thursday, july 5

coolest day ever.

this morning we got on a bus and drove to the base of mount pilatus, then got out of the bus and into a tiny four-person gondola that flew us over the trees up the side of the mountain.


iwas amazing, marred only a little bit by the rain and the wind. Not fun to ride in a hanging gondola when there is wind. We got off the small gondola and onto a big group gondola to take us to the very top of the mountain which was the single most terrifying experience of my life so far. There were fifty people in this stupid gondola that is hanging onto a (relatively) tiny cable pulling us up the side of a mountain seven thousand feet high and visibility is zero. this is what it looks like on a normal day:

and this is what it looked like on the day we went up:


you can see where the problem lies. we rode to the top in a rainy, freezing, wet, windy cloud and every time it shifted or shook--which was quite often--i thought i was going to pass out. at the top visibility was about twenty feet and the rest was white (as you can see above). those little black lines are the cables the gondola hangs on, descending into the abyss.

we hiked through the caves at the top of the mountain, and i learned about why the mountain is named "pilatus" and why there is a dragon associated with the mountain. apparently the mountain is named such because pontius pilate was buried in or by the lake at the base of the mountain and every year on good friday his ghost surfaces to try and rid himself of his sin by washing in the lake. his spirit presence is the reason for the supernatural occurrences on and around the mountain. the dragon's association with the mountain is not as clear as the story of pilate, but there have been dragon sightings on and around the mountain, and there is a lot of local lore about dragons living in the mountain. apparently a dragon skeleton was discovered here. toward the end of our hike the wind was blowing so hard and it was so cold that ice was forming on the trail. we ran inside to the restaurant/visitor's center and it started snowing. in july. that's okay, it gave us the chance to drink more hot chocolate.

we hung out at the top for a little while longer while people bought souvenirs and listened to a man play on an alp horn. the right picture is me listening to the world's longest playable alp horn measuring in at 40 feet. unfortunately, even though it is playable, no on is actually playing it, because it is off limits. apparently the swiss don't trust stupid americans to respect property that is not theirs.















our ride down was a cog wheel train that descends at a 48 degree angle. the angle is so steep that the trains are built on the angle. i was a little scared that the ice would pose a danger to the brakes of the train, but those wily swiss know how to deal with snow and ice. the ride down was safe and beautiful.


when we got back we had some free time, and so decided to go to the glacier gardens that are right by the lion monument. these "gardens" are really just the rock that was carved out by a glacier millions of years ago. there are huge "potholes" created by pressurized water melting off the glacier, and we even saw a fossil that was 19 million years old.


in the glacier garden there is the "alhambra hall of mirrors" that was built in 1896 for the swiss national exhibition. it was pretty disorienting.



outside there were a lot of fun house mirrors that we had a ton of fun messing around with.


afterward we walked to the museum of transportation to see "die alpen"--a movie about the alps at the imax theater. the museum was across town and we thought we could make it, but it took way longer than we expected to walk and we were way late.

after dinner a group of us took a lake tour on a boat that shipped us out on lake lucerne for a sunset tour. it was a bit too cloudy to see the sunset, but the views were still stunning. i took a ton of pictures, but they don't do any justice to the scenery. it was windy and cold, but it was worth it.