As was previously mentioned today is the start of our official hiking trip. We packed up from our postage stamp sized room (seriously I had to sit diagonally on the …aaahh, water closet) in Interlaken and headed to meet our guides around 10:30am at the train station. We have a group of 12 people, so reasonably small this time around. Our first stop for one night is Adelboden (it’s in Switzerland, …somewhere) It’s a gorgeous little alpine town where everything looks like the picture below. (Except for the one crane in the middle of town, go figure it a mini-Austin)

After a quick orientation meeting and lunch we headed out on our first hike. Today’s hike started with a quick jaunt to the gondola station to take us up the mountain. (Better than walking up, I assure you) I think we are in the 5000 foot range so you can feel it. (That’s about the height Denver so not too bad and it will get higher this trip) We ended up hiking about 4.5 miles today. The picture below was probably at our most distant hiking point. You can see the little village of Adelboden way off in the distance.

And guess what? There are lots of cows here grazing throughout the mountains and they are all wearing bells. (Probably for the tourists as I can’t think of a practical purpose) Here’s a few below just hangin. Apparently we learned at dinner that all cows in Switzerland have to be pasture raised.

Once we completed the 4.5 mile mountain loop we had to get back down. So we took what the Swiss refer to as Trotti bikes. We ended up coasting back into town in about a half hour. The trip however was not without incident. Apparently our Backroads leader missed a red light indicating we weren’t supposed to start down. (One way roads and apparently the up and down take turns??) This resulted in one very unhappy Swiss bus driver who tried to yell at each of us as he drove by, while leaving us only a couple feet of space. The Swiss do not like rule breakers! (On this topic yesterday we watched an Asian couple push on to a train before everyone else got off and man, every Swiss person offered a disgusted look and a few choice German words, which clearly were wasted on the Asians.)

So now onto our room. This trip is supposed to have awesome hotels. Well, so far so good. Just as proof, here’s a shot looking out onto our balcony. I’ll not present a picture of the bathroom but there is no need to sit diagonally. (I know that is a pretty low bar.)

And here’s a panorama from the balcony! Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Well, that’s all for today, we just finished a traditional Swiss dinner. Kelly and I had burrata with tomatoes and salmon for the main course. Not sure salmon is exactly ‘traditional’ for a country with no coastline but hey it was really good. …and Kelly got some ice cream (or sorbet?) so all is okay on that front. …until tomorrow.