Once again, I’m playing a little bit of catch-up with my Switzerland posts.  I believe I left off around Friday.  But first, let me show you what S’s parents gave to us as an engagement gift on Thursday evening:

This is a clock that S’s dad designed.  He thought of the idea and sketched it out in a drawing, and then he gave it to the artist who created the clock.

I absolutely love it.  And it is so special – handmade, and our first gift to really adorn our home as we start to create our life together.

S’s parents are so thoughtful, kind and generous.  I am so happy to be becoming a part of their family!

On Friday, we were outside and I saw this on the ground:

A small eggshell.  At first I was sad because I thought that whatever had been in it must have died.  But then I realized that it had actually hatched!

Beautiful.

The rest of the day was full of more natural beauty.  We headed to the Lötschental valley to do a hike. 

This was a hike that S used to do all the time when he was younger, so he was very excited to show it to me. 

It is about a 2 hour hike up to a hut in the mountains.  We started off right after lunchtime.

At the beginning of the trail there was a springwater fountain where we filled up our water bottle.  It was ice cold and tasted great.

We saw lots of streams and little waterfalls along the route.

And these beautiful purple flowers were everywhere!

This is the symbol that was used to mark the trail.  It was painted on rocks every few hundred feet or so.

It was an incredibly gorgeous day – blue sky and sunny.  It wasn’t too hot but wasn’t too cold.

There was still a lot of snow up in the alps, though.  I think that is there all year round – after all, it is still there in the middle of summer!

At last, about 1.5 hours in, we could see the hut.  See it up there?

Getting closer….

It actually wasn’t much of a hut at all, but rather a small building.  When S was younger, it actually was a hut.  However, an avalanche a few years ago destroyed the hut and it was rebuilt a big bigger, out of this cement material.  Guess they don’t want to risk it being destroyed again!

We finally got to the top, and look who we found also enjoying the hut by the Swiss flag!

We bought cokes inside the hut and drank them outside.  They were RIDICULOUSLY expensive – almost $11 for two (and mine was much smaller than S’s bottle you see below.)  And of course S proceeded to spill half of his on the table. 

There goes $3!! 

Then, we started our descent. 

On the way down, we saw a plethora of frogs!

And we took a bathroom break. 

Of course, S had to take a picture of my bathroom break. 

Next sighting?  A big, green caterpillar!

S liked that one.

We were exhausted by the time we finished.  On our drive back, we were almost home when we had to stop for a herd of cows crossing the road!  By the time I was able to stop laughing and get my camera out, they were pretty much all the way across.

You don’t see that in Silicon Valley!