We left for Switzerland early on Friday morning. It was a 7 hour train ride to a place called Basel. The first 5 hours of the train ride, we had a whole cabin thing to ourselves on the train, so we stretched out and slept for a while. It was nice. From Basel, we took another train to Lucerne where we stayed Friday night. It was a really cool little city on a beautiful lake. We walked around the "Old Town," saw some cool buildings and ate the most amazing Italian food we've ever had at a restaurant called La Gondola. We woke up to snow on Saturday morning, Happy Valentine's Day, went to see a Picasso exhibit and started on another train for Interlaken.
Random funny things in Switzerland: 1-masks everywhere, (we are still clueless as to why) 2- Grown adults riding horse like sledges down the Alps between Murren and Gimmewald, 3- People walking down the street in Lucerne with wooden shoes, 4-Weird hanging farm animal sculptures inside the train station in Lucerne, 5- Funny statue monument in Lucerne.
The two top pictures are the amazing train ride from Lucerne to
Interlaken. It was foggy, so we couldn't see the mountains very much, but the lakes and rivers were beautiful. The two bottom pictures are of Interlaken. It was a beautiful little town right in the middle of the Alps. We stayed Saturday night in
Rugenpark Hotel. It was nice...it even had its own bathroom (or WC) !!!
This is us in Interlaken on
Valentine's Day. We went to a restaurant called
The Baren for a traditional Swiss meal. Then we bought some chocolates and truffles that changed my life.
On Sunday morning, the weather was beautiful and sunny, so we decided to go up into the mountains. We went to a place called Murren. It was a little "car-free" village up in the Alps. It took 1 train, 1 gondola ride, and 1 more train to get there. We walked down a path for a while toward another village called Gimmewald, which was much older and looked abandoned. Old, old, wooden houses, farm animals and zero cars.
The Alps were stunning. Unlike anything we've ever seen. It felt like we were on top of the world. So beautiful. We saw a lot of sledging (basically what we call sledding) down the same path we were walking. Not just kids either, but grown adults, and even the elderly. One of the below pictures is of Brett attempting to dry his shoes off. Yes, we had some serious problems with wet shoes whilst walking through the snowy Alps, but it was totally worth it!
After coming back down off the mountains, we walked around Interlaken one last time, went in some shops and ate at McDonalds. Believe it, it's true and it was good. We then caught a train from Interlaken back to Lucerne, where we stayed again on Sunday night. We arrived in Lucerne around 9 PM at which point we walked around for 45 minutes looking for the Hotel Alpha. Luckily we found it before they closed the front desk down.
We woke up and caught yet another train from Lucerne to Basel where we enjoyed some yummy food and bought treats for the LONG train ride home. Our train left at around 1 PM and we got back to Brussels just after 8 PM. It was a long day and we both didn't want to get on another train for a long time. Switzerland was amazing. We both agreed that it is our favorite place in Europe, so far (not that we've been too many places). It was awesome hearing the German language, tasting the fondue, pretzels, chocolate, and most of all seeing the Alps.
Pretzels were everywhere in Switzerland, kind of like waffles are in Brussels.
We passed through Bern on the train. This is where my ancestors are from, so I had to prove that I was actually there.
This is one of the many many trains we were on.
