Farewell to Switzerland

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Today was a souvenir and chocolate shopping dsy. We also explored some of the small towns in the area and gave our hiking muscles a break.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Travel day, to Zurich, so we will be close to airport for flight home. After checking into the hotel (which is in the airport) we went to the Swiss National Museum. We learned a few tidbits of informstion about the Swiss history and their struggles.

Saturday we will fly home, farewell Switzerland thank you for a fantastic vacation and wonderful memories

Paragliding from Harder Kulm

Saturday, July 20, 2013
Extreme sport day - paragliding! First we must make an extreme trip down to Interlaken to meet with our agent, thus involves a train, cable car, train and one more train to arrive.

We find our agent and pile into the clown like van with 6 other victoms and 6 pilots, headed to Harder Kulm, our launch pad. As we exit the van our pilot assignments are made by random. Brenda got Rollie for her pilot and I got Alain.

Our pilots get busy laying out the paragliders and get us in our gear. Brenda will be taking off before me. Our pilots are busy giving last minute instructions and strapping us together,but all I hear in my head is "thats a short runway and steep cliff". The next thing I remember is Alains voice behind me "run run run". Before I could think, my feet are running and fastly run out of ground as we start to soar off the cliff. We were now flying!

Gliding out in the open, Alain quickly finds an eagle and heads towards it, using the same upstream of air as the eagle we ascend even higher. We are literally soaring with eagles!

After about 20 minutes of flying over Interlaken we make our descent into the park and touch down perfectly. A truly awesome experience!

Breakfast with a View

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

According to Rick Steve's travel guide for Switzerland, a good breakfast with a good view can both be obtained at the Piz Gloria restaurant on top of the Shilthorn mountain (the same mountain where Murren is located).  

Our plan this morning was to get a decent breakfast (instead of the same bread breakfast we've had), and we were not disappointed. A breakfast buffet of scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, hasbrowns, oh my we were in breakfast heaven. Good call Rick!  

A brief history (you can look up the rest), the Piz Gloria was used in the James Bond movie "On her Majesty's Secret Service". A new exhibit was added to the restaurant, Bond World, a tribute to the movie that made the restaurant famous. The exhibit was very well done with hands on activities, behind the scene interviews and clips. Truly better than expected.  

Top of Europe

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

We have been seeing signs everywhere about "Top of Europe Jungfraujoch" so today we decided to make it part of our activity.  

We crowded on the train in Lauterbrunnen with Japanese tour group that would take us to Kleinsteg. The train ride took about an hour then we would swap trains at Kliensteg (let the tour group go ahead).

We did some souvenir shopping and lunch browsing while waiting for next train.  

The train up to Jungfraujoch from Kleinsteg was mostly inside the mountain. About every 2000 feet of ascent the train would stop for five minutes at an observation point, we are still inside the mountain for these stops. What Brenda and I concluded was that these were planned stops so the passengers could get aclimated to the elevation change.  

An hour later we reach the top and are immediately shuffled into the greeting area where 1000 japanese tourist awaited our arrival so they could begin their tour. Now that we had our tour group we made our way to the "Snow Fun" area which allowed us to emerge from inside of the mountain into the snow cover top of Jungfraujoch mountain.  

Snow sleding was available, as well as skiing and snowboarding. Given my ability to find injury in any activity I attempt, we decided (actually Brenda decided because she didn't want to carry me down the mountain) that sleding would be the safer activity.  

With our snow activities complete and me still injury free, we continue our Jungfraujoch experience by going back into the mountain and viewing the alpine exhibit and the ice castle. After a quick souvenir stop we board the train that will take us back down to Kleinsteg where there was a hamburger meal waiting for us.

Valley Bike and Falls

Monday, July 22, 2013

Today was a beautiful morning which explains why the bike rental shop in Murren did not have any more bikes to rent. No matter i wasnt in the mood for crashing off a mountain today.

Brenda and I instead rented bikes in Lauterbrunnen, which is where we eventually wanted to ride anyway (side note Brenda found herself a really cool cycling jersey).

After renting bikes we picked up sandwiches from the Coop grocery store for a picnic later. Now it was time to ride!

Climbing aboard our mountain bikes we head out to Trummelbach falls, navigating the rising and falling grades until we are out of town and on flat land. Flat land? Yup, Lauterbrunnen is in the valley so once you leave town its flat.

About 30 minutes into our ride we reach our destination, Trummelbach falls. Other than explain what makes this water fall unique, the pictures will say the rest. The water fall is inside the mountain mostly so is waters fall within this cavernous like area inside the mountain.

Viewing waterfalls worked up an appetite. We rode our bikes until we found the perfect spot, a nice rocky patch next to the river in the vicinity of where base jumpers are known to jump.

No base jumpers and picnic complete, we climb on our bikes and take the mountain bike path back to Lauterbrunnen.

The Lucerne Option

Sunday, July 21, 2013

There really isnt much to blog about for this day. The plan was to take a day trip to Lucern and ride the boat on Lake Lucern then visit the Swiss mountain fortress museum. As misfortune would have it, we missed our connections by mere minutes causing our plans to unravel.  We did make to the museum, only able to visit for 20 minutes.

To make a long day and story short I will give the stats of this day.

13 hours of travel for 20 minutes of planned activity.

4 missed connectins, once you miss one it snowballs

2 tired and weary travelers

Below are some of the pictures we were able to get during our 20 minute speed tour

Hiking the North Face

Friday, July 19, 2013

So far we have taken many forms of transportation to get to Murren, so its no surprise that our first day out should start with us taking a Funicular, yet another form of transport, (waiting for donkeys next) up the mountain to start our hike of the North Face trail. 

The trails are well marked (as seen in the first picture). Some of the trails pass through farmers property and the farmers take advantage of this by providing a restaurant along the trail, Schiltap was one such place, we stopped at to eat cheese and bread with the cows (second picture).

Of course the hike was awesome and the views breathtaking. Pictures and words alone cannot describe the experience. After hiking downhill for 30 minutes with your toes gripping the front of your boots and the legs burning from the downhill exertion, you suddenly come across a waterfall. The rush of the water pushing fresh glacier air past you is simply refreshing! You sit and take this in a while and then you're able to push on. Awesome experience!

Muren Arrival

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Today actually started yestarday when we boarded our flight in Houston with connection in Amsterdam. Our arrival in Murren was accomplished by taking a train from Zurich to Bern where we switched trains. After departing Bern we arrived in Interlaken Ost. We boarded yet another train in Interlaken that took us to Lauterbrunen. At Lauterbrunen we boarded a cable car that took us up the mountain where another train was waiting to take us to Murren.

We ended our travel day with a quick walking tour of the village and a nice dinner at the Eiger Guest House where we were staying.  We had rosti for dinner which is a local dish similar to hasbrowns with added extras such as sausage, egg, or bacon.