In Pro - Day 3

We had an even earlier start on day 3 - 6:30am wake up, 7:30am breakfast.
By 8am we were on our way to Zurich.

First stop - crazy infectious diseases medical museum. The kids were a bit grossed out, but it really was quite interesting. It was a small museum and the pieces were all made from wax using molds from people with various skin conditions and then hand painted. They looked quite realistic and dated back from around the 1930's. A quick tour of that was all we needed to work up an appetite for lunch at some greasy spoon pizza/gyro joint. Yummeeh!

The real fun began in the afternoon. Around the ourskirts of Zurich, somewhere close to some airport, we arrived at the body flying company. That's right folks, you heard it here - BODY FLYING.
The gist: First you go through a brief training where they teach you the body position (much like bow pose in yoga without the foot holding) and they talk to you about safety and how to roll out of it. Then you get decked out in yet another suit that's kind of baggy, helmet, goggles and gloves and then you go out with 4 other people to this big cushioned ring. This is open to the outdoors, and in the center, underneath a grate, is the biggest fan you can imagine. The diameter must be at least 4 meters. There is an intstructor with you, and one at a time you fall into the center of the circle where he grabs onto your suit at the waist and leg and helps you take flight. Of course since he is a professional he does all the manuevering up and down and around. The highest we probably went was about 10 meters up. It's a pretty great feeling, and the wind is so strong it pushes your cheeks and makes you look and feel really funny. James wasn't so keen on it because he had a hard time breathing - I thought it was awesome! I think almost everyone had a go. You only get a total of 3 mins per person in flying time, but of course it feels a lot longer.




From there we were on to the highlight of the week for many of the kids - the waterpark - Alpamare. (of course us adults were hardly complaining as we got to do all these fun things too!)
Alpamare is an indoor waterpark with a wave pool, iodine heated pool and 9 or so waterslides of different natures - some where you sit in tubes, some without. We all had a great time and lots of bumps and bruises. Part of the fun was that the water slides started indoors and had parts outdoors, so because it was night time and cold it was a bit scary! Lots of laughter, as you might imagine.
All were thoroughly exhausted when we left the park at 10:30pm and we still had a good hour journey back to the hotels...
We got away with only one minor injury where one kid was rocked into the side of the slide after capsizing out of a 3 person tube. He's alive to talk about it so all is well.
We slept like rocks for the few hours we had.