This is no longer 3 ft sea level...

I really enjoy hiking and the outdoors, but coming from Miami, at elevation 3ft and no inclination whatsoever, hiking isn't really something that I get to do when home. However, not that I'm in Switzerland and surrounded by mountains in every direction, I no longer have this problem. On Sunday I went with five other Yalies to hike Le Reculet, the second highest summit in the Jura Mountains. However, when we took the bus to the town we had to get to, we didn't realize it was still over an hour long walk to actually reach the mountain. Thankfully, the trek was interrupted by yet another open air market. This one may have even been better than the one in Nyon! ...I may have to start coming here on Sundays just for the awesome fresh vegetables, jams and dried fruits. hmm.

mountains, mountains everywhere!

We began our journey up the mountain only to reach a road after about 15 minutes. After a bit of confusion and struggling to ask for directions in French, we realized that we were not actually on the mountain trail, but simply a nature walk; we quickly made our way to the trail to get to the trail on the mountain. Yes, there was another 45 minute path on the road up the mountain before the actual nature hike began. Once we finally reached the trail, we had already climbed a decent way up the mountain, enough that we had reached an outlook the displayed Geneva in all it's glory. This alone was worth the hike. But, we did come all this way to hike a mountain, not a road up a mountain, so we continued up. As you may expect, interestingly enough this hike was much more picturesque than that on the street. Still, we quickly found out that it was another 3 hours until reaching the summit; none of us had anticipated a full 10 hour day hike, so ended up turning around after a bit. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful hike and view of the city and I will undoubtedly be back to finish it off (and go to the market again!) possibly even this coming Sunday.

Where's Greg?

Greg, Luke, me, Field, and Kerkeira at the first outlook.

View of Geneva