Day 15: Day off! Adelboden!
After my adventures of the day before, I decided to relax more on my day off. I slept in until 11:30am and then I read for a while in my bed in Camp House. I then got ready and hiked to Main Chalet for lunch. After lunch, I ventured into Adelboden with summer vollie Libby. Except for when I got lost with my suitcase on the first day, I have not been into Adelboden since. It was a holiday so I expected most shops to be closed.

After we descended the mountain that Our Chalet lies on,  we walked through the rotary and up the other side of a mountain to Adelboden! We passed a few chalets and we first stopped by Adelboden's local museum is a small church on part of the incline up into the main part of town. Libby and I searched around the museum for a geocache. A geocache is usually a small container with a book or small trinkets inside. It is a game played world-wide where people hide geochaches in random locations. Then, they give clues to the coordinates of the geocaches and you have to go find them. Essentially, it is a modern-day treasure hunt. Unfortunantly, we forgot to translate the clues of the coordinates from German to english so we just looked around the museum. One side had long grass, a stone wall in the back and a woodesy area on the right-hand side. We were looking and ran into the man in town who runs the museum. After we talked to him, we gave up and decided to return another day when we had more information haha.

We continued the incline into town and passed by a Co-Op and a few other small shops and cafes. We turned onto a street nearby a church and then walked down a main street next to the church. Then I saw it...the fountain! Part of the staff challenge is to climb the fountain in town and I had imagined a fountain similar to one that I saw in Bern: a pool catching the water from a spout and a large spire running up the centre of the pool. Instead, the fountain in town is a pile of rocks with water spouting over them...haha not even close to what I was thinking but definitely easier!

Nearby the fountain, a man was selling some wooden items and the main street is near the church square. Libby and I went in and out of various shops including some bakeries! The chocolate was tempting but I ate the Balisto bar that I brought with me instead. A Baslisto bar is a crunchy bar with a chocolate coating....the Swiss version of a granola bar. I was surprised with how many shops were open considering it was a holiday in Switzerland!

We returned to the fountain and I wanted to climb it but we decided to wait until the man selling his wooden items had finished packing up first. We talked for a while and I found out more about Girl Guiding in the UK among other things. It was a good bonding time. Then, we decided we had waited long enough. I climbed up the fountain and posed for a picture...but not before getting one shoe wet haha. I think I have 12 points now!! Whoo!! I am closer to winning the glory of staff challenge!!!

Afterwards, we headed back down the mountainside to the rotary. On our way down we hung out and talked some more at a local playground. The Swiss playground was really cool and included a rope structure similar to a jungle gym and a red slide that was long and curved. We made it back to Our Chalet in time for dinner!

After dinner, some summer vollies wanted to go check out Ham's Bistro that Christoph had pointed out to us. One of the vollies had saw that it was open that day so we decided to check it out. We walked on a small dirt path to the right of the Stockli staff house down the side of the hill. Ham's Bistro is a small house located nearby Our Chalet and nearby Harry's Chalets (I passed it on my way to the Bonderfalles). We grabbed a few drinks and sat down outside. Ham, the man who owns the bistro, introduced himself and got to know us. We realized that the bistro opens on June 21st but once we name-dropped Christoph's name, Ham let us know to call us if we wanted him to open up the bistro. We made reservations for June 1st with chocolate fondue for summer vollie, Sarah's birthday!  We relaxed for a few hours and a few of the vollies even ordered cheese fondue! We then returned to Our Chalet and trekked back to Camp house. We found our new hangout for the summer haha.