylee so my mother in law would have one fewer child.  Since Rylee is the only one not in school, that seemed like a great idea. I am so grateful to my mother in law who was willing to come out and babysit the kids for 2 weeks for me.  I'm a lucky girl!

SUNDAY:

Rylee sacked out 15 minutes into the drive ans slept 2 hours.

I enjoyed lovely scenery like this.

I listened to "Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" while I drove.

MONDAY:

We got to Andy and Kera's house and shared our Mardi Gras Booty with the kids.  Emma was quite pleased.  We spent the night and Kera drove me to the airport Monday morning.

Except there was a little problem.  Look under the car.  See that?  We stopped for gas a couple miles from the airport and noticed that.  Kera pulled forward to see if it was us.  It was.

  This is where the oil went.  Well, the oil that wasn't sprayed all under the car and down the road.  Bad stuff here!  No, there was no warning.  no, we didn't run over anything.  no, there wasn't a light that came in.  It just happened.

I had to call a cab, who charged me $20 to drive me 3 miles to the airport.  I did not leave a tip.  $20.  Sheesh.  I did make my flight on time.  Kera got the van towed, and got home, and I felt horribly guilty for abandoning her to run off to get on a plane to Germany!  But that's what I did.  I made the flight to Atlanta, and the connecting on to Stutgart.  My parents came on the trip with me (DAN invited them!!) and it was nice to hang with them on the long flight.

 Check out my dinner!

 I was excited about it!

TUESDAY:

I'm sorry, this just kills me every time I see it!  Best sign ever!

Most adorable bathroom signs ever!

 Best Book of Mormon Ever!

We drove to Switzerland and visited my aunt and uncle who are serving a mission in Bern.  They fed us dinner.

And we posed on their couch.  I'm pretty sure I was not ready for this picture.

My aunt and uncle have a plethora of clocks.  And by that, I mean like 10. All very cool like this one, which is bigger than it looks here.

My mom and her sister.  Aren't they cute?