Day 6: Thunder, Feel the Thunder

 Our morning 4 miler turned into an almost 5 but we made it out to the lake where we played the day before.  It was a cloudy day after a very stormy night.  Somehow, Kate and Owen slept through brilliant flashes and booming thunder.  They have limited thunderstorm experience and would have been pretty freaked out.

Brady found us a perfect path to jog.

Our morning pastry and smoothie outing almost turned into an uh-oh travel moment.  Most of Switerland won't accept our Amex cards, so we brought our Visa instead.  As we struggled to remembered our passcodes and failed multiple times, we realized it had never been set up as an ATM and we could not do so without visiting a bank.  Owen asked if Kate could just use her card and Kate's ATM withdrawal paid the tourist tax for our AirB&B and saved us many many hours.

Hard showers as we waited for the Cogwheel train from Wilderswil to Schynige Platte.  We hoped the skies would clear and just as we went to board, it completely stopped raining and we had perfect views all the way up the mountain.

This train has operated since 1893 and took us through pastures and forests to views to the Bernese Highlands.

This was the first time on the trip seeing the cows with bells.  Exquisite. 

We picked up qiuck sandwiches from the cafe at the top (almost getting charged 25 CHF for each before catching the error!), and enjoyed the views over Interlaken and Lake Thun.  We saw the skies darkening again and knew our time was limited for our 

We busted him with a smile!

Fastest (painful) slide!

"Mom, take a picture of me with this hiking stick!"

See those angry skies?  Coming soon...

This was our first hike of the trip and not at all disappointing!

This is me telling the kids the hike is only 3.7 miles and we can make it before the storm.

This is Zac doubting me.

This is Kate asking if she and I can just run the rest of the trail because the boys are not going fast enough.

...and this is where we reluctantly turned around because we saw flashes in the sky and heard thunder.  In the family retelling of this story, I was not going to turn around and took a full 5 minutes to convince.  That is not true and while I was bummed to miss the ridge section, I knew that I was not the best judge of safety and should rely on Brady and the kids' judgement over my own.  I turned around within a minute and we started to jog.  

In the Kate and Owen's retelling of the story, lightening came down 30 feet away.  The storm did come quickly and at one point, I did wonder if we should seek shelter.  Kate will never forgive us for taking pictures of the cows crossing our during the storm.

We made it back to the station with several other groups of hikers and jumped on the train, laughing at the misadventure and "close calls."  If it had been just me and Brady, we would have waited out the storm for 45 minutes in the station and gone back for the hike.  When we disembarked from the train, the skies were as clear as we had seen them at Switzerland and we knew we missed an opportunity.  

Kate's face says it all.

We tracked down Clarks in Interlaken and showed them our jumping bridge.  Shay ran to her car to change and all the kids decided to jump again.

Zac backflipping:

Shay:

Kate:

Trying to convince Tate to jump.  It took about 30 minutes but he did it!

Zac's backflip leap over the rails:

Kate and Shay together.  These girls picked up right where they left off and it was such a comfortable  reunion.

Owen's turn!

Kate and Shay offering their support.  Tate wanted to backflip but it took him about 30 minutes to summon the courage. 

Then he jumped three more times without hesitation.

Pre-dinner gelato: our last of the trip.  So good, so decadent.

Our much anticipated segment of the trip: staying in Murren.  We were so happy with our views from the gondola and stepping off into Murren felt like a journey to another world. 

My favorite meal of the trip was in Murren, eating fondue and green curry while watching the world cup around Zac's phone.

The Swiss don't have the same issues with theft and crime as the rest of the world...

Staying in the mountains meant it was the first night we were not sweating.  There are few places in Europe with A/C and the mountains were all we needed to finally cool off.