It's been too long...

Wow I just decided it was time to jump back into this blogging and catching up - and it's been since the end of October! Geesh Carrie. Well life has been quite a roller coaster ride since around then.  Tunisia was going through some unrest so I took off to meet Alo in Budapest where he was working in late September. Then one of my best friends, Maggie, came to meet me in Europe and we traveled around for a couple weeks.  After that we had many visitors including our friend Charlotte from Madrid and most importantly - Alo's mom and her friend from TX! We were so happy Alo's mom was able to come visit us - she always planned to come to Indonesia as well but time got away and before you knew it we had left so this was a real treat for us! After that I went home for the holiday early and just got back about 2 weeks ago! Home was a world wind of things going on as usual - but this year was extra special and exciting because of one huge thing that happened - Alo and I got engaged!!! Yep - after 4 years and living in 2 foreign countries and traveling our buns off - we're getting married!

I'll make sure to post about all the exciting things I mentioned above but first I want to wrap up our our trip last August to Switzerland...

After Lucerne we didn't have a plan. We kept our last 2 nights "free" so that we could kind of plan as we went and decide what we loved and wanted to go back to or might still want to see. We headed from Lucerne to Lake Brienz for the day. It is just GORGEOUS. I was told by everyone before our trip that we HAD to see Interlaken area and Lake Brienz but man were they right! I will say from our 1 full day in the area, Lake Brienz was our favorite. We stopped at the local grocery store, filled up on some goodies, and drove around the lake until we found a spot to set up a relaxing day with a picnic.  It was by far one of our favorite days on the trip. Nothing to do but enjoy the beautiful scenery and relax - we had no plans or expectations of the day so it just felt nice compared to our jam packed schedule previously.

We had some visitors!

We both jumped in and went for a QUICK swim - wooo it was freezing!

We stayed in a little town we stumbled upon called Grindelwald, in the Jungfrau region, and our sweet little hotel had this sign that I just loved! Will be making a sign like this for my house someday :)

For our last free day we decided to try to find a chocolate factory and see the Chillon castle so on the way we stopped in Bern to check it out. The old city centre is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Bern was ranked one of the world's top 10 cities to live in for best quality of life - Switzerland in general gets this award if you ask me!

We visited the Caillers chocolate factory and just loved it! Definitely worth doing if you want to see how it's done and how chocolate first came to life :)

 See all the different shades of colors on the wall? Yup those are all different kinds of chocolate bars - candy heaven!

And then for the best part - the tasting! Never.have.eaten.SO.much.chocolate!

And lastly, the Chillon Castle in the french speaking region of Switzerland on the shore of Lake Geneva...

The toilet! Not bad for dating back to possibly the 12th century!

After touring the Chillon Castle for hours we headed back in the direction of Milan where our flight left the next day hoping to find a sweet town in Switzerland on the way to stay the night in. Thanks to our bad navigating skills - we accidentally ended up back in Italy and stayed in some random little town in the mountains. I swear I've sadly forgotten the name but was near Aosta I believe. Ops! Next time we'll pay more attention to the route instead of unintentionally getting on a toll road that cost like 30 Euro with no way to turn around! This entire trip to Italy and Switzerland certainly ranks up there at my top favorite adventures Alo and I have taken together :)