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Published: September 1st 2010
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We left Rennes, France yesterday morning, took TGV back to Paris and another TGV to Berne, Switzerland then took local train to Interlaken(in-ter-laa-ken). It was a long day on the trains. I remember asking a lady at the snack bar on the train from Paris "How do I know when I get into Switzerland?" She jokingly said "you'll see green cows". I paused for a second almost took it seriously. I laughed and smiled at her while thinking to myself "I actually want to see a green cow, it'd be awesome". It took about an hour from the French-Swiss border to Berne and same on the way back through Zurich.
We stayed at the studio I found on Interlaken website. It was a steal compared with another place we stayed at after coming back from the glacier hike. The studio was much cheaper and spacious and much much more comfortable. We got dressed and wandered out to look for a launder mat or breakfast, don't remember exactly which one first. One our first meal, I was shocked at food price tags, but kind of got used to it after awhile. My mussel pasta, I would have called it clams in
stead of mussels, was about SCF 20. Next we put in our order for water. Tap water is not a standard here. The first question our server asked was "with gas or no gas". While I was lost, Doug figured out quickly and answered "no bubbles". The server nodded and repeated our orders to us before walking back to the kitchen. Most of the waters we found in supermarkets and the ones served in restaurants were mineral waters. Honestly, I don't have a thing with any kind of water, but dang! waters here tasted wonderfully good. My next surprise and a bit upsetting initially was the portion of my food. I thought to myself "Gees, this's so expensive". In retrospect, it's still true about cost of food in that area, but portion wise I think I've just gotten used to an American portion. I recall how I was overwhelmed by food portion in the U.S. when I first arrived, but now it's something to be expected.
Interlaken was small and touristy. You'll find souvenir shops selling vitronox/swiss army knives and swiss army watches on every corner. We did pick up a few swiss army knives for the hike in
Grindelwald, where we rented the hiking boots. We didn't do much today just walked around town, went up the funicular to look at the views of Thun lake and Brienz lake and immediately had to come back down in time to pick up our clothes from the laundry place. Another thing I found inconvenient was that places closed and open at certain times, so we had to time things according to that. Same is true with France. Only cafes were open in the morning and served mostly bread, coffees, small salads, and more kinds of breads. While we were in France, finding a breakfast we wanted to eat was a great challenge. It was unfortunate for Doug and even I got really tired of eating baguettes everyday. By the way, they eat their baguettes at room temperature which in most cases I found very chewy. I got too tired of biting it off and chewing it that I never finished any of my baguettes. Maybe, just maybe... that the French are slim because of energy used in eating baguettes. Our 3 days in France, we literally felt starved and could count the meals that we actually felt full which were
some thing like 2 meals.
The next day, we went to Grindelwald, half an hour train ride away up the mountains. Our first stop was Grindelwald Sports to confirm the trip and get more questions answered. Then stopped by Bernet Sports to rent hiking boots and picked up a few more things for the hike tomorrow. We then took a cable car up to First for a zip line, but unfortunately it rained so we didn't have time to wait for it to open again. Even though, the zip line was not a success, I did enjoy the mountain views greatly. In the distance I could see a glacier. Cows were grazing here and there nearby. I found a shaded and dry spot just outside of the restaurant, and we just sat there watching clouds moving in and away, taking in cool air, and having hot cocoa and espresso. It was nice.
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