Skiing Flumserberg and the Zurich Zoo!

Last weekend our friend Miriam flew in on Thursday night from Hamburg to hang out for the weekend!

Friday morning we headed to Flumserberg for a girl's ski day -Nathan had to work to pay for my trip - thanks honey:). We checked the weather forecast in the morning and it looked to be a beautiful day on the slopes! Sunshine and almost 30 degree F weather - my ideal skiing conditions! And Flumserberg is only about an hour from Zurich on the train so it is a really good day trip.

Well.... the weather forecasters in Switzerland are as good as the ones in Raleigh. And by that I mean they suck.:) It was snowing, -15 degrees Celsius, 30 kmph winds, and our visibility on the slopes was about 20 feet. Good times:) Especially since Miriam hadn't skiied since 2002! However, with that being said - we had an amazing day! Miriam did great and only took out one family:)!

Because it was snowing so hard (as you can see in this picture) we decided to eat lunch...

This was our view at lunch - nice sunny skies! So we decided to head back up the gondola...

This is what it looked like once we got up the gondola (less than 15 minutes later)! Where did the blue skies go? Totally my luck!
I had to post this (but I don't feel bad b/c Miriam made it her FB profile pic:)) She almost took out a dad and his daughter but at least she warned them by screaming to get out of the way!

Beautiful view of the Wallensee from the slopes!

Friday night we checked the weather forecast for Saturday and it was bad news. We had wanted to go to Andermatt but the weather forecast said -20 degrees C and up to 45 kmph winds! Yikes! I wanted to ski and all but that didn't sound like fun so we decided to skip it. And yes we checked other slopes but all of Switzerland had this freakish winter storm:( When we woke up on Saturday everything was white and the snow kept falling and falling and falling. By 1 pm we were stir crazy so we decided to go out and do something close to home - hike the Uetliberg. I wrote about that in my post here.

Sunday was freezing, but no more snow (thank goodness). Unfortunately we couldn't ski ,because Miriam's flight home was around 6 pm so we decided to go to the Zurich Zoo! It was SO awesome! I can't believe we waited this long to go! I mean HELLO - of course Zurich's Zoo would be awesome - everything here is PERFECT! I saw my first ant eater - not what I expected it to look like (not that I'm sure what I expected it to look like), the rainforest exhibit was amazing, the Penguin Parade through the zoo was soooo cute, and the animals living in natural like conditions made my happy. We liked it so much we kept delaying our departure and had to rush home so Miriam wouldn't miss her flight! If you plan to go - give yourself at least 4 hours - we wish we would have had more time!

Penguin Parade! The furry brown ones in the back of the line are the babies!

Great weekend with Miriam! Now when are we heading to Hamburg? hmmmmm
Picture albums for Flumserberg and the Zoo!