Green Education in a Green Country

13.4.07

Swiss cheese!

Last week Aaron and I took another vacation, this time to Germany and Switzerland (yes, I am still doing schoolwork. I find time to squeeze it in between the travelling :)

We met up with my friend Crystan in Germany, who so graciously let us stay at her place, baked muffins and brownies for our trip, and took us grocery shopping for imported American stuff (yay for reasonably priced contact solution, microwave popcorn, and batteries!). Then all three of us hit the Autobahn in Crystan's very cute convertible Mini Cooper, and a few hours later we were in the Swiss Alps!

So, what did we do in Switzerland? Well, we.....hey....wait...what's that in the sky?

It's a bird!


It's a plane!


It's me hang-gliding! Yay! It was scarier than I thought it would be, but also just absolutely amazing. If you'd love to know what it feels like to fly...you should try it. I'll have more pictures soon from when I was in the sky; I just need to get them developed.

Other pictures of the breathtaking beauty of the alps:


(and some pictures of me and Crystan pretending to be angry abominable snowmen)




After Switzerland, we headed back to Germany and checked out the very cute city of Heidelberg.

There are more pictures from Heidelberg (the castle, the views) but I am getting tired of uploading pictures. And you're probably sick of looking at them. So that's all for now!

4.4.07

Spring flora in Edinburgh

As promised, here are some flower pictures Aaron and I took in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago:










A Highland Adventure

With exams over (and hopefully successfully passed), Aaron and I decided to celebrate by taking a vacation in the Scottish highlands -- specifically in a little town called Aviemore, in the Cairngorms National Park.

We took a train there on Friday night, and marveled to ourselves that you can get anywhere in Scotland by train -- even to largely wild areas. On Saturday we bagged our first Munro, Cairn Gorm mountain:


This is the weather station at the top. Windy much?


The "view" from the top:


We then took a nice walk through the Rothiemurchus estate:
(see the sheep in the background?!)




On Sunday, we decided to walk to Boat of Garten, a town 5 miles away. The scenic walk included incongruous flower sculptures in the middle of the woods:


a long stretch of walking through the heather:


and a restored Victorian steam train transported us back to Aviemore -- very cool!


All in all -- about as perfect of a weekend as anyone could ask for.