Mountains at Last

After exactly 50 days in Europe, we finally got some mountains. This weekend we caught a cheap flight to Geneva, Switzerland, then took a train to Leysin. Leysin is a quaint little town in the foothills of the Swiss Alps with a bunch of hikes, single tracks for mountain biking, and what is probably an awesome ski slope in winter. In short, exactly the kind of place we needed to be.

Beautiful, beautiful mountains that I want to climb on so bad. 

It was fun going through the pictures when we got back to Rotterdam. We both look insanely happy in all of them. Well, except for the one where I look like someone farted.

When we reached the top of our hike it began clouding over (and the sun started going down), resulting in beautiful sunlight. Amazingly, it actually came out in the pictures. 

Leysin is a ways up the side of a small mountain and doubles as a ski resort in winter. Accordingly, they developed a really cool track on their trains in order to get them up the mountain. Being good little engineers, Ev and I admired the ingenuity for longer than was probably necessary. 

Of course, the trip started out with an almost-adventure. Having never flown out of Amsterdam (let alone on EasyJet- yes, that is a real airline, and yes, the tickets are super cheap) and with the internet yielding useful advice such as "make sure to allow yourself plenty of time at the airport," we figured better early then late and checked the train schedule from Rotterdam to Schipol. We opted for the early train that would give us a full 2 hours before out flight, which meant we needed to be at the train station by 5am. No problem, we'll get up at 4 and hop on the metro. 4am rolled around and I had a sudden realization: the metro stops running at 1:30am and I didn't know what time it started up again. A frantic burst of research confirmed that the metro was a no-go, and we quickly shoved our stuff into backpacks and hopped on the bikes. 

Amazingly, we arrived at Rotterdam Centraal with 15 minutes to spare.

Lessons of the Netherlands #4:

Trains at the buttcrack of dawn are ridden by two types of people: drunk young people heading home after the clubs close, and people who have early-morning flights out of Amsterdam. Just to be clear, incredibly drunk people at 5am are bloody awful. 

Which leads us to...

Lesson of the Netherlands #5: 

Don't show up to the airport 2 hours ahead of time when you're flying on a discount airline within the EU. The security checkpoint doesn't open until 6:30am and your actual gate isn't assigned until 30min before your flight. You will spend 30 minutes sitting outside the checkpoint, then another hour and a half hanging out in a super small terminal waiting for your plane. It takes 2 minutes to get through security (the line moves fast), and if you're not checking bags there is no reason to be at the airport an hour and a half before they even start thinking about your flight. Next time, an hour or so will suffice.

Anyway, back to Switzerland...

It came to our attention Sunday morning that nothing in Geneva is open on Sunday. This was devastating, as it meant out walk to what is supposed to be an amazing chocolate shop was for naught. We did however, discover this nifty little climbing wall in the river.

As we meandered around Geneva, we decided to check out a lighthouse at the end of a long dock. When we reached the dock, we saw a bunch of divers and people in yellow vests pulling trash out of the lake. When we came back a couple hours later, they had removed several truckloads of garbage. Ev and I thought it was really cool that there are organised events to cleanup the waterways in Geneva. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a nation-wide thing, actually. The Swiss seem to take very good care of their nature.

There is a pretty nifty fountain in Geneva that is probably one of the tallest in the world (I'm just guessing, but it's bloody huge). 

Of course, Ev had to take a picture of me taking a picture of the fountain. Because that's how we roll.

We already have tickets to Geneva again for the weekend of October 10th. We'll meet up with our buddy Ryan, who's doing a masters degree in Manchester, and hit up Chamonix for some climbing. On real rocks. It's going to be magical!

I should probably stop procrastinating and go back to studying. Which, I suppose counts as

Amy Approved Way #4 to Procrastinate Schoolwork:

Write blog posts about awesome weekend adventures.