Tamara in Switzerland: Barfuss Wanderweg

Today we went on a little excursion to a town called Jakobsbatt and then walked a trail called the Barfuss Wanderweg (or in English Barefoot trail). And if you can't tell by the name it is meant to be walked barefoot, which we did. So first we drove to Apenzell and then took the train to the town. It's a very nice little town with lots of outdoor activities. There's a large hill that you can take a cablecar up and there were several people paragliding off of it. They also had those outdoor training facilities where you walk along a highrise obstacle course and ziplining. The nice thing that we did was take a summer bobsled up the hill and then rode it down, which was quite fun. So then we started off on the trail and true to form went barefoot. It started off nice with grass and then some varying underfoot materials like wood chips, pebbles, etc. Then there was a nice part where you walked through a creek with large stones. What started to get interesting is when you had to walk on some asphalt, which believe me was very hot (not to mention it was quite hot today anyway, yes Heather it was really actually hot, in the 90's). There were a few times when we had to do that, but usually I just ran across it really quickly and it wasn't too bad, but then came this horrible part and we were all running and our feet were burning. I think my feet will remember that forever. Most of the rest of the trail was grass thank goodness, and then towards the end there was a cool part that was mud. Overall it was very nice and I was told it was about 6 km or so long (not sure how long that is in miles), and it took us about 3 hours I think, since we had Ryan and took our time and made stops and breaks. At the end we took the train back to Apenzell and then went to a nice outdoor restaurant and had some giant ice creams. Then we came back and had some nice meat on the grill and were all ravenous (despite the giant ice cream), and now I'm quite tired and hopefully will sleep well tonight.