Spectacular Switzerland: Sweet Stops On The Way Back To Basel

I love meringue! Love it! But it has to be good quality and tasteful:). I've had some really good meringue in France and not so great in Portugal, so we had to try it in Switzerland, more specifically in Meiringen, the Alpine village where "they say" meringue was originated.

We stopped by Meiringen's meringue shop on our way to the airport. I bought two big bags of tiny meringues--one was a chocolate kind and one was a regular kind. I LOVED them both!

The tiny meringue thingies are too addictive though...I tried to resist, but by the time we got to the plane, I think only half of one bag was still there (and there are at least 30 in each bag). 

I usually have one or two specific food items that I love in each country that I miss every time I think about that country. In Switzerland it will be Rosti and Meringue!! 

So as we were driving towards Basel, the weather was getting worse and worse. Rainy clouds were covering the sky and we went through crazy periods of rain as we drove over mountain passes. We made it to Lucerne as our midway stop. But because it was so rainy, we decided to just walk over to the famous bridge, Kapelbrukke. It is a wooden bridge across the Reuss River with beautiful restored paintings under the roof depicting local life in ancient times.

Apparently in 1993, the bridge almost burnt down completely! Two thirds of its paintings were destroyed and one person died, sadly. Reconstruction is still going on several paintings. 

And this was a beautiful end to our quick "Switzerland in a weekend" trip. I would love to see more of this country! This was one of our top three favorite trips, I'd say. Expensive? Yes! Gorgeous? Yes! Worth the trip? Definitely! (just pack a suitcase full of snacks to bring with you).

Lyana.

Spectacular Switzerland: Wendgen-Kleine Sheidegg Hike

I am so glad that we like to take lots of pictures when we travel because when I look back at the photos later a flood of memories comes back to me that otherwise may be forever forgotten.  

Although to be honest, that flood of memories excludes place names like Lauterbrunnen and Wengen.  That is where I need my sweetheart's help, and she reminds me the names of all the places so that I can write blog posts that make sense.  

One day we took a train from the village of Lauterbrunnen to a smaller village called Wengen UP in the mountains.  I say UP because the train, though it started on a flat surface, soon was CLIMBING the mountain. . . 

With stunning views like this waterfall.  Don't you just want to stand at the bottom of it and let the water land on your head?

On that note, we were soon to have water falling on our heads in the form of RAIN!  The weather was getting wetter and wetter as we ascended the mountain to our train stop.  After we got out of the train, we proceeded to take a cable car from Wengen to Männlichen (yeah, I couldn't remember that name either).  Again AMAZING VIEWS as we travelled higher and higher into the clouds . . . literally. 

When I saw that Swiss flag from the cable car I decided I wanted a picture next to it.  

So I got it!

We took the trail from the cable car dropoff at Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg (a mountain pass at 2,061 m).  The trail was 2.8 miles on a decently wide path with "50 meters/160 feet ascent and 200 meters /660 feet of gradual descent."  Basically a pretty easy hike that took us 1 and 1/2 hours. We started out in the rain . . .

 

And soon found ourselves in the snow.  My two greatest fears were (in no particular order) as they played on the snow bank above the trail: 1) they were going to slip and slide down the snow, tumble across the trail, and carry on down the side of the mountain.  And 2) they were going to get their hands wet and cold and then complain the rest of the hike.  Thankfully, neither occurred and the kids truly did an outstanding job on this hike.

The pass was closed the week before we went to Switzerland, and it had only just opened a day or two before we arrived. Still plenty of wetness around, between the rain and snowmelt.  And the communal watering troughs.  Most of these troughs collected safe-for-human-consumption water.  In fact that was one of my favorite things about hiking in Switzerland - almost every trail had multiple fresh spring water fountains where you could quench your thirst (because let me tell you, warm sparkling water is not very refreshing on a hike).

Again, the scenery was breathtaking. Most importantly, the kids were having a great time.

Which is the real reason we are smiling.  Happy kids = Happy parents.

That's our trail along the mountain (on the right).  

The kids made a surprising find: an Alpine Salamander.  

Either praying to the snow gods to come to England or just hugging the snowbank because it's been so long since he's seen this much snow.

Though the rain stopped a long time ago, the low-lying clouds persisted.

One way the kids kept entertained, when not playing in the snow or catching salamanders, was making up songs and playing "band" where they did vocal instrument sounds and bee-bopped away the time.

Finally we found our way to Kleine Sheidegg where we were very tempted to take the train back down to Wengen.  I should mention there are no pictures between the one above and the one below where we are at the station because the last 10 minutes of our hike the clouds burst and we broke out the ponchos, and my camera is not very waterproof.  Because we had just survived a decent rainstorm, we treated ourselves to semi-hot chocolate at the cafe next to the rail station.  This was a famous station where people set off to either go to Jungfrau, the highest railway in Europe, or even climb the deadly Eiger! 

We DID NOT take the train, however.  No, we still had plenty of energy (and time?).  So we found the trail DOWN from Kleine Scheidegg to Wengen.  It is about 4 miles, 785 meters/2600 feet of descent, and I think it took us about 2 hours.

 

Yeah, that's Eiger there.  The North Side is the most famous (er infamous) side for steel-hearted climbers.

Less snow and more green the further down we travel.

Even though the terrain was not difficult and it was all downhill, by now some of the grumpiness was coming out in one or more of the party. In fact if you asked Alex, it wasn't a party at all. It's true though, hiking downhill constantly is sometimes as hard or harder than hiking up.  I know my feet were ACHING badly by this point but Lyana was doing just fine.

Oh, we were so happy to see Wengen village!  And the train station where we knew we could sit down and go back down the rest of the mountain NOT walking.   By the way, see the cows?  Real Swiss cows too.

Somehow Mark was able to distract himself from his sore feet by counting every step he took.  Every time he reached 100 he got so excited.  

Alex just wanted to be done so he kept on walking, ignoring the rest of us as we continued to stop for photos. 

I had my camera at the ready when Mark was at 9900 steps, so that when he hit 10000 I could capture him as jumped around to announce it to me. He kept counting and eventually he reached 11800 but he says he'd have even more if he'd started from the very beginning of our hike. 

And we were all very tired...so we took the train back to Lauterbrunnen. 

Driving back to Interlaken, we came across a few cows, just walking on the road in town. 

We were so tired at the end of the day, happy to finally get to our tiny "house" but so proud of all our hiking. 

Mark is keen on "Magic Tree House" book series at the moment. 

Good night. 

Spectacular Switzerland: Hiking In The Alps

Switzerland was everything that I'd imagined it to be! 

We lucked out with weather on our first day of a massive hike and loved every minute of sunshine in the mountains. I left off my previous post at our lunch stop in Murren. Let me tell you, German crusty fresh bread tastes even better if eaten outside. This fresh mountain water tasted great too! Water stations like this were everywhere along the hiking routes which made it very easy to refill our water bottles. Which was a good thing because the night before, Robert by mistake bought six big bottles of sparkling water by mistake, thinking it was still-haha.  

Sometimes, a water fight was inevitable. At least Mark was a good sport. 

So this lovely village of Murren is a carless village--so the only way to get to it is by cable car or by cogwheel train. It's small but so beautiful! 

Many hiking and cycling routes connect Murren with other villages. All are clearly marked and times of how long it would take you to get there are...not very exact as they are timed by seasoned local senior citizens, thus UNDERestimating the real duration of the hike-haha.

In the middle of the village we found the station we were looking for where a slow moving train was to take us up to Allmendhubel.

This was a super short ride, maybe 5 minutes? Still exciting for the kids. 

Allmendhubel had a nice rest stop with a place to eat and a children's playground. We stopped for maybe twenty minutes to let the kids run around while we relaxed in the sun.

Well, I was relaxing but Robert was pretending to be a marmot or something. They had these awesome tunnels in the playground where you could crawl around and lots of other cool equipment. 

Nice view, eh?

So, the majority of the following pictures are just to illustrate how beautiful our hike was. Around every corner we found a majestic scenery with beautiful grassy slopes and snowy peaks. 

Our colorful hiking family:).

Katya had the camera for half of the time and she was taking a million pictures trying to play with the settings:).

As we were walking by this extensive roped off area, Mark asked Robert if he thinks that the fence is electrocuted (not sure why he thought of that). Robert convinced him that it was completely safe and that it was just used to mark the boundaries. In a few meters, we came across this sign... 

Our hiking was mostly downhill with only one part that required some difficult climbing. 

We took a couple of breaks to enjoy the scenery and grab a snack. 

This is REAL!

Katya had a funny photo session with Alex. He kind of blends in with the grass and the flowers.

The kids really enjoyed this hike as they could run free half of the time we were walking through the flat grassy areas.

Another water station. 

Mark kept singing, "Look at me, I am the king of the world!". 

Oh, how did I get so lucky? 

The village of Murren down below.

Quick break to take a few more pictures.

And to get squished:)

And to jump. 

We made it down to Murren in a couple of hours by late afternoon. We bought a box of packaged ice cream at the village shop (since it was a much better deal than buying individually packaged ones) and devoured it on a nearby bench. We had two leftover so we just found two random kids walking by and gave it to them:). 

Our hike for the day was not over yet and Katya knew it. 

From Murren, we headed down towards Gimmewald, Rick Steves' favorite village in the area. The hike was less than an hour and ALL downhill. Katya and Mark decided to count their steps so they were occupied by that the whole time. 

Alex was just in his zone...dreaming of avalanches (this is a major avalanche area). 

We made it to Gimmewald right around 6 pm and had dinner at Gimmewald Pension. Not on the couch...this was just one of the places to sit in their outside area. 

This is the place where I ordered cheese fondue, the Swiss specialty, but was not impressed as it turned out to be soooo salty and not warm enough (the heater thingie was not working properly, we think). Katya was not impressed either, apparently. Yeah...we play card games when we wait for our food at restaurants...at least it keeps the kids occupied for half an hour. 

Have you ever seen an honesty shop?:) We saw a couple on our trip in this area. You basically just come in, take what you like and leave the money where they ask you. Crazy, right? :)

 We took the cable car from Gimmewald back to Stechelberg, got back to our car and drove home. It was still very light outside and very warm although the stormy clouds were rolling in. As our holiday park was next to the lake, we ran over there and had the kids play in the water for a bit (it was 9 pm by then!). And that was the end of day ONE! We really had a great time and were so happy that it was warm!