We had a train to catch this morning, so we met outside our hotel and walked to the train station.

I should pause here to mention how much Europeans love sparking water.  And often the bottles are deceptively vague about whether or not they are carbonated.  There are even levels of carbonation, as you can select "little bubbles."  At the train station, Ryan bought Lori what he *thought* was a bottle of still water.  However he quickly learned otherwise when Lori attempted to open it on the train and it exploded water everywhere.

The water must have gotten on the electrical outlet by the seats, because when Ryan went to plug something in he got a nice shock and shorted out all the electrical outlets in the entire train car.  We told the ticket-taker when she came by, but she just shrugged.  Okay, then.

The train took us to Tirano, Italy, where we stopped for lunch at this amazing cafe called Bistrot Merizzi.  Amalie and Matt made all their crazy connections, and successfully met up with us at the cafe.  Reunited!

After lunch we boarded the Bernina Express.

The views were gorgeous, breathtaking, and full of European charm and sophistication.


We were the loud, obnoxious, Americans.

But we were having a great time.


We arrived in Chur, Switzerland to a sun shower.  After we checked into our hotel, we wandered down the street to an outdoor bar.  We chatted with the bartender and some locals for a while until we started getting hungry.  We asked the bartender for a dinner recommendation.


The sun had set by now, and our cute little sun shower was now just a rainstorm.  The bartender hailed us a cab to take us to his dinner recommendation.  This adventure deserves a post of its own:

#Americans

After the disaster that was #Americans, we still needed food.  Our Italian cabdriver called up a friend of his and got us a table at a loud, brightly lit, Italian restaurant.  It was perfect.

After dinner Matt, Amalie, and Robin went back to the hotel and the rest of us went out to explore the town's nightlife.  We stayed out until a little after midnight, and some of the party may have enjoyed a lot of adult beverages.  Luckily, at least one of us was sober enough to navigate us back to the hotel and assist others of us who were having difficulty fitting their key into to door.

With everyone safe in their rooms, we called it a night.