So…  believe it or not, I actually did run on Sunday evening – shortly after I finished my last post.  I decided that the best thing to do, rather than skip the run altogether, was to do six miles on Sunday evening and six miles on Monday morning.    So we mapped out a 6 miler on MapMyRun and we took off – S rode the bike along side me.  So I was all set to do my six miles…   Except we took a wrong turn and had to double back, and it ended up being 8.7 miles! I was hurting by the time we arrived back home.  I think it was a lot more mental than physical… when you expect to be done after six miles but are still running 2.5 miles later, it’s a killer!  It was tough physically, too, though.  The hills where we ran are just ridiculous.

So we arrived back at the house and I was pretty much ready to eat as much as possible and then call it a night.  I was still feeling our major plane flights from the day before.  But S pointed out that to complete my 12 miles, I now only had 3.3 left to go, so I might as well try to go slow and get it done.  That way I would be able to relax and sleep in the next day.  He even offered to run it with me!  So we did it together.  We went super slow, and the hills around here are KILLER but it was so awesome to get it done.  I was pretty proud of myself for running 12 miles the day after my international flight.  Plus then I pretty much got to eat my weight in fondue for dinner and chocolate for dessert

Overall, I finished 12.22 miles in 2:04.  Garmin info can be seen here. 

Stats:
Time:  02:04:43
Distance:  12.22 mi
Elevation Gain:  1,118 ft
Avg Moving Pace:  10:06 min/mi

Not too shabby.

And believe it or not, I still couldn’t sleep afterwards.  I was exhausted, and actually right asleep… but then I woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t fall back to sleep again.  So I had some breakfast in the middle of the night:

This cereal is like a raspberry granola.  It is delicious!  And a great snacky food.  I read, poked around online, and finally fell back asleep a few hours later. 

Monday morning we woke up bright and early at 8:30am and got ready to head to Zurich.  S’s grandmother lives there, and we were going to take her out for lunch.  We left at about 10:30, and it was a 2 1/2 hour drive.  By the time we arrived, picked up his Grandma, and then took a bus and three different trains to get there, we arrived at the restaurant for lunch at almost 2pm.  I was practically gnawing my arm off I was so hungry.  Unfortunately, the restaurant did not have an English menu that I could understand.  I didn’t want to ask S to translate the whole thing while he was trying to converse with his grandma, and also to order for himself, so I just got something that I could somewhat understand – and it turned out to be a pretty good option.  A greek-ish salad with black olives, avocado and capers.

I’m not really a fan of capers.  I don’t have them and always think that maybe my tastes might have changed a bit and I will like them this time… but I never do. 

After lunch, we went to another cafe and got a coffee.  That is the Swiss way, always ending a meal with a coffee.  Or at least S’s family’s way.

I was hungry very soon after dropping off S’s grandmother back at her house.  So on the way home, we stopped at a Swiss Aldi!!  Aldi used to be one of my favorite stores where I grew up.  It is an awesome little grocery store that is very inexpensive.  It is mainly able to be so cheap because it sells mainly its own brands.  In addition, it does little cost-saving measures:  They do not bag your groceries.  You have to bring your own, or use the boxes they have there from their shipments.  And to get a cart, you have to insert a quarter (you get the quarter back when you return the cart.)  Unfortunately, they don’t have Aldi in California   But they do have it in Switzerland!  I got lots of goodies, including…

Chocolate caramel cream mice:

A variety of mini Ritter Sport bars:

And these awesome cookies – kinda similar to oreos, except hazelnut!!

I’ll bet you can guess what my dinner will be tonight