Ski Switz!

For the past few days we have been in Switzerland. Rob and I desperately wanted to go skiing-- just for ONE day-- and we had never been to Switzerland, so we finally decided to drive down to Grindelwald (about 5 hours away) before all the snow was gone for the season. Our hotel - Gasthaus Aspen- was very nice, and was actually ON the ski slope. (It's kind of different to ski down the mountain past lodges, restaurants, cows, and sheep.)

Our hotel- the Aspen.

Charlotte and Toby at the hotel- a family (with a 9 year old girl) lives in and runs the hotel and our kids really enjoyed playing with her old toys, books, and her cat.

Downtown Grindelwald.

Check it out-- I'm famous here! ;)

(In case you didn't know, my maiden name is Kaufman.)

Fancy food in the hotel restaurant. (But they actually did great with the kid stuff- providing plastic dishes and menu items they would eat.)

Ski day! We took this four-seater cable car up the mountain to the day care where we were leaving the kids for the day. It took 30 minutes. The kids LOVED it!

After we dropped off the kids, we headed down! Last time Rob and I went skiing was 4 years ago. We proclaimed ourselves "intermediate" skiers when we rented our stuff, but OH MY GOSH, these intermediate slopes nearly killed us. It was so hard. We had a lot of fun!!! But we also spent some time on our butts, broke into cold sweats, and even hiked our way out of one particularly bad situation. But hey, the views were gorgeous. ;)

Here we go!

We went "all the way" down the mountain only once-- and it took us about an hour and twenty minutes. These are MASSIVE mountains. We also tried some of the other slopes and lifts up at the top. (Although these were not short runs either- one took us 45 minutes.)

Riding back up in the cable car after our long run.

Rob and kiddos enjoying the view at the end of our ski day. :)

After we were done skiing (aka completely exhausted) we headed to the cable car to go down and learned that it was closed due to high winds. With the kids we were unable to ski down, so we had to take a huge gondola down the other side of the mountain and then a train up the one side and another train down the other side to get back to our car. In ski boots. Hauling two children. And skis. Sigh.

At the bottom of the mountain we learned we could return our skis & boots there, so that is what we did. Sure, we had to buy new shoes to walk in, but it was soooooo worth it. :)

View of the glacier on our train ride over the mountain.

Back at the hotel. Washed, jammied, and reading a bedtime story.

The next day we took the kids swimming at an indoor pool and bought a couple t-shirts. Then it was time to head home to Germany. This is a snapshot I took while we drove past one of the huge glacial lakes near Interlaken. The water is incredibly blue because of the sediment in the glacial melt.

Auf wiedersehen Jungfrau!

You kicked our butts, but we had a great time and who knows, we may be back next year!