I recently returned from an exhausting yet exhillerating 3 day hike through the Alps.  Everything is indescribably breath-taking to witness from the hights of these mountains!  The air is cool and fresh, the mountain spring water ice-cold but as clean as it gets, and the plants are so lush and verdant so far away from the strife of city life.  These mountains are so collosal that they present an illusion of being closer than they are, yet the idea of climbing to the top of one is practically madness.  Most of the mountains are covered in forests near the bottoms, then fade into fields garnished with flowers of all the rainbow's colors, and finally near the tops sprout massive stone peaks that cradle pockets of snow.  During my hike, I finally made it so high as to grab a handful of snow near Schachen.  Schachen is an interesting little tea-house placed atop the middle of nowhere by King Ludwig II.  The interior of this building conceals a room of gold ornamented in a Persian style, with stain-glass windows of bright blue, yellow, and red.  The tea-house is very oddly out of place, but magnificient none-the-less.