Hiking alone is neither cool nor fantastic...

I woke up pretty early this morning, because four out of five of my roommates were leaving today, and they made a lot of noise. That was alright. I got up and went for a walk around the town to try to figure out what I was going to do with my day. I decided to take the Gondola from Grindelwald to First and hike down (I actually could not figure out how hike up, so it happened this way). But first I had to come back to my room to get my Eurail pass for a 25% discount. The Quattrocchi in me was pretty psyched about this.

The ride up to first is about 30 minutes and I was pretty much white knuckling it the entire time. I don't know what it is, but anytime I am in a gondola (and sometimes on chair lifts as well) I can't help but think about what would happen if the cable were to snap. It's much worse when I'm riding alone, and I happened to be alone this time. Needless to say, I was pretty happy with my decision to walk down.

I had originally decided to walk down a path that went by an alpine lake and had lots of wild flowers, but I couldn't figure out where that path started. Instead I decided to follow the other hikers. Safety in numbers, I always say. I ended up going along the marmot path. If you have binoculars you can supposedly see lots of marmots coming out of the rocks. I saw none. I did see some cows though, and more butterflies than I've seen since I was a kid. Anyway, I followed the marmot path for a while, but at a fork in the road I decided to change course and take what I thought was a more direct route back to Grindelwald. It was a mistake. I noticed that everyone was heading back towards Bort, which is one of the stations on the gondola ride, but the sign to Grindelwald was pointing in a different direction. I waited until I saw some other hikers take that trail and then I went down it as well. I think we were the only people on that trail, and they kept stopping to take pictures so I quickly passed them.

I was a really nice walk. When I got bored of being by myself I listened to Fleet Foxes and the Flaming Lips on my ipod. I couldn't figure out why the path was so empty, and I started to get kind of worried. I really had no other option than to keep going.

At this point I had been walking for what felt like hours. In reality it was maybe an hour and a half. My toes hurt because I was walking downhill and they were pushing against the front of my shoes, so I took to walking backwards down the hills. It's great for the butt you guys, I'm telling you. Anyway, as I said, I thought it had been hours. It was starting to get dark so I pegged it at eight at the earliest. Luckily I brought my trusty travel alarm, so I dug that out to check the time: quarter to six. Huh, that's strange. Why is the sky so dark? And what's that sound? Oh yes, my friends, it was thunder. I was about to get caught in a crazy mountain storm with no where to go for shelter and no rain gear. And the lightning was starting. But worry not because as fate would have it two cars drove by and the driver of the first car offered me a ride (that's one lucky thing about looking generally clueless. People assume you are harmless and want to help you). I felt pretty safe taking the offer as it came from a man who was at least 65. I was pretty sure I could take him in a fight if it came to that. Luckily it didn't. I got in before the rain started and we were at our destination just as the downpour stopped. What luck! To make things even more magical, there was a glorious rainbow in the sky. The man directed me to the train station (which was unfortunately down a pretty steep, narrow road) and bid me farewell.

View from the top of First.

Wow! What a looker!

Like my father before me, I took many pictures of waterfalls (streams?).

A magical ending!