Riederalp Day 1

After some searching, I found a place in Riederalp, a tiny town high up in the Alps. It's right next to the Aletsch glacier (the longest glacier in the Alps). The train wound through the mountains, past tiny villages perched precariously on steep slopes. We even passed a high altitude soccer field. After a transfer in Brig, we caught the cable car up to Riederalp. Most of the others on the cable car were natives. It must be amusing for them to watch the tourists, for whom the novelty of riding a cable car to a mountain village is still very strong. For them it's just the morning commute. They just ran out of Schoko Bons (a delicious Nougaty Treat) or something and had to go to the big store at the bottom of the hill.


We stayed at the Hotel Resort Alpenrose. It's basically a hotel with one masseus, a hot tub, sauna, steam room, heated tile recliners and an adventure shower. Now I have to admit, I was curious what the hell an adventure shower is. It turns out it's a tiny booth that looks like a teleporter from Star Trek. You step inside and press one of three buttons and depending upon your selection you are belted with luke warm to cold to incredibly hot water at random intervals from all directions. This conflagration is accompanied by the sound and light show in the style of A) Pale Green Lighting to the tune of Jungle birds and Monkeys B) A Simulated Thunder Storm or C) something that I can only describe as a Volcanic Eruption. Needless to say, the novelty of the adventure shower wears off fast, that is unless you're a hip hop video director "bling, bling".

After dropping off our stuff, Lexi and I started up the hill. We quickly realized how much harder hiking at altitude was, but we pushed upward until we came across a herd of cattle. It was a little intimidating. Even swiss cows have horns and they are pretty huge. When we showed up, the whole herd looked at us. For a second I thought that they somehow knew about that doner kebab I had last week and wanted payback for their fallen brother. But they quickly turned back to eating their grass. It was so cold that their breath threw up big clouds of steam. Whenever the herd moved, it sounded like a broken cuckoo clock being rolled down a hill. As we started back down the hill, the two closest cows started to follow us. They looked so sad waiting around the gate.


After we went climbing we stopped at the bunny slope, which you can ride carts down in the summer. They have this great sled cart with two wheels in the front, which you steer by leaning left or right on the chassis, which turns the front axle. As silly as it sounds, it was so fun I went down again.

For dinner we had an array of fondues and raclette. The pear and ham fondue was the best, but the mushroom and cheese fondue was also very good. For desert we had chocolate sundaes. There weren't many people around. I guess the tourist season starts a little later. It was pretty nice having a resort town pretty much to ourselves.