#10: Hiking to my death

My roommates have been talking about wanting to go hiking for a while now, and yesterday we decided to execute that plan. They planned a day trip to this place called Little Switzerland which is near a town called Echternach in Luxembourg. We left in the late morning, bought some food, and headed out. When we got to the starting point, the map we looked at estimated about a 5 hour hike on the trail they had picked. The trail was also described as "heavy". Now, for any inexperienced hikers like myself...this is an awful combination, but you will make it through.

See that dark red/brown route? That's the path we took. It's crazy long, right? What was I thinking when I said yes to this...


The route we start was estimated to be about 20 km. That's really really long for all my American readers...anyways we started our hike into Little Switzerland. It was absolutely beautiful! Everything was so green and there was limestone everywhere. There were little caves we could walk through, and we even found little caves in cracks in the limestone and had some fun exploring them. At one point we even found a staircase in a crack in the limestone, it started as stairs and eventually turned into climbing a ladder at a near 90 degree angle . It was the craziest thing ever, but so much fun!

The first section of the hike was the most beautiful, the next section was the most difficult. Hiking in Europe involves a lot of stairs and going up and up until you think you can't possibly go any higher, then surprise surprise there are more stairs to climb. Eventually we even crossed the border of Luxembourg and were hiking through Germany for a few hours...that part was the most difficult. Me being totally out of shape required many pit stops while my roommates tried their best to cheer me on, and my legs tried their hardest to convince me that falling over was the best option. But it was too late, going back would have taken just as long as finishing.

After much huffing and puffing, sweating, and swearing that I was dying, we made it to the end of the most difficult section. That's right, we're only about halfway done at this point! We must carry on. We kept moving and ended up walking on flat paths for a while which was so great because I had a chance to breath again. Germany's forests reminded me a lot of Wisconsin, plus it was so quiet. It was a nice escape from the city life.

Eventually we got back to lime stone and it was nice because I was roasting at this point and the rocks were like an all natural air conditioning. Besides that fact that they were so beautiful. Everything on the trail was so beautiful to be exact. After a few hours we crossed the border back into Luxembourg. It was like the trail-makers didn't want us to think that Germany was the most difficult part, because guess what, STAIRS! Stairs, stairs, stairs, every step I take feels like fire, stairs...At this point my roommates started lying to me about how much longer we had to walk, it went from 4 km to 8 more km. Don't worry we're almost there, oh well actually we still have a few hours of walking to do...When we finally made it back to the car, my body couldn't have been happier to sit..because I hadn't allowed myself to sit the whole hike for fear that I wouldn't get back up...

We then went driving around and visited a few castles, they were closed so we only got to see the outsides of them, but they were still lovely and were nice little warm-downs from the hiking intensive day...I'm writing this the morning after and my hips hurt so much...not my muscles, but my joints...I feel like an old person. Everything hurts and I'm dying...And we're planning another trip today...wish me luck...

It was so beautiful though that I made a little video montage of the day. Feel free to watch it and enjoy the hike from the comfort of your home, or chair, or anything that doesn't involve 5 hours of hiking!
http://youtu.be/H_XStFhpW8o