the swiss miss adventures: I never stop moving and I love it!

Salut!

It has been forever since I have written! Life has been super busy and well I kind of forget! I have been several places since my last post... The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Gouda, and Utrecht). It was an incredible experience and I really enjoyed my time there! Gruyere, Switzerland which is home to Gruyere cheese which is delicious as well as the Cailler/ Nestle chocolate factory. I went on this full day excursion with Link. Link is an au pair group that connects au pairs in the Lake Geneva area. I have made so many great friends through this group, and hope to continue meeting more! The couple, Paul and Becky, that started the Link group have been doing this for over 20-something years. It is truly a blessing to be around other people in your same field and especially having Paul and Becky to talk to is incredible. They have the biggest hearts and its incredible what they do for me and the other au pairs! Back to my story....On the Cows, Chocolate, and Cheese day we stood in the pouring, freezing rain to watch a parade/festival of the cows coming home from the mountains! Some have head-dresses and others don't but they all have massive bells around their necks! It was a blast to see this, walk the streets with locals and have lunch with new friends while listening to live music from a 3-man band! We then headed to the Cailler/Nestle chocolate factory....All you can eat/taste! It was really cool and then we headed to the Gruyere cheese museum/factory to learn how it was made. My tour was given by an english speaking dairy cow on a really large phone that looked like it was straight out of 1995, but hey I learned a lot and laughed a lot as well! We then hiked up a hill to the village of Gruyere where we walked around a bit and then ended the day with Chalet Soup! The entire day was amazing regardless of the rain and cold!

My next excursion was to Zermatt, Switzerland. This was another Link trip, that I originally wasn't going on and Becky called me to say there was a spot open and my host mom insisted I not miss the opportunity! I am so glad I didn't...Saturday afternoon we arrived by train in Zermatt. Zermatt is such a cute little village without cars. The only vehicles are the taxis/busses to the hotels and ski lifts. Flower boxes line every building, and the view of the Matterhorn is absolutely breathtaking (on a perfect clear day). We hiked up to a little village called Zmutt and had apple stroodles below the Matterhorn. From there we hiked back into town for dinner and wandering. The next morning we jumped a train up 3100 meters to Gornergrat and hiked down! It was snowing up top which was incredible! I loved every second of it. Now this hike down was insane! Very rocky terrain, foggy, and made my booty so sore! It took us about 4 hours to get down, with a few stops for pictures of course! I really enjoyed this time as well and will be back to visit Zermatt again.