Climbing Mt. Pilatus

View while hiking up

We just got home from hiking Mt. Pilatus in Lucerne. Our friends Stacey and Alex had asked us earlier in the week if we wanted to go hiking on Sunday. Nate and I have never really been big hikers but it always sounds fun and I want to do more of it so we were up for it. We finally decided on Lucerne and when we arrived this morning, our original plan was to take the gondola up to the second stop and just hike all the way down from there. Can you even say hike at that point since it’s all downhill? I’m not sure. Anyways, we got up there and decided to hike uphill for just a bit, towards Mt. Pilatus, so that we weren’t just doing downhill. Well one thing led to another and we ended up deciding that we might as well just finish it up and hike all the way to Mt. Pilatus. Afterall, the sign said it was 2 hours and 10 minutes from where we were at that point and we were watching all sorts

Almost there

of people go up there, including little kids. Well it turns out this was some serious hiking! We quickly learned that it was not going to be an easy stroll up the mountain. We were climbing a pretty steep trail. All in all we ended up hiking up 2350 feet in about 2 hours. No doubt I will be sore tomorrow. But what an amazing hike! It was super foggy in the valley but we were above the clouds and in the sun and it was incredibly scenic and beautiful. Our reward at the top was french fries and a beer and then the gondola ride all the way back down. I must say, it was a great day in the Swiss alps!

Just starting out

View from the top

Madrid - My 2 Cents

I know Nate gave a recap of our time in Madrid but I wanted to add a bit more from my perspective as well. 

View from the Google Madrid Office

One thing that really stood out for me this trip to Spain was their sense of time.  Everything is later in Spain and time doesn’t seem to matter as much.  As Nate mentioned, I was in Madrid for work on Thursday and Friday.  After being in internal meetings all day Thursday, we had a team work dinner that night.  The dinner didn’t even start until 9:30pm, with us finishing up around midnight and off for drinks after.  The Google Madrid café’s lunch hours are from 1pm to 4:30pm.   Nate and I went to an actual restaurant (as opposed to just going from one tapas bar to another) for dinner Saturday night and got there around 9:30pm.  The place was practically empty but by the time we were half way through our meal, it was packed full.  I was worried when we arrived that the restaurant wouldn’t be any good since no one was there, turns out we were just too early.  Nate left Sunday afternoon and I walked around the Prado Museum and got ready for one more day in the office on Monday.  We had three partner meetings lined up so it was a busy day.  The first meeting was scheduled to start at 9:30.  The partner we were meeting with didn’t show up until 10am and then it ran an hour over.  You gotta love it.  When it comes to time, Spain couldn’t be more opposite of Switzerland.   

So back to work.  Thursday was meetings all day and Friday we had a fun event where we attended a cooking class and learned how to make tapas and sangria.  I loved this idea….such a great team event.  We made tortilla Espanola (Spanish potato omelette), calamari, salmorejo (similar to gazpacho) and lots of other yummy things that I can’t remember.  One lesson I learned about sangria, which I will pass on to you, is that it is considered tacky to eat the fruit (apparently that’s only what college students do looking to get drunk).   I’m not usually a big fan of sangria but what we made sure was tasty.

Another thing Nate and I checked out was a flamenco show on Saturday night.  I had wanted to do it, it seemed like a fun thing to do, and turned out it was.  It was in a smaller venue (think Bimbo’s in SF) with a Spanish band playing and a man and a woman flamenco dancer.  Just a small stage with no more than 7 people on it.  It was so fascinating to watch and very intense! 

Spain was definitely a good time.  After five nights there I came home exhausted but loved every minute.  I can’t wait to go back!  

And We're Back

Ok – so where were we?  Not entirely sure myself but spending this weekend at home after travelling somewhere around 13,000 miles over the past three weeks is a very good thing.  But not complaining, it’s been a non-stop adventure.

We last left you in Munich for Oktoberfest which was of course a blast as previously noted by Cleaver.  From there a few days of work then off for a long weekend in Washington DC for the wedding of our close friends Ehren and Julie ShortridgeHill.  But wait – there’s more!   Well, not really that was pretty much the focus of the weekend though did get some sightseeing in too as I had never been to DC. 

After a short 9 hour flight we arrived at probably the worst airport ever (Dulles) beginning with a short shuttle ride across the runway in some sort of vehicle designed by the Snorks.  Honestly, it was just a weird space looking thing that dropped us off at immigration where we waited in line for 45 minutes before we even got to baggage claim.  But once we got that disaster out of the way, into our rental car and off to the hotel, the weekend finally got started.

BBQ that night at Ehren’s house, then spent the next morning with friends walking through the POURING rain to see the White house, Capital Hill and a few other monuments along the way which was really neat to see.  While I’m doing this Cleaver took the morning to go have brunch with an old friend of hers that she worked with who now lives in the DC area.  We definitely had to make good use of our time and not waste a minute.

After all that was out of the way we piled into the car and headed for Luray, VA which was about 2 hours away and the location of the wedding.  Rehearsal, a nice dinner / cocktail hour hosted by Ehren’s Dad and then off to a local bar.  And by local I mean real “local”.  The name of the place was Uncle Bucks.  I forgot that in Virginia they grow tobacco which means they still smoke in bars – a lot.  And when about 30 city slickers roll in on the local turf I’m not so sure they were down with our crowd but I’m also pretty sure with the amount of beer we all drank we doubled their revenue for the past 6 months.  So it worked out.

Next morning was Saturday, went to breakfast at Uncle Bucks.  Yup you read that right, hey it was a small town.  Enjoyed a very lovely wedding in a beautiful country setting and kept the party going until someone found a dentist asleep on top of our car.  Lots of fun and Congrats again to the happy couple!

Sunday we made our way back to the airport and got on our flight home which landed Monday morning in Zurich.  Tried to get some sleep, squeezed in a few days of work before off to our next destination - Madrid!

Cleaver had actual work to do in Madrid, so we took advantage of that and stayed for the weekend.  We had been there for one short night a few years back and were excited to go back.  We were not disappointed.   Spain has such a great culture of eating, drinking, staying out late and having fun that I’m certain that I need to spend even more time there than I have.  Such a great place.

Aside from staying out too late we did take time on Saturday to walk around and see the city, parks, palaces, shopping areas, etc…, there really is a lot to see and we didn’t even go into any of the museums.  Did I mention that I ♥ Spain?

  

Finally on Sunday I went back to Zurich to get ready for another week of work, Cleaver stayed for work she had still in Madrid on Monday.

Now we’re spending a few weekends at home before Cleaver’s cousin comes to visit and we hit the road (well rail in this case) again for Paris.  Good times!