Flims, Baveno, Milan, Oh My!

I sent this past week in some of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen. First, I spent a couple of days up in Flims, a little village in the Swiss Alps, with my host family and some . There, we took a ski lift up all the way up a mountain and then we hiked back down. The view was so amazing and there was even a couple patches of snow! Naturally, me and my younger host brother had a snowball fight. The scenery was sos beautiful I felt like I was in The Sound of Music with all the green hills and mountains in the background. While we were up there, we even had fondue! The last day that we were there, a ballon festival happened, which was a little piece of California for me, since the Sonoma County Ballon Festival always happens in Windsor. After Flims, we drove a couple hours down to Italy, where we stayed at a hotel in Baveno, which is right on the edge of Lake Majoire. Baveno is the quintessential Italian village, with cobblestone roads, colorful buildings, small streets and of course, lots of gelaterias and pizzerias. After we stayed a couple of days in Baveno, we drove about an hour down to Milano. After living in Bern for a couple of months and being used to small cities, being in Milano was crazy. The city is just so huge! We stayed at a hotel right in the center of the city, and it was also only a 5 minute walk to the Duomo. We took a tour around Milano on a double-decker bus, and the city is absolutely amazing. We also went out to dinner at two amazing ristorantes, and let me tell you, authentic italian food is so bomb. The last night for dinner I opted for pasta instead of pizza (I had pizza the night before). I ordered some shrimp scampi and me being me, I thought that the shrimp would be like normal shrimp (cleaned and de-shelled). Apparently I thought wrong because when my food came out, there were four whole shrimp sitting on top of a mound of pasta (don't worry, they were cooked). So I ended up cracking and picking out the meat from the shrimp. It was actually a pretty cool experience, since I've never had to do that before. When we came back to Bern, we went over a mountain (alp) pass. We stopped at a little mountain restaurant for a quick snack. I had mushroom potato soup and it was one of the best things I have ever tasted. I am so in love with both Italy and Switzerland, it's crazy. I can't wait to go back to Milan during the Eurotour!