Interlaken, Grindelwald and Pfingstegg

Sorry this post took so long to put up, but there are a lot of pictures!

Last weekend, we bit the bullet and bought a five day Swiss Rail Pass for about $560 US. It allows Jim and I to travel on any train we like, anywhere we like, on five specific days we get to choose. We also got a Family Pass (included for free) so Jack and Lily can travel with us for free. The pass also gives us a 15% discount on most tourist activities and allows us in all museums for free.

For our first day of travel, we decided to mimic one of the package trips we saw in a brochure Jim picked up at the Swiss Embassy in New York. We got up bright and early, bought our pass, and hopped on a train to Interlaken Ost, a town at the foot of the Swiss Alps. The kids loved the train!




The train journey was about 2 hours, figuring in all of the stops in between, and we all enjoyed looking at all the sites out the windows. I think Jim got some video, but my camera doesn't capture moving scenes well, so I didn't bother to take pictures.

Interlaken Ost

We arrived at Interlaken Ost around 10 am. This is a picture of the railway station. Our first stop was a local cafe so we could get some breakfast -- it was too crazy trying to eat on the train because the choice was to eat in the dining car (and potentially lose our seats in the crowded 2d class compartment) or wait for the dining cart to come by (our choice, but the cart never came to our car). After eating, we stopped at the Coop (a chain of cooperative markets) and picked up so food and drinks for later so we wouldn't get stuck without food again.

This picture is a beautiful fountain in the square near the train station. A thin layer of water flows over the top and down the sides. Jack was fascinated by it!

Grindelwald

Our pass allows us to just get on any train without reservations or tickets, so we hopped on the next train to Grindelwald, which is at the base of the Alps. I couldn't get over how stereotypically "Swiss" everything looked there, and wondered which came first -- the look of the town or the outside world's stereotype of a Swiss mountain village. Probably a bit of both! The above picture is a view from the train station towards the Alps, which were obscured by some low clouds.

We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the next leg of our journey, which was a cable car to an outlook point on the mountain above Grindelwald, called Pfingstegg. I took a few pictures on our walk. The above is another view as we walk towards the Alps.

And another view as we got closer.
I loved this little chalet because it had the stereotypical window boxes filled with bright flowers and a big row of Swiss cowbells hung on the porch. Lily and I ended up buying a small bell for our Christmas tree. It has nostalgic significance for me, because when my Aunt visited Switzerland when I was small, she brought a similar bell home for me.

This is the church that was our landmark -- we walked until we came to the church and then we turned right. I love the architecture.


As we got closer to the cable cars, I was able to get some better shots of the mountains.

I wish the weather had been better, but we've had a lot of cloudy days here. Jim's coworkers have told him that July is the nicest month for weather here, but that this summer has been unusually cloudy.


Here we are about to get on the cable car at Grindelwald.

The kids loved this part of the journey, too!

Pfingstegg
Once we arrived at the outlook, Pfingstegg, we took a quick bathroom break. The signs on the building and on each door were hilarious. It's hard to see in this picture, but the mens' room had a picture of a man facing away, as if he were peeing, and a woman with her skirt lifted squatting! I felt a little weird photographing it until I saw several other tourists doing the same.

The primary reason Jim wanted to go to Pfingstegg was to ride on the Rodelbahn, which is a summer bobsled. This sign and weird carved face showed us the way.

As well as a small restaurant with a terrific patio view of the valley, Pfingstegg had lots for kids to do, including a trampoline, a slide, a swingset and a sandbox. I had some other pictures to post of those, but apparently they didn't get uploaded here. There were some pigs that lived up there -- Lily loved them and was excited to see them, but Jack was a little afraid. I carried him up near the pigs and he said "Too close!"

Here are my little kid and my giant kid on the Rodelbahn. There wasn't a good vantage point to get a picture of them when they were cruising around. This is at the very beginning. Jim bought 4 rides -- two adults and 2 children. Since both of the kids wanted to go with him, I waited at the top. Jim had so much fun, he bought 4 more rides and they did it again. I was kind of relieved not to have to go!

This is Lily pretending to be Cocolino. Cocolino is a cat with a fried egg eye patch who cooks with his little brother and sister. They are apparently characters in a popular series of books called Kuchen mit Cocolino (Cooking with Cocolino) - the books present a series of simple recipes for children. They had a little Cocolino play area next to the Rodelbahn that featured a place you could play Cocolino's theme song and add percussion. The theme song part was broken....


...but that didn't stop the kids from playing percussion!

After investigating all of the activities at Pfingstegg, we took a break and had cheese, fruit and cold drinks on a little bench set up overlooking the valley. This is Lily posing in front of the view.

And here's a view of the mountaintops from our bench.

The town of Grindelwald from the bench.

And, last but not least, my feet to give you and idea of how close we were to the edge.

All in all, it was a fun trip. We have so much flexibility with the train pass that we could pick and choose when to get our next train connection. That allowed us to take our time and really look at things without worrying about a deadline. The trains between Grindelwald and Interlaken Ost, and Interlaken and Basel run fairly frequently all day long.

I did check out a yarn store in Grindelwald, but it carried a rather boring stock of Regia, Opal and Lana Grossa. So no yarn purchases for now. Jim did pick up a jack knife (Swiss Army, of course). It has an orange peeler as one of its many features. Jim commented on how handy that was, and my response was "Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've been out alone with just an orange and a regular knife and thought 'Gee, if only I had an oranger peeler and could get this orange open!"