Not a different city! Kinda cool to enter a town that you already know a bunch about! We took a walk to the post office from the station, though and quickly found out something NEW - shipping from Switzerland is super expensive. Something shipped that would have been 30 euros in Italy costs almost 70 in Switzerland..
Walking on from the post office we enjoyed the same old ridiculous scenery you get in Interlaken -
And amazing waterfalls everywhere -
Weather being great as predicted, so we caught the train up to Lauterbrunnen and then the bus to the base of the gondola and headed up towards Schilthorn peak to get an amazing view of from up in the Swiss Alps on a clear morning/afternoon.
Before the train I was impressed with the engineering of this interesting "thing" -
The water was running off of all four sides of the rectangular block at an even flow and leaving no area dry... Perfectly flat, perfect amount of water running. I'm an engineer so these things catch my eye and fascinate me =)
On the gondola ride up to the peak we were already enjoying spectacular views -
As we got higher and higher -
We had to take multiple different gondolas to get to the top. At each stop the temperature outside plummeted until finally we reached the summit and snow was on the ground.
The summit at Schilthorn was well known as a great vantage point since the late 19th century but the geology of the mountain did not allow for the building of a railway until the early 1960's. Led by Ernst Feuz, the aerial cable-car industry had made enough progress to tackle the project. Through considerable technical and financial difficulties, in 1967 the Schilthorn summit was finally made accessible to the general public and became the world's longest aerial cableway. Having all the problems posed at building in the high altitude, Ernst Feuz decided that this alone was not enough and he pushed further in his dream to create a unique experience for all visitors that were taking on the breathtaking scenery at Schilthorn Peak. He developed the revolutionary idea of building the world's first revolving restaurant at 3000m altitude. Everyone thought he was mad, but he realized his dream and that's where James Bond made his entrance!
The gift shop was covered in 007 memorabilia, the waiters outfits at the restaurant had a little 007 on them and even the dishes were marked with 007! - (see below)
We had come for the views and the special restaurant so we sat down and began to revolve!
The soup was the best I'd had on the trip thus far - a delicious Chili-looking soup that was very salty and didn't taste like any chili I'd ever had. Candace had an asian soup and we both split the local lamb dish from Gimmewald. I set one of our bags with nothing too important in it down on the ledge next to me for fun and we wondered if we could grab it after the restaurant made a full revolution but we found out later when it was nowhere to be found that one of the waiters had grabbed it and held it to the side. =)
We let the restaurant revolve around twice while we finished our food and ordered a special coffee, cappuccino, ice-cream dessert. Being unprepared for hiking in the cold up top, we took a quick peek outside and then headed on the Gondola down.
The kids we shared the gondola with loved the ride down -
And again we were mesmerized by the beauty around us.
Taking the bus we went halfway back and got out at "Trummelback Falle", the coolest waterfall experience I've ever had. Being on top of waterfalls is cool. Looking down over the edges is nice, and seeing Niagra falls was cool too. Swimming at the base of them in Maine or jumping through them in Hawaii is great, as well as jumping off the top of them or standing at the base and letting the water pound down on you, But this was a different experience entirely. These falls ran through the inside of the mountain itself and what the swiss had done is carved a tunnel into the mountain along the pathway of the waterfall. This allowed us to basically go into a cave in the side of the mountain and follow the pathway of the waterfall as it twisted and turned through its interesting route and created various "waterfall vantage points", of which there were around 15.
Video1 -
Video2 -
Pics -
Once done, and after a game of chess while waiting for the bus with beautiful views,
we were back in Interlaken and started our walk home. At the big field, we came across a man walking on a steel cable strung almost all the way across the massive field that was in the center of town. We sat and watched him finish his walk one way and I grabbed a pic after his break and his start of his walk back.
Back at the Backpackers Villa we did some laundry and got ready to rock for Canyoning at 7am the next day!
Breakfast and Canyoning begins. This is one of the main reasons we came back to Interlaken, as the weather last time we were here had kept us from doing it. Oh, sure, there were other Canyons to "Canyon" in that they were running expeditions into, but not the "Big" one, the one twice as intense as the others. The water level needs to be at "5 cm or less" to run a trip to the "Big" one.
I believe I described Canyoning in an earlier post, but I had never personally heard of Canyoning before this trip so I think it would be more fun to take you through the experience and show, rather than explain it. We can thank my waterproof, crushproof camera later.
Before we hopped into the van to take off from the Adventure Headquarters every person canyoning with us had to pick out a full wetsuit as well as a half wetsuit, helmet, aquasocks, aquashoes and a lifejacket. We bundled them all into our lifejacket and attached our helmet before throwing each "package" into the van. Each helmet had a name on it - Candace's "Jiffy", mine "Squid", effectively labeling our bundles for us. We gathered, all 13 of us, into a van with our two guides, Daz & Toby, and Matt our cameraman. We arrived in a forest location at which point we got out and suited up with our gear.
Once ready we all started our trek into the forest
and soon to a river. A quick pep talk later from Daz
and we were trekking through the river with our gear on, hopping over boulders, wading through pools of water, and hiking along the rocks.
Soon enough we came to a waterfall… There was no hiking around this waterfall, you see, in Canyoning you jump OFF the waterfalls and into the pools below. This excursion was one where I was actually nervous to let Candace come along on as I'd blame myself forever if something happened to her. But then I thought about how I'd probably rave about it and wish that she could have had the experience once it was all over with. Also the possibility of her regret of not going and maybe never being able to get another chance to come to Interlaken and experience what I raved about. I knew that she wouldn't be left out so I counted on that townboy in her, the one that made her tough enough that she could beat up her old boyfriends (before she met me of course ;), to come out and take over, using her wit and agility to manage the situations. Listening carefully to our guide each of us made our 1st jump, plummeting into the pool below.
In our group, nobody chickened out, which sometimes happens and forces a guide to hike that person back out of the valley and forest and to the van.
Thus, with all 13 of us as an intact group, our Canyoning experience truly began.
Sliding down long chutes,
Jumping off more waterfalls, one after the next,
Rappelling down steep inclines,
Plus more,
Our group successfully traversed these Water Canyons of Interlaken.
Sometimes yelling back to those behind you the instructions, or pointing out important holds or strategies, we had a blast and surprisingly kept warm in the frigid springwater, which I'd put at around 60 degrees, maybe less.
I think I enjoyed the "slides" the most, as some of them were "corkscrew" slides down rock carved into corkscrew shapes over thousands of years.
Others they would lower you down a bit, then you would let go yourself and slide the rest of the way. Sometimes at the base of a slide it would look like you were going to nail a tree or something
But the guides knew what they were doing and everybody avoided major injury.
Here is a pic of Candace going down a good-sized slide -
One slide in particular Luke would love as it's similar to a jump that he taught me at the Waterhole in Sedona once, though not quite as dangerous. With the slide I speak of, the goal was to jump from one cliff to the side of a different cliff which was a flat rockface. You would then proceed to slide down that cliff-face and into the pool of water below.
Another one that was pretty cool was where they lowered us into a cave and the water pushed us through and out, falling to the side. We would then get our bearings, unclip ourselves from the rope, and then yell up "F*$k yeah!!" to indicate that we had detached and that all was clear for the next person to come through.
Once through the canyon, we had a beautiful walk through the river
and down to the area where beers and food awaited as reward.
We met a cool lady, Karen, who owned properties in Jamacia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and worked at Vail Resorts in Colorado. She was interesting to talk to as we had been to all the places she owned properties and it was easy to relate to her about it and some other business stuff. We exchanged info.
After the excursion, we hopped on the train to Lauterbrunnen, took the bus passing Trummelback Falle, caught the gondola heading towards Schilthorn, and were soon up in the Swiss Alps at Grimmelwald, a super small town full of sheep and beautiful views.
We had to hike 5 minutes on a hiking trail a bit to get to our lodging at "Walter's" Mittaghorn Hotel. The place reminded me of the camp up in Maine.
We got checked in and soon were on our balcony enjoying the Swiss Alps. I was well prepared to enjoy this view as I busted out the special Padron cigar from that cool dude in Amsterdam, some belgian chocolates, and a belgian beer and Candace with her sketchbook, a special ladies belgian beer, and some belgian chocolates was also ready to view in style!
We sat back on our balcony and passed a couple hours away watching the Sheep below and the gondolas pass every so often.
We looked at the huge cliffwalls of the mountains around us and noticed the history of the rock shifting and made some "discoveries" about the way mountains are all put together and the erosion, creating the slopes and angles at the base of the cliffs around.
After a couple games of Othello on the Kindle, neither of us had noticed the fog come in. It literally must have taken less than 30 seconds for it to come in and completely block all views of anything except the barn in front of us and a couple sheep in the yard near it. Crazy weather! It was time to get ready to head downstairs for dinner. We soon heard the dinner "gong" get hammered off and we were on our way downstairs. We entered into a room with another three couples about our age or so who were already sitting down to dinner. Tim, our host that evening, was bringing out a legit chicken noodle soup and Candace and I dove right into it. We hit it off with two of the other couples and conversation was great. Amanda, an occupational therapist and Matt, a Physicians assistant were from Kuai, Hawaii. Jon and Brittney were from Kansas and involved with ministry and firefighting. Talking about anything from Hawaii, to hikes around Interlaken, to joking about the sheep-noises Jon was making from the balcony earlier (we had wondered who that was that kept making those funny sheep sounds and having the sheep reply back!!) and other things. We began talking about how cool the goats are and mimicking the noises they were making. After 2-3 minutes of us going on about goats, the house keeper (Tim) told us "those goats your talking about are actually sheep". and we all begin cracking up that we didn't know the difference - haha! The main course was spaghetti and chicken, and they brought Candace a vegetarian option, some great asparagus, which was a surprise because on the phone they didn't say they had one, but they put the personal touch in there. We also had a bowl of really good (for some reason) green beans.
This place was pretty awesome. The old man Walt who has been running the place since forever ago is 88 years old and Tim, the dude serving us dinner, helps him with most things. Ted is a paraglider maniac who goes nearly every day for several hours and has travelled much of Europe. We learned that Walt doesn't actually make a dime off the profits of the hotel. He sponsors a village in a 3rd world country and all the money from the hotel goes to that village to help provide water and other things, also avoiding Swiss taxes. Walt lives simply and off of his pension and runs his hotel just to help others…
Several hours into dinner, and after Tim had joined us at the table with a German beer and stories AS well as serving us an excellent homemade dessert, we were finally calling it an end to an epic dinner and heading to our rooms upstairs. One funny thing about our room is that the beds were a bit short, -
though nothing noticeable once the lights were out (I was definitely posing in the pic above haha).
At this time, Candace and I didn't know if we would be staying another night or if we would be heading off somewhere sunny, so we left it to the morning to decide once the weather was a bit more firmly in place. After a final game of Othello, we were in lala land and having a good, cozy nights sleep.
Morning hit and the valley was covered in fog and raining. "Time to move onto somewhere warm" declared Candace, and we took Brittney's advice and headed to where they had just come from - French wine country. In a national park and in a little town called Eguisheim.
Before heading out Candace and I also booked our lodging in Eguisheim as well as for our one night in Paris at a sweet location right near Notre Dame through AirBNB, our 1 night in Dublin, as well as our flight to Dublin from Paris. Sadly it was time to part ways with our new friends, BUT not before a pic!
The other two couples were going to hike down from Gimmelwald to the Falls (we told them about), and we wished them luck and then also headed out, walking in the fog towards the gondola -
We grabbed a great lunch at a hostel advertising "hot meal" for 10 euros. I had walked in asking what the special was and the dude practically yelled at me its ___ it's AMAZING, with eyes bulging and everything. I was like uhhhh OK I'll take that. Candace had a vegetable keish on a bed of salad which was very good as well.
On the walk to the gondola, Candace fell in love with a massive cow. She fed him daises and everything, but their romance was short lived as she was sadly pulled away by our gondola arriving - haha
After our gondola ride down we were soon on a train north, heading to French wine-tasting country!
J & C,
ReplyDeleteAMAZING!!!! You two and the pics!!! Can't wait to hear stories and see your faces on SUNDAY!!!
Love you, Jocelyn