Vallorbe

This past weekend was challenging with the weather (lots of rain), but we made the best of it! On Saturday we met some friends at a park in Morges for a BBQ. After hanging out for about an hour the black clouds starting moving pretty fast across the lake and you guessed it....we got rained on! Lucky for us there was some shelter and we were able to move our stuff before the raindrops hit.

We weren't going to let the rain slow us down on Sunday either, but we planned a little differently. We decided to go to the town of Vallorbe which is situated in the Jura Mountains. They have some amazing caves (grottes). Sam and Zoe have both visited here with their classes and were excited to show mom and dad around.

The caves were amazing! Now I haven't been to Cave of the Mounds in Wisconsin since I was probably ten, so I don't really have anything to compare these caves too, but we were impressed. Ben was speechless or just confused! We had a nice paper guide in English which really made the tour more interesting. After the caves we hiked in the woods for about an hour. It was lightly raining, but there was enough cover that we didn't get wet. The forest was so different from where we had gone hiking the previous weekend. The forest was so lush and the moss clung to everything. We hiked along a dried up river bed....and we hiked UP this time. Sam and Zoe were not happy.

So you would think after that we'd head home, right. HA It was only 2:30 people....we drove to the city of Neuchatel and walked around for a few hours until the rain caught up with us. Neuchatel is north of us and sits on the northern tip of Lake Neuchatel. It is a really pretty city built up on a hill. It had a very Mediterrean feel to me. Of course all the shops were closed on Sunday, but we did mangage to walk around the chateau, cathedral, and climb the prison tower. This gave us a great view of the city.