We had a late start to the morning. Last night we were both woken up by noisy neighbors around 3 a.m. Jacob checked his phone to see alerts that our internet had died at home. I know this may not seem like a big deal but it controls all sorts of things in our house from the AC to turning lights on and off while we are away. Plus, we couldn’t check our cat cams! Luckily, our cat feeder for the day was heading over and we were able to get in touch with her to make sure everything was ok and to have the router reset.
Yes, we know we are crazy cat parents. She teased us about having the AC on for our cat!
After that debacle, we got back to sleep and woke up around 7:30 a.m. It wasn’t until about 9 a.m. that we were out the door and headed to a local bakery that our AirBnB host recommended. Jacob and I both got a delicious vanilla schnecken pastry to go.
We then walked through town and purchased our transit passes for our time here. Our regional passes which give us unlimited trips on the trains, buses and cable cars cost $270 Swiss Francs each. Yes, you read that right. Even though this is a steep cost, it will end up saving us money. One of the cable car rides we took today would have cost $90 each alone. And we took many cable cars and trains today. Long story short, Switzerland is expensive.
After purchasing our tickets we walked to our first cable car of the day. We took a gondola type cable car up to Mannlichen. We wandered about Mannlichen for a bit and took some pictures of the views. We noticed that we heard many American voices, and this continued to be trend throughout the day. At Mannlichen there was a restaurant and giant playground for kids.
We hopped on a cable car here and it took us down the other side of the mountain to Wengen. We wandered around Wengen for a bit and then stopped by another bakery and picked out some yummy treats. Jacob got a strawberry tart and I got a cheesey pretzel that they warmed for me. We ate these in a park nearby. The weather was warm today and beautiful blue skies with big white puffy clouds.
After eating our treats, we applied sunscreen and I also applied bug spray. I am determined to not get anymore bites!
We then walked over to the train station to take this to Lauterbrunnen. We visited Lauterbrunnen in 2016 and Jacob wanted to recreate our trip. We only spent a short time in this area before so we plan to add in a few more scenic adventures. But first, we wanted to see if anything was different or had changed. One major change for us was the crowds. When we traveled here in 2016, it was in October and there were hardly any people around. Not this time, some of the cable cars we were stuffed on were so full of people we could barely move. I told Jacob that it was literally my nightmare.
Anyway…
Once we arrived in Lauterbrunnen we began the familiar walk that we had done six years ago. It was so beautiful and clear today. When we were here in 2016 it was overcast.
I was a little disappointed by the lack of cows but we did see goats.
We continued our walk to Trummelbach Falls. We went here in 2016 and wanted to go again. Trummelbach Falls has 10 glacial waterfalls that are encased inside the mountain. When you arrive there you can take an elevator inside the mountain toward the top of the falls and then work your way down to see all the different falls. You walk up stairs and through caves to get different vantage points. In some areas it was really cold and we got covered in spray from the falls. It was hard to capture these well on camera but we did take a few videos. One of the really impressive parts of this is how loud the falls are echoing throughout the caves. It is a never-ending rumble.
Here is a link to a short video from within the caves.
Once we were done there, we stopped by their restaurant for a quick break before we headed out on the next leg of our walk.
From Trummelbach Falls we walked to Stechelberg and hopped on a cable car up to Gimmelwald. We walked around Gimmelwald which is a very small town. We saw the Honesty Shop that we had visited six years ago and checked it out again. They now have cold beverages for $4. We also walked by a spot where I took our photo in 2016. So we had to recreate it with a selfie!
The next cable car to Murren was supposed to arrive in about 15 minutes but we figured we should get there early just in case, which was good on our part because the cable car was 10 minutes early! We had to run down a hill and jump on another crowded cable car just in time to make the trek to Murren.
Once in Murren, we again just strolled through the town. We were looking for a place to eat but many of the shops were closed because it was Sunday and we weren’t looking for a big meal.
After failing to find food, we continued on so that we could catch a train from Murren to Grutschalp. We hopped off the train and ran over to catch another cable car that would take us to Lauterbrunnen. The cable car was packed but said it could somehow magically fit 40 more people! We were so squished. This is when I said it was my worst nightmare. I basically just stared at the floor until we reached the bottom.
From there we were back on train the rest of the way back to Grindelwald. It felt like we traveled all over Switzerland today and really we just scratched the surface of all the amazing things to see and do here. Though we were trying to keep it a light day, my watch tracked 11 miles of walking today… oops!
We stopped by the store on our way back to the apartment and picked up food for dinner and breakfast. We still plan to visit the bakery in the morning, don’t worry. I told Jacob it was my goal to eat an obscene amount of pastries while we are here.
We have a few different things we want to do over the next few days but we are going to let the weather in the morning and how we feel, be the judge of the activities. One of our hikes is pretty strenuous. We will see what tomorrow brings.
Until then!