Europe Day 7 – Eingleberg

Europe Day 7 – Eingleberg

We got to sleep in today, till 8:30 AM, wow it was great. I got up, took a shower, then headed down for some breakfast. Poor selection this morning, so two pieces of toast and a lot of apple juice will have to do. Today, we were going to go to the top of Mt. Titlis. So I attempted to bundle up, but I didn’t bring any warm clothes, so all I could do was to put on two additional t-shirts as my extra protection from the cold. We walked to the base of the mountain, and proceeded to get into the gondolas to start our ascent to the top of the mountain. The views overlooking the valley, small city, and the mountains was absolutely amazing. We got off our first gondola and then onto another for the second phase of the journey to the top of the mountain. Finally, we reached our third gondola point where we proceeded to the top of the mountain in a rotating gondola. So, I would stand still and the gondola floor would rotate so I could see the surrounding mountains without having to move.
After quite some time in gondolas headed to the top of the mountain, we got off at the top of Mt. Titlis at 10,000 ft. At this height, not much could be seen because we were in the clouds, and it was snowing. But it was a lot of fun going up there to that altitude. One of the guys in the group, Jeremy, had never seen snow before or been somewhere that cold in his life. It was about 30 F up there when we were there. So I walked around on top of the mountain for a little while just trying to see anything when the clouds would let up a little. I bought a pass for the ‘Ice Flyer’ earlier, so I walked down to do this with several others. We got on the lift to take us to another part of the mountain. When we got off, we walked around for about five minutes, then asked the attendant if we could do the actual ‘Ice Flyer’. Turns out they weren’t running it today. It was supposed to be snowtubing, but it turned out to be a life ride through the clouds meaning I wasn’t able to see anything on the lift either.
After the disappointment of the ‘Ice Flyer’, I checked out the shops there on top of the mountain. I found this pretty interesting advertisement for CK involving two girls making out. That was it, I don’t have a clue which product was being promoted, maybe just the name. But I don’t think I would have seen anything like that in the states. Eventually, shop wandering became boring, and it was time to check out the Ice Grotto. Turns out this was simply some passageways carved into a glacier several hundred feet below the surface. Turns out that ice is pretty cold, especially considering everything surrounding me was ice. Yet another cool thing to do at 10,000 feet. After I had seen all the attractions offered on top of Mt. Titlis, I headed back down the mountain. Myself with others took the two gondolas down most of the mountain. But, rather than get onto the last gondola to make the final descent to town, we thought it would be fun to take scooters down the rest of the way. It was tons of fun going down the mountain on a little scooter. Coz bit it on the way down, but other than that I managed to take the zig-zag turns without much trouble although I almost lost it on one taking the turn a bit too fast.
The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, cleaning up, and organizing in general. I got a late lunch of some traditional lasagna as well as most of Jeff’s pasta. Then a nice shower where I cleaned myself up real nice. Dinner then followed at the same place we ate the night before. Rather than go to a pub after dinner like the night before (where Ben got beat pretty badly), we thought it would be nice to hang out in the lobby of the hotel and drink wine. This turned out to be a great idea. Several days prior, much of the rest of the group went to a wine tasting and bought several bottles of wine. This wine was very good; a nice white wine that was quite sweet – very pleasant. We also had several types of Swiss and German chocolates and various cheeses for this occasion. We sat around and talked about the many hilarious activities that have happened so far on the trip. Nights like this are the types of times that I think are very valuable. Where many friends can sit around in a circle and hang out talking about good times and what is to come. I hope there are many more of these types of events on this trip, but more importantly during my life. I do not want to get caught up with always doing some special activity or too busy working to miss out on these good times to simply spend time with the important people in my life.
About half of the crew decided to go back to the pub we were last night, while the rest of us headed to bed. Those that headed to the pub, ended up very drunk by the end of the night. It’s been fantastic in Switzerland – a very pretty country. Tomorrow, I will be up at 6 AM to head to Austria to do some rafting.