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Sunday, June 9
We got up early, even though we could have slept in a bit. We went downstairs for breakfast at the Mexican restaurant associated with the hotel.. There have been better breakfast buffets, but the price was right (included with the room).
Now, about our room. We've stayed in better laid out ones. And the bed was hard. Not like the soft, cushy ones we had for the last week. The shower is very modernistic, which means not very practical. A sheet of glass instead of a curtain or other wall. The opening to the shower is right by the counter, making getting out awkward. And one of the two shower heads is a “rain head”, which I don't like as it gets my hair wet when I don't want it to. The only real way to use the toilet is to leave the door open, which exposes one to not only the rest of the room, but, if the curtains are open, the people across the street... Lots of hard corners and sharp edges. Oh, well, it's just for four nights. We'll survive.
We met up with Christian about 8:15 and walked over to the pick-up point for today's excursion. It was semi-organized chaos... Several people asked Christian if he was the guide for the tour we were meeting. Nope.
The bus pulled in a little before 9 and the Orientals all swarmed the tour guide. She was obviously loading the larger parties first so they could sit together, but some people just wouldn't wait their turns... However, we all got loaded in ample time and were soon on our way to Interlaken Ost. It was a lovely drive. Lousy weather, however... Rainy day all day long.
The photo on the left shows one of the many, many waterfalls we saw from the bus on the way to Interlaken. Most of the photos along in here that I attempted wound up in the trash, however. It felt like the bus hit a bump every time I pressed the shutter! And the windows weren't all that clean, either.
The photo on the right shows some of the beautiful scenery we were driving through. No bumps for this one - we were stopped at a traffic light....
Interlaken was mostly a toilet and short shopping stop. We had to get some change so that we could use the toilets (one Swiss franc each) and wait for the lines to shorten. We skipped the “shopping” and wandered around the area. It seems to be a nice town. When we arrived, we saw hang gliders landing. I wish we had walked over to the old part of town, but we only had a short stop and didn't want to get left when the bus loaded.
We did wander a little, but never more than about a block from the pickup point. The photo on the left above shows some flowers lining the wide sidewalk leading to the town's casino. That's the casino in the background. The center photo shows the large fountain in front of the casino. The photo on the right shows a large hotel with mountains rising behind it. This was across the large park where our meeting place was.
The three photos above show different views of the flower beds in the large park where we were to meet the bus.
The photo on the left shows our view from the park area to the old part of Interlaken. This is the area I wish we had had time to wander. As you can see, it was very rainy that day.
We were all at the meeting place on time, but no bus. He was almost 20 minutes late getting to the loading spot. The tour guide was having a fit as we had train reservations to meet. Once the bus got there, it (a double decker) was soon loaded and we were on our way again.
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The next stop was Grinderwald, where about 1/3 of the people on the bus (including us) got off. The rest were signed up for a different destination.
The photo on the left shows our train waiting at the station. The photo on the right shows the view across the valley - just to the right of the train location. The clouds would get lower as the day went on.
These two photos show more of the cloud shrouded mountains around Grindelwald.
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We soon boarded the inclined railroad (highest train in the world) and were on our way up the mountain. We had to change trains part way up. It seems they run two trains up to the halfway point, then one train the rest of the way up. We would return to valley level on the other train.
The cloud ceiling was just barely above the elevation of Grinderwald. Not much mountain scenery visible, but still a good day. Except for the people. Jungfraujoch is a popular tourist destination and lots and lots of tourists were up there despite the lack of visibility. It's never enjoyable elbowing your way through a crowd....
There were several things to see at Jungfraujoch. We hit most of them.
We did skip the elevator to the Sphinx (a science observatory) at the top as it was a high speed elevator, which doesn't agree with me. Most of our group did. We'd catch up with them all later at the meeting point.
Instead, we took the rest of the route – Ice Experience and Ice Castle. Both of which were interesting.
The Ice Experience featured a moving walkway that traveled past a series of paintings depicting some of the difficulties constructing the railway we had just traveled on.
The photo on the left shows the entrance to the Ice Experience. The oversized (and comic) mountain goat and lighted edelweiss were in constant demand for photo ops. I grabbed this shot between people posing...
The photo on the right shows one of the paintings on the wall of the Ice Experience.
Then it was on to the Ice Castle, an art gallery carved into the ice of the glacier. The artwork on display is all ice carvings! And, yes, it was cold. And the floors were also ice, which was slippery. There were hand rails all over the place to help with stability.
The photo on the left shows the tunnel that enters the Ice Palace with its handrail installed along one wall. The center photo shows me in this tunnel. The photo on the right is one of the ice sculptures pronouncing this the "Top of Europe".
The three photos above were taken in the Ice Castle, also. The photo on the left shows a nice sculpture of a flock of eagles catching fish. The center photo shows one of the humorous exhibits - Scrat, a character from the Ice Age movies, trapped in the ice with his acorn. The photo on the right shows a group of penguins with an igloo.
Carl took this photo of me shooting one of the ice statues...
We passed on the couple of outside observation area. It wasn't worth stepping outside as the clouds were right up against the windows of the buildings.
We ate lunch at the a la carte place. The self-serve was crowded and didn't have anything that looked appealing. Carl had the lobster/cognac soup and I had a salad with smoked duckling slices. Not bad. The bread was the best part. Like a soft pretzel in taste and outer shell, but about 6 inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter.
We also passed on the Lindt tour. Since I can't eat chocolate, why tempt fate???
We then did some souvenir shopping and went down to meet the group. That area was solid people. All the tour groups seemed to be using the same general vicinity and time as a meeting place. One old man nearly passed out. He wound up clutching my arms until he got over the dizziness. The elevation here was about 11,333 feet, so some people were feeling the effects of altitude sickness.
Eventually we were on our way back down the mountain. We took a different route after the half way point. This train went through the Valley of 72 Waterfalls (according to our guide). They were really wonderful to see. The clouds broke up a little as we dropped down the mountan, but it was still overcast. The valley was fairly visible.
The train continued through the town of Wengen. It's a quaint little town where motor vehicles are not allowed. The train is the main access and internal transportation is bicycles and feet.
The three photos above were taken as we approached Wengen. The center photo shows the cloud shrouded mountains across the valley.
After a short stop in Wengen, we continued down the mountain to the town of Lauterbrunnen, the end of the line.
The three photos above show the changing scenery as we dropped from Wengen to Lauterbrunnen. The clouds continued to thin and the waterfalls became more and more visible.
And the views continued to improve as we dropped into Lauterbrunnen itself.
We finally connected with the bus again. Then we stopped in Interlaken again to pick up the other half of the people that were on the original bus, then sped back to Lucerne. Whew! What a day.
There were lots of tunnels along the route back to town. We must have taken a more direct route, as I don't remember there being as many tunnels this morning.
We were so tired when we got back to the hotel that we skipped dinner. Instead, we went downstairs and had 2 margaritas each at the bar associated with hotel, and crashed for the night. No alarm clock tomorrow!!!!!