A day in the Alps

By the 15th of June Zac and I had gotten married, took a plane ride across the world, seen London, Bruges, and Amsterdam...and sufficiently burnt ourselves out.  We were just plain worn out.  We slept in late and were feeling lazy.  We just couldn't seem to get motivated to go explore.  We watched a movie we'd seen already and then worked up the courage to leave Jared's apartment.

We got on the train and headed to Geneva.  We told Jared that we wanted to ride a gondola up the side of a mountain and he said he knew just the place.  The train ride was only about 30 minutes and beautiful.

We got a bus ticket and rode until the end of the line.  There weren't many signs directing us, but we could see the mountain. 

 There were cute awfully cute houses along the way.

Luckly we came upon this sign, which really didn't help much, as it pointed down a crazy unnamed alley.

I was loving this view and Zac, although he is holding his foot all janky and I don't know why.

We found another sign....we were getting close! The Saleve here we come!

We finally found the little building which sold tickets for the gondolas and bought a "round trip."  I'm not sure why you would go only one way, but to each his own.  I suppose it's because the Saleve, while it towers over Geneva, is actually in France.  When we set foot on the mountain, we were in the northern alps in the Chablais area.  Awesome!

This is a view shortly after we started upward.  The entire ride was about 5 minutes, and the gondola had a glass bottom so you could be terrified of the fall the entire time.  It was beautiful though.

Here is a picture of the face of the mountain so you get an idea of how steep it was and just how far you could fall.  Everytime I look at it I get a tingly feeling in my toes....

We reached the top and were ready to explore.  Gondolas left frequently, so we had plenty of time. 

It was sunny, warm and beautiful (and windy)

Another of all of Geneva, much higher up this time.

Right off the bat we headed for some trails.  On the way we saw the crazy ass who'd brought his bike with him in the gondola tearing off into the woods.

 

Trails didn't last long for us.  It was steep and we kept in mind that every step downhill, was another step back uphill.  It was great to be out of a city for awhile.  

Plus....the view

Not sure why...but this is one of my favorite pictures from out entire trip.

We bought a couple bottles of water from the restaurant at the top of the gondola ride and then headed back down the mountain.  Our timing was perfect the entire ride home.  Right when we would get to a transportation switch, the bus, train, metro was waiting on us.  We had headed back early to catch dinner with Jared.  Little did we know, he wasn't going to get home til after 9.  We made the best of it. Went to the local grocery store, bought stuff for dinner and packed ourselves awesome sandwiches for the next day.  A very long day as we rode from Lausanne to the sinking city of Venice!