Valentine's Day Weekend

David and I always seem to end up with interesting Valentine's Day stories. This year was no exception.

We took a trip to the Black Forest in Germany to go snowshoeing. We were invited by a lady from our scuba diving club who is a member of the Alpine club in Metz that planned the trip. We left Saturday morning at 6:30am, took a bus with the rest of the club members, and began hiking through the snow a little after 12:30pm. We hiked for 6 hours, about 10 miles the first day. The views were beautiful! The snow was fluffy! And the sun was shining! It took us a while to get our clothing layers right, but once we found the right combination it was great.

After the 10 miles we arrived at our hotel. The rooms were nice and we had an enormous balcony (too bad it was too cold to really enjoy it). We went to check out the pool and were unhappy to see that the pool wasn't heated. The water was freezing! So, of course, we skipped it! After nice warm showers we headed down for dinner. We had vegetable soup, delicious filets and potatoes, followed by a yummy sorbet and fruit dessert. Pretty good for a Valentine's Day dinner...and we didn't even plan it!

The next morning we set our for day two of snowshoeing. With healed feet and rested legs we were raring to go! A lot of the time we were following a path, but often we got to create our own. I liked it best when we were able to walk through the fluffy, untouched snow. The only qualm I had with snowshoeing was that I saw a lot of ski slopes and skiers. While we were walking UP they were skiing DOWN. And when we were WALKING down, they were still SKIING down. I was totally jealous. I wanted to ski so badly, but the cleats on the bottom of my 'raquets' wouldn't allow it. So, Matthew, this picture is for you:

The ski slopes we've been to are like the ghetto compared to everything I saw this past weekend. There were so many slopes to ski down that it wasn't crowded. You could ski wherever you wanted and on paths of completely fresh and fluffy snow. So cool.

At the end of our hike we stopped by a little German "cafe" (I guess that's what you'd call it...it wasn't a restaurant...). We had hot chocolate and an enormous slice of apple pie. It was delicious!

Then we got back on the bus and headed back to Metz. This is where is gets pretty interesting. Things were so normal the whole time that I new something was bound to happen. On the bus they had a microphone so that the 'leaders' of the trip could make announcements. For the majority of the trip back there was someone talking on the microphone. They were talking about future trip options (in extreme detail) as well as recaping the trip that we just took (also in extreme detail). And after that they put in a German music CD and turned up the volume. Then, after a while of the CD playing, the guy that had the microphone started whistling the tune and tapping on the microphone. So, all of the talking and noise making was kind of annoying. We were kind of hoping to sleep some on the way back...ha!

It was a great weekend. Check out more pictures here.