Our second morning in the Berner Oberland dawned as bright and sunny as our first so we set off for Lauterbrunnen and the Trümmelbach Falls. The village is small and the people friendly: Kacy was able to get a Swiss Army knife for her son, and the folks at the shop engraved an old one of mine for me at no cost.
There are a number of waterfalls in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and Trümmelbach Falls is one of the most impressive. Ordinarily, you can climb to the top via stairways cut into the hillside or take a funicular, but the path was closed this day, though, so we had to settle for admiring from the road. With all the wildflowers in bloom, it wasn't really a disappointment to "have to" hike along admiring the view...
Then we set off up to the Schilthorn and its Piz Gloria revolving restaurant (the one in the James Bond movie, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"). First, it's a steep cog railway up to Gimmelwald, then another rail to Mürren, and two cable cars from there to the Schilthorn. (On one, from Mürren, we saw a pair of cows being transported!)
The Schilthorn offers the same sort of spectacular views that the Jungfraujoch offers, but from the other side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley. The restaurant revolves slowly and, with beer in hand, you can watch as the top of Europe rolls by.
But we wanted more activity than that so it was back down to Mürren and off to hike in the woods above that tiny town. Kacy kept stopping to pick up rocks when she wasn't off playing in the remaining snowfields in some of the mountain meadows.
The views from Mürren are simply spectacular, and there is little to block the view once you're up above the town itself. And the Mürren side of the mountain is gorgeous itself, with fields of snow crocuses and mountain streams and deep dark stands of trees.
We opted for a relatively early dinner in Mürren (the last train down off the mountain left at about 7:30 p.m., and our hotel was back in Interlaken!). As we came down the mountain, it started to rain and by the time we reached Lauterbrunnen it was clear that it had been raining there for some time. As we approached Interlaken by train, just to the east of town, a double rainbow broke out... and it lasted long enough for us to get several photographs even as we walked along the Interlaken streets back towards the hotel.
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Lauterbrunnen Valley
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Trümmelbach Falls
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Cows on Schilthornbahn
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Cable car
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Schilthorn
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Eiger, Jungfrau, Mönch
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JGR at Schilthorn
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Kacy at Piz Gloria
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'It's a rock, Mom!'
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Mürren view
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Mürren view
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Mürren view
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Mürren view
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Mürren view
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Mürren view
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Dinner in Mürren
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Interlaken rainbow
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Interlaken rainbow
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