The Matterhorn

The Matterhorn is Switzerland's most famous mountain and was not successfully climbed until about 1865. On the descent, 4 of the 7 climbers fell to their death. In the alpine museum we saw the rope that broke and caused their deaths. This is a photo from the internet showing its distictive sharp triangular shape.

As you can see, the day we were up next to it, the Matterhorn's peak was in the clouds all day. It was really impressive, but we couldn't see the peak.


This is the view from the village of Zermatt. It has a green meadow that leads right up to it and then it shoots to the sky.

Grindelwald

When we arrived in Grindelwald, we stopped to view Jungfrau Mountain. We would be going to the top in a few days. It is covered in snow and glacier and tops out at 13,642 ft. above sea level.


This and the picture below are what we saw from the balcony of our hotel room. The sound of the rushing water of a glacier fed stream was the constant background for this scene.

Charlie got to play an alpine horn at a demonstration of folk culture. He passed on yodeling.

A friendly cow (or bull?) took a liking to Colleen during its part of the folk culture show. Obviously, it is not a Brown Swiss, but we did see a lot of them in other places.

internet problems

Sorry that we have not posted. We have not been able to find an internet cafe that allows us to attach our photos so we can share them with you. We will be leaving for home on July 24 and we will post some from there to get you caught up.

Sounio in Greece

We went to the island of Aegina. They had 2 specialties, pistachio nuts and octopus!!


Fresh octopus waiting to be grilled.

Colleen eating octopus. It DOESN'T taste like chicken.

The water really is this blue.

Audrey Hepburn? Grace Kelly? NO !! It's Crystal Moniot!!

The water is so clear, you can see at least 10 feet down.

Amy and Tom with the Aegean Sea behind them.

Sunset at Sounio.

Greece

Greece is sunny and hotter than Rome! It's been between 90 and 100 every day. The sea is beautiful. More on that later. Here are some of the places we visited.


Crystal, Tom and Amy are having a great time together. Here at the Temple of Posieden in Sunio. Beautiful sunset.

Theater of Dyonesius. Amy and Tom have a discussion before taking some photos.

The Parthenon on the Acropolis in the background.

Rome

We had a great time in Rome. It was very hot and sunny. We had a hard time finding a good Italian restaurant till the last night there.



This is St. Peter's Square. The line was about 5 hours to get inside. We didn't make that.

The marble columns of the forum looked translucent when the evening sun hit them.

Here we are in front of the Colosseum.