Switzerland Wrap Up

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…
February 17th – The night before, I had wished that we would have another snow storm before we left Switzerland…well, that happened. When we woke up this morning, it was snowing really hard. We decided to take the train into Interlaken today to shop and arrange our train ticket to Spain. It’s about a 30 minute train ride. We arrived at station Interlaken Ost, but needed to make our way to Interlaken West (a couple of miles apart). Instead of paying for the train ride, we decided to walk. Daniela, at the Booking Office, said that it was an easy walk with a lot of shops along the way. Well, I have no doubt about the easy walk on a good weather day, but it was snowing a lot. We did make the walk, but were very cold and wet by the time we stopped for lunch. Migros Restaurant was our choice for the day. Rick Steve’s book recommended it as an inexpensive lunch, as did Daniela. Migros is one of the local grocery stores with a cafeteria style restaurant. It reminded us a little bit like Central Market and definitely was inexpensive in comparison. After lunch, we decided to do some shopping since we had to wait for the train ticket office to open back up from lunch. Around here, everything literally closes for a couple of hours for lunch. I was determined to find a Santa Claus made in Switzerland. I was thrilled to find one that was carved out of wood locally. We then arrived back at the train station to check on the tickets to Spain. Well, we learned the hard way that overnight train rides need to be booked way in advance. There was nothing available. Mike spent about 20 minutes with the travel agent looking at all various train options and all that was available was a day train that would have taken over 15 hours. We decided that would be a nightmare with the kids and was not a task we were willing to tackle at this point. We were upset that we wouldn’t be able to take the night train and headed back to Lauterbrunnen to determine what to do. Once we arrived there, Mike went to search the internet to figure out how we were going to get to Spain. After some research online, he found us a flight out of Geneva to Madrid on one of the local budget airlines (think Southwest). While it cost a little more than we had planned, a 15 hour train ride turns into a 3 hour train ride to Geneva with a 2 hour flight to Madrid…definitely a good trade-off.

Bond. James Bond
February 18th –Today we took 4 different cable cars up 10,000 feet to the summit of the Schilthorn (mountain). Piz Gloria, the station at the top, includes a rotating restaurant. We decided to eat lunch first and it was by far the best meal I’ve had so far. Sputzli was the name of the dish, but basically it was homemade mini-dumplings with ham, pears and fried onions. Also, it was cool to rotate around while eating and see all the beautiful mountain tops. The James Bond movie, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, was filmed at Piz Gloria and highlights from the movie are shown in a panorama video. While we were at 10,000 feet, Austin had his own shining moment. He pee-peed in a public restroom potty for the first time. I do believe we had to make some James Bond moves to make that happen too. After we were over the “007” hype, we headed back down by 2 cable cars to the village of Murren and went ice skating. The kids had a rough start, but finally got the hang of it (a little bit) and we skated for a couple of hours. The weather was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shining so it was perfect for ice skating outdoors.

Never Say Never
February 19th –Scratch the last sentence in “Got Snow boots?” blog because we did go sledging again today without proper footwear! We obviously got over the effects it had on us and given that it was our next to last day in Switzerland, we wanted to do it again. We rode the train up to station Kleine Sheindigg so that we would have a long sledging run. Well, halfway down, Mike and Austin’s steering wheel on their sledge broke off which caused Mike to have to steer the sledge with his feet. When we arrived at the Allmend train station, Mike’s shoes were full of snow and he could not go any further. So we took the train back down to Wengen where we had a picnic lunch. After lunch, we went to trade out the sledge, but they did not have another one with a steering wheel. Lucky Mike (at least he thought) because they loaned him a pair of snow boots so that he could steer his new sledge with his feet. We went up the cable car to the Mannlichen stop. Off we went down the sledge trail…Abby and I were doing fine, but Mike and Austin were having a little difficulty. When they came down the mountain, the “steering feet” caused snow to blow right back in their faces. Poor Austin looked like a snowman because he was completely covered with snow. It is hard to steer a sledge with your feet or at least harder than it looks. It took about 2 hours to make our way down the run and then back to Wengen. We had to make a stop at our favorite bakery in Wengen for some sweets before heading back to the apartment.