In the Alps!

Natalie and I are currently in a hostel up in the Swiss Alps in the tiny village of Gimmelwald, and it is beautiful! Like a made-up place, surrounded by mountains and trees and blue skies. (In theory. We got in very late, so the blue skies were gone.)

Today has been a very long day. It got off on the wrong foot when our alarm did not go off at 4 am as it was supposed to. I woke up at 7:30, immediately realized that the sun should not be out, and woke Natalie. We had to do some major restructuring of our travel plans, since our train had left at 6:30. Long story short, we had to take a more roundabout path, involving briefly stopping in Germany, until we finally arrived 10 hours later than planned. After three trains, a bus, and a gondola. We are exhausted.

But! The French Open! One of the best days of my life. I got to see Serena Williams lose to Sam Stosur in 3 sets, and then Rafael Nadal beat Nicolas Almagro in 3 sets. Such high-level tennis, it was amazing to see. And my seat was really good. All in all, worth every penny and I need to go to another Slam soon.

The one negative is that I got positively scorched. It was a beautiful day, and I spent 6 hours in the sun without sunscreen. While wearing sunglasses. So you can probably imagine how that worked out.

After I got back from the match, I met Natalie, Brandon, and a group of others at the Eiffel Tower. It looks beautiful at night, all lit up. And it sparkles every hour, which is a sight worth seeing. After hanging out there for a while, we hit the Paris night scene again, and got to watch part of the Hawks game. We got back to our hostel around 3, and went to bed for what we thought would be an hour. And that's when we overslept majorly.

But we're here! And tomorrow, we have 10 hours of travel to get to Vienna. But we'll have 2 nights there, so things can be a little slower paced.

That's all for now. Tomorrow, I've been here a week! It feels a lot longer. I'm starting to miss home, but there's still so much to see and do that it's not something I dwell on. 3 more countries to visit!