Swiss You Were Here (Part 3)

We woke up and checked the webcam channel that shows views from around the valley. It was all clear. It was going to be a beautiful day! We headed up to Männlichen for the Spring Mountain Festival. There was supposed to be a traditional flag thrower and yodelers! We were pumped.  When we arrived at the top, the views were amazing! It was also packed. We were so thankful we had done the hike the day before since today it would be insanely crowded. The mountain wildflowers were in full bloom. Gorgeous!  

We had trouble finding the festival, but eventually found it on the deck of the restaurant. I got a great spot! We saw a flag thrower and alpine horn players. It was interesting, but not really what we thought of when we heard flag thrower.

It was still interesting to see a traditional Swiss festival though. After this flag thrower came the yodelers from Wengen. We were misinformed about what yodeling really is, apparently, since we were underwhelmed. Here is a video of traditional Swiss yodeling.

After yodeling came folk dancing:

The folk dancing finished up and we decided to head to Interlaken to find out about paragliding. We were hoping to be able to go today since the weather was pretty, but just wanted to book something for Tuesday. So we took the cable car back down to Wengen, caught the train to Lauterbrunnen, then switched trains to Interlaken. It sounds like a lot, but the trains and everything were super easy to navigate.   

We got to Interlaken and walked to the park where you can sign up to paraglide. We arrived around 12:45 and were able to book a 2:30 time! Woo hoo! We wandered around and ate lunch at Hotel Toscana. J had a traditional Swiss roast something and an interesting salad, and I had penne. We topped it off with ice cream. We then went back to the park and awaited our time. We got on the bus with the others going and headed to Beatenburg. On the ride we picked our pilots. I picked Dan, a guy from New Zealand (since I knew he knew English!). He was a great pick! J randomly picked Flo. He was an okay pick, but J had a good time and landed safe, so that's the important thing.

J's salad

Me and Dan ready to fly!

J is the one in the background

Me steering! :)

 

My view

 

 

It was just incredible! I loved every second of all the twists and turns. J wasn't feeling so well that high, so he opted out of the twists and turns. I was this close to becoming a tandum paragliding instructor and just staying in Switzerland. Ok, not really, but it would be awesome!

After paragliding, we went back to Wengen to enjoy the beautiful views from our balcony. We cooked calzones from the grocery store and ate outside. We did a little planning since we were going to Bern tomorrow and wanted to have plenty to do. Turns out it was more than I could handle....

to be continued....