Switzerland!!

Even though we took a night train and were able to sleep a little on our journey....we were worn out and getting a little sick of trains.

At least our ride was packed with pretty scenes of the Swiss country side

We eventually ended up in Lausanne and called my cousin for directions from there.

It was so simple to get to his house, we were thrilled.  Especially after getting somewhat lost at every other destination.  We just crossed the street from the train station to the metro station, then rode it to the last stop.  Jared's apartment was one block up, but he met us at the stop.  We got to laughing though because his stop is d'Ouchy, douchy....hahaha!

We dropped our bags off in his apartment and went for a walk and to grab some lunch.  One little fact about Switzerland, it's very expensive.  They speak french where Jared lives, so he had to translate.  But we stopped at a restaurant, nothing special at all, but a individual sized pizza was a little over $20.  The exchange rate gave us only slightly more francs for our dollars, so it was still like $15.  We were a little taken aback.  Luckly, Jared is a sweet heart and bought us lunch.  We went to the grocery store to buy food to make our dinner and to buy chocolate to bring home to the family :)

 For those of you who are wondering why I have a cousin in Europe, this is why.  Jared is an accountant and works for ADM.  They needed more English speaking people for their foreign offices and he just happened to be a young, single man willing to live abroad.  It's actually a really freakin sweet deal.  Not only do they pay for his apartment, but they pay for his phone, food, and he gets a salary.  Awesome if you ask me!  Plus, he gets 2 trips home each year, so there's not too much time to miss people.  Anyway....Lausanne sits right on Lake Geneva, which is freakin beautiful.  This was a view of the lake.

And from the pier looking inland

We wandered from there around the adorable city.  We saw beautiful fountains (which are pure enough you can drink from them)

A clock made of flowers...which was accurate

Great modern sculptures

And guys in not so modern roller skates performing tricks in the hot, hot sun.

By the way, it was hot in Switzerland.  From "need a jacket" cool in Amsterdam to "where the hell is my tank top" was much appreciated.

I loved this giant chess set.  I almost challenged Zac to another game!

The boys in front of Lake Geneva

Zac and I, so happy to be warm!

Shortly after this we all headed back to Jared's apartment and crashed hard.  We woke up around 6pm and sat around deciding what to do for another couple hours.  Jared told us there was a carnival down the street, why he didn't tell us earlier, I dont' know.  Everyone loves a carnival, everyone.  We walked down to it...and much to our dismay, they were packing up :(  This made us sad...Jared was very sad.

We still got a couple shots of what would have been sweet rides!

They had packed up all the carni food too, but we were still happy to be outside on what turned out to be a great, relaxing day!