Day 38 - Zurich (Switzerland) - The hills are alive!

GIVE ME A Y, GIVE ME AN OH, GIVE ME A D, E, L... GIVE ME A YODEL!!! We are often asked what has been the highlight of our trip... not an easy one to answer given how different every place is... but definitely up there in the top three would have to be hiking through the Jungrau region of Switzerland. We drove several hours from Zurich to get to the Jungfrau, caught two cable cars up the mountain, would have taken a third but it wasn't operating, so hiked for an hour to the start of our planned hike! The air was fresh and the higher we got the more snow surrounded us. The sun was shining and the flowers blossoming and hiking makes you feel like you deserve the view (and the sandwiches taste so much better!). We hiked for about three hours and would have to stop every minute or so to take a picture that tried to capture how stunning the view was. Definitely don't try and overstretch your limits, but get up there and give it a go... great stuff. And at the end, if you've been good you can treat yourself to large steins of beer and cheesy Swiss snacks. Of course ordering Swiss food is actually not as straight forward as it sounds (much to the embarresment of Sandro, our Swiss local). Firstly never order cheese fondue in the summer (we did). Secondly never order it with anything else (we did). If you do order it with something else make sure it's not more cheese (we ordered a cheese potato gratin). Finally if you can't follow all these rules, at least order a nice Swiss white wine (we ordered an Italian red wine). Needless to say the waitress was double checking everything we ordered. We even had the chief poke his head out the door to see who was ordering all this! When they finally realised that Sandro was Swiss and the rest of us non-natives, I think they took pity on how embarressed he must have been.
LESSON FOR THE DAY: Bugger tradition, order whatever you feel like eating!