Brrr...

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I've got to say, snow is a beautiful thing. Having grown up in Florida, it's not something we see too often (once in the last twenty years, by my count). But after so long a wait, it was well worth it to come to Interlaken and see what a white Christmas would actually look like.

Interlaken is centrally located in Switzerland, about an hour east of Bern. It took us a little over two hours to get there from Zurich, changing trains in Bern. It's not very big, and almost all of the main area seems to exist for the sake of tourism. That said, the real attractions here for most are the powdery slopes and the alpine beauty.

The hostess at the hotel we were staying at suggested that if we went up to the mountains, we should go to Schilthorn instead of Jungfraujoch, the highest peak in the area. The train to Jungfrau is billed as the top of Europe, and is a main attraction around here. She said that Schilthorn, while not as high, had the better views. We took her advice, and up we went. To get to the top, we had to take a train to Lauterbrunnen, a cable car to Grutschalp, another train to Murren, and another cable car to the top. Most of the people going up were skiiers and snowboarders. It looked like a load of fun, and I feel like we should have gone out and tried it. At the top, there is a revolving restaurant and a gift shop along with the platform set up to get a good look at the surrounding mountain range. The view was astounding. The peaks just rose one after another all the way to the horizon.

We went back up to Lauterbrunnen a couple of days later to do some hiking. We took the cable car to Grutschalp and hiked up to Murren. It's one of the shorter trails at about three miles, and supposedly one of the easier. Could have fooled me. I had to break out the inhaler a couple of times going up. What made it worse was that the main ones walking the trail seemed to be the local elderly folks, and they seemed to be handling the terrain swimmingly. That's ok. We conquered the climb, and had a blast while doing it. It was funny that by time we reached Murren, we both were warmed up enough that we probably could have gone around in short sleeves. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and at 5000 feet up the sun was just beating down on us. We ate lunch in Murren to cool off and let the sun go down some.

By the time we started back, the temperature had dropped quite a bit as the sun had retreated behind some of the larger mountains. We'd barely gotten clear of Murren before we broke out into snowball fights and other sorts of foolishness. I'd always wanted to have one, and it's good to know that despite my warm weather upbringing, I am currently 1-0 and accepting challenges.

Interlaken has been good for us. It was great to get outdoors and just have fun. Cities are great, and much more convenient when travelling, but they're hard to relax in. After spending four days in Interlaken, I think our batteries have been charged. It's also given us motivation to make that elusive winter season a bigger part of our life.

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Photos

Schilthorn
You can see Thun just beyond the mountains

snowman
I killed him seconds after this picture was taken!!

mountains

scenes from the hike
I like this because of its similarity to a shot I got of Julie in Turkey

Comments

[matthew26]

wow
those pictures you've taken are really beautiful.it looks like you enjoyed your vacation in Interlaken, with all the adventures you experienced.