Day 17: Four flights and then I'm home! (Sunday, August 24)

We sure do love our early morning wake up calls! We were up by 4:45 to get everything nicely packed in our bags and were off to the first of five airports we will be at today. 

We returned our rental car at the airport and then got a little lost finding our terminal. But eventually we made it and after waiting around for over an hour we were in the air on the way back to London. 

Once we arrived in London, we had to "leave" the airport to check back in and go through security again. I think our airline is the only one that doesn't allow you to check in at home and has to be done at the airport so we couldn't just go to our connecting flight. Lame. But luckily it wasn't too crowded going through passport check and security. It's not like we didn't have plenty of time to spare anyway. Once we got back through security, we ate some breakfast and still had 2 1/2 hours till our flight left. 

The flight to Iceland was fine. Tom was out before the plane even took off! He woke up mid flight and was shocked to see us in the air. Funny. I think I finally slept a little bit until the position I was in caused parts of my body to fall asleep which woke me up. We landed and had another fun layover full of nothing. 

Fun fact: in case anyone doesn't watch the news or hasn't heard, there is an alert for a volcano erupting in Iceland. 

Two weeks ago when we first arrived in Iceland, we made jokes about what if a volcano erupted like four years ago and we were stuck in Europe because there would be too much ash in the air to fly out. Especially when we were flying to and out of Iceland to get home. And then three nights ago, Liz gets a text from someone informing us there IS a volcano erupting. We thought he was kidding until we looked it up for ourselves. So the last few days we've laughed and joked even more that we could in fact get stuck in Europe because of a volcano! On one hand, it would have been a fun adventure to have gotten stuck due to a volcano eruption, but on the other, I just wanted to get home. So luckily we made it out safe and sound. 

The flight from Iceland to Denver was a little over eight hours and I did not sleep at all. I tried, but sitting in the middle seat creates a struggle for me to sleep. Plus I wasn't super tired anyway. So I watched movies and tv shows the whole time. 

We landed in Denver around 6:45 and said goodbye to Tom at this point. He has family in Denver that he is staying to see for the night. So luckily for him, he was done flying for the day. As for the rest of us, we still had a two hour layover and an hour and a half flight ahead of us before we finally got home. 

I had attempted to sleep during the layover. I even layed on the ground to really spread out. It didn't work. Neither did sleeping on the plane. 

But I'm finally home! And I'm soooo exhausted! I loved every minute of my trip but I am excited to be home and look forward to passing out on my bed for hopefully a great night sleep!

Tomorrow: Reality! :(

Day 16: Driving back to Barcelona, Spain (August, 23)

Let me start today's post by talking about how great of a friend I have. Not many people can say they are still friends with the first friend they ever had in life. But I can. Ellen Larsen (now Ellen Irion) and I have been friends since we were in diapers. And 24 years later we are traveling through Europe together! We spent a lot of time on this trip reminiscing about all our favorite childhood memories. I don't have many that don't involve Ellen. And now we just made many more memories to reminisce about in 24 more years! You can't find a better friend than Ellen Larsen Irion! I sure do love that girl!

Anyway, the point of this little rant was because that great friend of mine brought me breakfast in bed this morning. 

Like, really? Sweetest thing ever! I couldn't actually eat it in bed though because I was on a bottom bunk and couldn't sit up in it. So I walked out to the kitchen and ate. (I also should add that her husband Russ helped out a lot with this breakfast, so I need to give him credit as well. Thanks Russ!)

We were all in a hurry this morning to get showered and ready to make the long car rides we all had ahead of us. Ellen and Russ had to drive back to Frankfurt to catch their flights home in the morning while the rest of us had to drive back to Barcelona. 

So by 9:00 we were all back on the rode starting our journey to get home. I watched out the window for a while trying to soak up the last views I'll get of the Alps before I brought out the nook to get lost in another book. 

I'm sure gonna miss all the green! 

So I pretty much read the whole time we were driving. I started feeling a little sick at one point, like stomach sick, but it went away after a while. 

We stopped for lunch at an apparently very popular rest stop. There were so many people it took us a while to find a parking spot! I ended up not getting anything because I still had a lot of fruit I had bought earlier so I just watched the others eat and ate my fruit once we were back on the rode again. 

We then had a little adventure with traffic. We'd get off the freeway and drive along side roads to try and avoid the heavy traffic and get back on later. I don't know how well it actually worked or if we saved any time doing that. I just kept reading not really paying attention to anything else. 

Then we came upon this one toll booth and ended up waiting for over an hour! It was insane! I couldn't believe how bad the traffic was to go through and pay a stupid toll! So lame. But we passed it and continued driving. 

We stopped for dinner briefly and were back on the rode within 30 minutes. Obviously this has been a very eventful day.. You can tell by the pictures I stole from Liz of each of us throughout the day.

I tried to sleep after dinner since it was now dark outside, but failed. We finally made it to our hostel around 11:30. Just 3 1/2 hours later than we first thought.. 

So now we'll get about five hours of sleep before we are up and starting a long day of flights home! It's gonna be fun...

Tomorrow: four flights and then home!

Day 15: Adelboden, Switzerland (Friday, August 22)

My night was a little rough. I woke up quite a few times to blow my nose or from random cough attacks. Around 9:00 I decided I should probably get up, I didn't want anyone waiting for me because they felt bad to wake me up. I could've slept longer though. Tom was still sleeping and we didn't even leave the house till after noon. Russ and Ellen had left early to go paragliding but the rest of us didn't have any plans. So I ate breakfast and showered and waited for everyone else to get ready. 

Also, just take a look at the view from my bedroom window..

We then had to drive to find some sort of grocery store to buy lunch. We had to come back to the house to eat and then we finally decided on our activity for the day: scooter rides down the alps. Sounds fun, right? It totally was! We bought an all day pass where you ride trams up the mountain and then get on scooters and ride back down. There are a bunch of different trails so we just went up and down and got to really enjoy the Swiss alps! Not a bad way to spend 3 1/2 hours of my last day in Switzerland!

On the very last trail down, Tom finally ate it. It was a really funny moment though. One of those where you can't help but laugh even though you feel so bad for the person! He cut up his hands a little bit, but other than that he was fine.

Once we got back to the car, we drove back to the house to meet up with Russ and Ellen to figure out what to do for dinner. 

We went on a little adventure through this cute little town to find a place to eat. We had asked the lady we are renting from for some advice but we couldn't find the place she told us. So we just walked up and down this street and finally ended up at this town square place where we sat outside and ordered dinner from a little pub nearby. It was probably my favorite dinner. Mostly because of the atmosphere. There were heaters around and blankets to have on our laps and we even had entertainment! There was a little orchestra playing at first and then there was this big group of performers. We saw a band, a choir, and some ladies dancing before we left back to our apartment for the night. 

We ended up just taking it easy back at the house playing cards and asking a lot of would you rather questions. It was a fun chill night. And now I better get to bed. We have a lot of traveling to do in the next two days to get home and I don't know how much sleep I'll be able to get in the car and on the planes..

Tomorrow: driving all day back to Barcelona!

Day 14: Gimmelwald & Interlaken, Switzerland (Thursday, August 21)

Good news is that I slept well. The bed was super comfy and Tom had given me more drugs before I went to bed so I think they helped me sleep through the night. Bad news is that I'm still sick. It's more stuffy rather than runny now. Bummer. 

We had a rough time getting started this morning. You can tell there is slight tension with what people want to do. Ellen has been dreaming of doing this particular hike here so that was their plan. Logan isn't the fondest of heights so they were going to sit out. Which left Tom and I to decide what we wanted to do. I really wanted to do the hike, but wasn't sure if I would survive it with my cold. But then I knew I'd regret it if I didn't go. Tom felt the same way. So the four of us parted from Liz and Logan and headed more up the mountain to do this insane hike. 

We got there and walked around the little streets to find the place to rent harnesses. I can't believe people live here! It's just this little town on the side of a cliff in the middle of the alps!

When we got to the rental place, they said we also had to rent shoes. It would double the cost and then we'd have to deal with our own shoes since we weren't planning on going back to that town. (The end of the hike was at the town where we left our bags at our hotel) With a little bit of walking around, we finally found the second (and only other) place to rent equipment. Turns out they are closed Thursdays. Like really? There was even a guy in the store that just ignored us when we tried knocking on the door. So dumb. We went back to the first place and they weren't going to budge on the whole shoe thing. So we ended up bailing on the hike. Ellen was pretty upset, but I think she's gotten over it by now. 

We made our way to a little grocery store to get some food for lunch. I bought a liter of orange juice to try and help this cold leave my system. And then we found a trail that would take us back down to our hotel. Just a hike through the Swiss alps, no big deal. 

The hills ARE alive with the sound of music!

Such a pretty hike!! I'm sort of glad he other hike didn't work out. I mean, it would have been awesome, but with my cold, the hike we did was perfect. 

We got back to our hotel and sat around for a little bit because we has just missed the tram and had to wait for the next one. By the way, this is what our hotel looked like:

There was an honesty shop right next door. No one is in it. You just leave your money for what you take. 

We got on the tram and even though it's a short little ride, it did have an amazing view. 

We got back into our car and drove to Interlaken to meet back up with Liz and Logan. The drive through the little canyon was beautiful for what I saw of it. I closed my eyes after a while to sleep.

We had chosen to meet up at a certain store close to the train station but what we didn't realize was there were two train stations and both had the store by it. But we eventually ended up at the same one. We ate lunch at a little restaurant in the grocery store and then decided to go to the lake and walk around a bit. 

I just can't take how beautiful the world is. I have loved exploring all of these new places! 

After our little walk around the lake, we went to a grocery store to pick up things to eat for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. The place we are staying at tonight is pretty much the basement of a house and so we have access to a kitchen. And once we all had our food, we made our way up another canyon to our place in Adelboden that we'll be staying for the next two nights. 

We arrived and got a tour of the place. It's this cute little basement apartment. Three bedrooms, one and a half bath, a kitchen, and a living/dining room. 

Everyone else decided they wanted to play cards. I sat out cause I'm still not feeling good and I didn't think touching all of the cards while wiping my nose was a good idea. It's not fun being sick on vacation and I would hate to be the cause of anyone else getting sick. So I say back drinking orange juice and just watched them play for a bit before heading off to bed. 

Tomorrow: Adelboden, Switzerland! 

Day 13: Munich, Germany (Wednesday, August 20)

My cold is worse. Gosh dangit. I was in and out of sleep all night because of it. Luckily Tom has Vitamin C's and a miracle drug (so he says) which I've taken so we'll see if that helps me out.

Today was our slowest morning yet which I wasn't complaining about. This cold is not giving me motivation to explore. We ate, showered, and left the hostel around 10:30. We walked over to the Innenstadt to see the Rathaus glockenspiel. We made a quick stop at a store called C&A because we've realized the weather in Switzerland is going to be cold and Ellen needed pants while I needed a long sleeve shirt or sweater. My little rain jacket won't be good enough for 30 degree weather. Russ also needed a new church shirt since he ripped his climbing down a bunk bed the other night. We actually had great luck finding exactly what we all needed for cheap. I bought a tan stripped sweater which I'm actually really excited about. Something cute and warm! We bought our merchandise then continued on to the Rathaus, which was really neat. We happened to be there at te top of thr hour so we were able to see Glockenspiel where the music and little dancing people went off.

Afterwards, we made our way to The Church of our Holy Lady. When we walked inside, we weren't that impressed. It was the lamest church we've seen so far. The only cool part was a footprint that supposedly is Satan's. He was commanded to leave the building and stomped his foot in protest. 

Kinda funny what people believe.

We made our way back to the hostel after that to get our car. We stopped by a grocery store for more snacks and we were on our way to the next stop. 

I attempted to sleep during the drive. I say attempted because I don't feel like I ever fell asleep, but I also think I must have. 

We planned a little detour on our way to Switzerland to see the Neuschwanstein Castle. Just the castle that Walt Disney modeled his Disneyland castle after. No big deal. 

We made the hike up to see it up close. It wasn't a hard hike. It was asphalt all the way up. But when it's cold, you're out of shape, and have a cold, it was a little rough. But I wasn't going to let all of that stop me. It was worth it. 

We also hiked a little farther past the castle to get to a bridge that has an awesome view:

We walked down and got back in our cars to head to Switzerland. We had a little adventure to find somewhere to eat on the way. And by on the way, I mean we took some crazy detour not on the way to some place that ended up being super expensive so we gave up and ended up at a McDonald's. And then we were back on the rode. 

Once again I attempted to sleep. We had like a four hour drive and I must have slept some but it was miserable. I feel miserable. And of course we then have a hard time finding our place we're staying for the night. The GPS kept telling us to board a ferry. Tom had been here before with his parents and told us  a story about how they all of a sudden were boarding a ferry in their car that was super expensive and took them through the mountain. We were kinda freaking out that that is what we were going to have to do. Mind you, this was at 11 at night. Not the best night to be lost and confused when all I need is a warm bed to get some actual sleep rather than attempt sleep in a car. 

We finally called the hotel and figured out we needed to ride a tram to get to it. There were no cars allowed up there. Luckily it was 11:30 and the last one left at 11:45. So we quickly drove to the place and got on board. Apparently this tram is the thing to do here anyway. It's just too bad it's at night so we can't see anything. At least we'll get to see it when we leave tomorrow. Unless it's still raining, or worse, snowing! Which snow is sadly in the forecast. There was talk in the car that if that's the case, we may just start our journey back towards Spain and spend more time in Southern France. We'll see. 

The hotel we're staying at is this big cabin place. It's kinda cool from what I've seen so far. Which isn't much. But my bed is comfy so let's hope I get some good sleep tonight!

Tomorrow: Gimmelwald, Switzerland!