I kicked off Day 2 going for a run (in Switzerland no big deal) in Gland where my parents live. I ran on some of the roads and through the shops and apartments. It's awesome to see mixed residential areas. Lots of buildings have shops on the 0th floor and have apartments on top of them. Switzerland has 0-based floors by the way.
All around Switzerland there are water fountains, which I imagine provide 100% pure water from the top of a mountain. But seriously it's cool because you can fill up your water bottle and it tastes good and it's nice and cold.
I then hit up a cafe and had a hot chocolate, and read some. I learned how to say "hot chocolate please" in French and then she spoke some more French and I was like crap I don't know what you're saying. And she switched to English and said that I can sit and she'll bring it out to me. My French is a bit rusty (I don't know any).
My family later went to visit Champery, a town that exists on a hill in the mountains. I went there several years ago on a band trip and loved it. You enter the start of the hill and there's a playground on your left, and you look up the hill and it's a beautiful little town. There's a clock on the left as you go up less than a mile, and off in the distance during the night time you can see a lit-up cross. It's breath-taking. It's easy to take good pictures there because the town is very picturesque. I bought a miniature cowbell there. Awesome.
We also ran into some other Americans there in Champery. It was nice to see some people who spoke English. We had an instant bond both being from the US. They were super nice and had fancy cameras and have websites where they put their photos online. I'll maybe comment on this post later w/ the website urls.
After Champery we hit up the Chillon Castle right on Lake Geneva. Pretty awesome. A part of me wanted someone to attack the castle while we were touring inside of it, just to make it the full experience. It did not happen. I did learn that the color blue was considered super rare back in the 14th century because you got blue powder from rubbing a rare stone together. As a result, only royalty had blue. So if you had blue back in the 14th century you were kind of a big deal. I would have probably tried to get some on eBay.
On our walk to the car after the castle visit, we walked along Lake Geneva. The lake is super clear, and when it's warm enough you can swim in the lake and look at the mountains and watch the sailboats. Win-win-win.
Later that evening we got back in time to watch VT beat Miami on espn360.com. It was funny watching Virginia Tech play football from Switzerland. Technology is connecting the WORLD together in a beautiful harmony, I think. It's deep I know :)
We also Skyped with my brother which was fun. He lives in Boston.
