Hiking the Alps

After class on Monday a group of people decided to hike to the top of the mountain near Bregenz.  I didn't really know what to expect or even how far people planned on going.  I was thinking something along the lines of US National parks.  I packed up my bookbag to include by water bottle, bathing suit,  and towel because there was talk of swimming when we got down since it was nice out.  I didn't want to wear my gross gym shorts so I decided to be really stylish and wear my tennis shoes with a sundress.

The hike up the mountain was harder than I expected, it was steeper than most of what I have hiked before. Having a bookbag on also left I giant sweat mark on my back so that was awesome but after an hour and a half we made it to the top!  We stopped quite a few times on the way up and felt like lazy Americans but we took pictures when we stopped too.

The streams were really cold so we put our hands in them to cool off.

This alone pretty much made the hike worth it.

Taken at the top of the mountain where the tram lets people off.

On the top of the mountain we got ice cream and looked at the zoo that contained mountain animals.  A few people decided to hike to the next village so we walked an hour downhill to the village of Fluh.  It turns out there isn't much there except for slugs.  The sidewalks right near the grass were covered in slugs.  Other than that we passed a fire station, church, houses and a hotel/restaurant that was closed on Mondays since it was about 6:30 when we got there we were slightly disappointed by that.

The Church in Fluh

 We found a bus that ran from Fluh into Bregenz and took the last one of the night.  When we got off the bus we found other people who had gone swimming after getting back down from the mountain so we all got dinner then headed to the beach (with a beer in hand) to hang out and watch the sunset.  It was a great ending to the night

.