Zurich, Day 2

Today started off by waking up and eating breakfast. Doug had set out some yogurt, granola, and blueberries. After we ate and got ready for the day, Doug walked us to his lab here at the University of Zurich. We got to see his office, his lab space, his new lab space (which he's moving into next week), and his "frog room". It's amazing how different labs look here in comparison to back in the U.S. Although he has one room inside the building that contains frogs, he also has an area outside with containers of tadpoles. We'd never have anything like that at Vanderbilt.

After his little tour, Laura and I walked back to their place and relaxed until Doug came back for lunch. The exhaustion from the overnight train ride, as well as the whole trip, caught up to us. Lunch was leftover chicken salad, which I was happy to eat.

We decided that we were going to go on a hike near Lake Walen (Walensee), which was southeast of Zurich and near to the Alps. We wanted to hike from Amden to Quinten, a village that you can only reach either by hike or by boat. We didn't know what to expect for the hike, but the weather was supposed to be nice all day.

We drive out toward Amden, and the scenery is just spectacular. Even though we weren't really in the Alps, it was mountainous. Actually, it was pretty much the same area I saw when I was looking at the scenery on the train ride in. I knew that we were going to see some awesome views on this hike.

With Abe on Doug's back and with Wally (Doug and Audrey's dog) at our side, we started off on the hike. But guess what? Yep, it started raining! This wasn't the easiest of hikes, and now we had mud and wet rocks to contend with. At any rate, the first shower didn't last too long, and the sun was back out. Good thing, too, because the view of the lake and the mountains beyond was amazing everywhere we went.

Eventually we came across a sign that pointed us to Quinten, and said it was 2 hours away. We have no idea what pace would get us there in 2 hours, but at least we knew how long it should take. The hike was pretty much two uphill and two downhill areas while passing through one small village.

On the way, I noticed way up in the mountains a huge waterfall. So awesome. Eventually, we passed by a path that led to the waterfall, but we didn't go that way. However, we did go past parts of the waterfall, so I got quite a few pictures.

It rained a couple more times (one for quite a while) during the rest of the hike, and the hike took a total time of around 3 hours. There were no casualties and no spills, though I think Wally was getting uncomfortable since he was really wet. But we made it to Quinten.

We get there and run across a man who tells us that the restaurant there is open and will be open until 10, and that the boat runs to the other side of the lake until 9. This made us happy, because we didn't want to hike through all of that again. Quinten is this quaint town that had gardens full of grapes, and we also saw a cherry tree and a pear tree. Just a nice little village.

Audrey went to talk to the guy who ran the boat and asked him if he spoke English. His response was "Not on Monday mornings". Funny. We get the schedule down for the boat ride to the other side, for the tram ride to a different city where we would catch a bus back up to Amden and to the car.

With that set, we ate dinner at a seafood restaurant there in Quinten. The food was awesome. I had black perch with a sauce that was pretty much tomatoes, bacon, and onions. And they had hot chocolate! So it was a good way to celebrate us making it to Quinten.

After dinner, we rode the boat to the other side, got on the tram, got on the bus, and made it back to the car. Then we just rode back to their place.

Now I've gotta get up really early tomorrow to catch our flight to Barcelona via London. Better than taking another overnight, 14 hour train.

Again, hopefully I'll be able to update tomorrow night, so see you then!

(This post was actually posted at 11:53PM Zurich time.)