For the last part of my trip, we went hiking throughout Switzerland.  Specifically, we were in an area known as Lauterbrunnen Valley, which is about 30 minutes south by train from Interlaken.  I spent a total of 5 days hiking there (my sister spent 3).  There are well over 100 hiking trails in the area of various distances and difficulties – you could easily spend several months in the area hiking and never repeat the same trail.

I definitely plan to be back in the area some time.  We had great weather the first 2 days, then the last 3 it was cloudy and rainy at times.  Still amazing, but probably not as scenic as it could be (couldn’t see the highest mountain tops).  It was never clear enough for us to take a cable car to the 2 highest mountains in the area either.  My last day part of the hike was along a mountain side trail through fields of flowers with cloud so heavy you could only see 20 feet in front of you.  Then it suddenly cleared and you could see a waterfall to the side, and snow-covered mountains straight ahead.

Shown is a map (including elevation) of where we hiked.  For a version without elevation but where you can zoom and pan in Google Maps, you can use this link: http://bit.ly/9RqJs4

Once I have time to go through my pictures, I’ll get them uploaded and geo-tagged and overlayed with this map or Google Earth somehow.  No clue when that will be though!

Copenhagen is a neat city.  There are bike lanes literally on every street, people biking everywhere, and rivers running through the city.  I’m told bikes will be more prevalent in Amsterdam, but I find that hard to believe seeing how many there are here.  And drivers don’t honk at every single bike or try and run them over!

2 days worth of wandering in Copenhagen came out to be 22.4 miles.  Add in the 7.5k race tonight and the wandering afterwards for dinner, and I probably walked/ran a total of 28-30 miles the past 2 days.  Not too shabby I’d say!

Wrapped up in Prague now. Lots and lots of walking.  And rain.  Shown is the map of where we walked today.  Came out to be ~16.3 miles for the day.  Not too shabby.  Saw most of the major sites – Castle, Royal Gardens, Ancient Clock (scientific name, really), Jewish museum & cemetery, and a number of other old buildings.

In Shirakawa-Go, I stayed overnight in one of the thatched roof farmhouses.  Part of that included having breakfast and dinner.  Part of the dinner was fresh river trout.  When it was first put in front of me, I was afraid the fish might get up and run away.

In Kanazawa, I went to the equivalent of a tapas bar.  After loading up and getting nearly full on 'safe' foods, I decided to sample a more interesting item from the menu.  So, I ordered the "Grilled Pork Foot."  I had no idea it would be quite so literal!