We all have a ‘bucket list’. On my bucket list was spending my golden birthday (turning 26 on February 26th) in Switzerland doing something adventurous. You would think that buying a one way flight to London was enough!

So on the 26th of February I headed out to Switzerland. For those of you who aren’t aware, Switzerland is expensive. A beautiful country with wonderful people but nonetheless expensive! It isn’t so much the exchange rate that kills the dollar, but the actual cost of living is outrageous. For example, a bottle of water is $5.00. So for someone who was on a tight budget, I made due with what I could.

I booked the trip in advance, so the flight was fairly cheap. I flew into Basel International Airport, which had the cheapest EasyJet flights. (For those of you that know me, I missed my scheduled flight. For those that don’t, I’m late for everything!)  The second thing I needed to do was to book accommodations. Now, originally I was going to do this trip solo, but one of my dearest friends, Ashley, decided to join me (I was very happy she did, probably wouldn’t have had such a good time without her). I checked out hostels and realized that they were fairly expensive for 3 nights. So I looked into Couchsurfing, for those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s an online platform where random people let random strangers crash on their couches for free. (I know, nuts! haha) Usually these random people that offer up their couches offer to take you around for the weekend, and in exchange you might cook dinner one night or offer to buy groceries for the weekend. All in all, a very cheap way of traveling.

Because I was with Ashley we attempted to try couchsurfing and to be honest, we had an awesome time and host! His name was Sandro, and he is so awesome. Ashley and I had our own private bedroom with a beautiful view (below) of the Swiss Alps!

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(view from the bedroom)

The first night we spent in Switzerland we decided to stay in, do some cooking, drink wine, cheese, and get to know Sandro as little more. The second day we slept in and spent the afternoon exploring the town of Därstetten (we were about 20-30mins from Interlaken). The weather was pretty bad, as it was snowing, but we still managed to have fun. We made our way to the top of a mountain where we had a snowball fight!

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(Ashley and I)

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(right to left: Me, Sandro, and Ashley

Our last night in Switzerland was spent bar hoping in Interlaken. It ended kinda early because the bars closed at 1:00am.

That was all alright though, because Ashley and I had one hell of day…

My last day in Switzerland (I have been dying to share) was in all honesty (and the whole reason why I really wanted to go to Switzerland…)

I wanted to learn to fly. Yes, I know, slightly crazy.

The last day was absolutely beautiful. The sun was out and we were up early and headed to Interlaken where Ashley and I paraglided off the Swiss Alps. (Enjoy!)

https://youtu.be/6ygKBOeYiw8