Right now I am sitting at a little desk in our little room in a little town square with a little castle overhead in little Thun, Switzerland listening to traditional Swiss music playing outside my window. It’s pretty fantastic.

We will be here for the next three days.

Since I did most of the hotel booking, Jacob was slightly displeased about driving down a little cobblestone road to this town square and waiting for me to check in. We are staying at Hotel Krone. It is a beautiful old building that has been renovated nicely. Although we are in a tiny little room, its so well put together it feels quite comfortable.

My face is feeling hot as I write this because Jacob and I inevitably got sun burnt during our mountain excursions today. We did remember our sunglasses though so that’s a plus.

This morning we ate our free breakfast at our hotel in Zurich and then quickly checked out and were on the road. A good thing too! We didn’t realize what a big day we had ahead of us.

It was less than an hour drive to Lucerne and once we arrived we navigated to the central station to park our car. Jacob had figured out that we could buy a half-fare pass for our time in Switzerland that would cut some of our costs down. Essentially its a voucher you buy and then all your train fare is half the cost. You need to be using the train quite a bit to make it worth it. So over the next few days we will be on the train quite a bit!

After chatting with some nice people at tourist information we purchased all the tickets we would need to navigate to Mount Pilatus. This would involve getting on a train from Lucerne to Alpnachstad. From there you get off the train, show your ticket to some friendly people and they give you another ticket to board the super steep train that goes straight up the mountain at a terrifying angle. Jacob tells me this is the steepest train in the world.  The steepest angle is 48 percent. We were in the car with a German family and two men traveling from India. The father of the German family was so kind to swap seats with me so that I could take pictures out of the window, which was a bit terrifying but also awesome.

 

After that the family gave us lots of nice tips about what to do at the top of the mountain. They were so kind!

Once we arrived at the top, a mere 7,000 feet, we were off exploring. There are several paths you can take from the top. In fact, there are many trails that you can take from the very bottom up if you want to. Even though we like to earn our views, we decided to do that with cash via the train instead this time.

The views were absolutely spectacular. The pathways are a bit rocky and you have to watch your head from time to time. (if you click on the photos below they are enlarge)

After some initial exploration it was time for lunch! Lucky for us this place had food for a hefty price. We got some sausage, fries and vegetables then sat out in the sunshine to admire the mountaintops around us.

After lunch it was off on more exploring.

Little black birds were everywhere picking up little scraps that people were feeding them. They were pretty cute. We also saw some mountain goats in the far distance.

While at the top of Tomlishorn we ran into some friendly Americans visiting from Chicago. We chatted with them for a bit and they shared some suggestions about places to see in Zermatt where we are headed next. It was wonderful getting to chat with them for a bit and share our experiences. They were kind enough to take the photo below.

After a trek down the mountain, our adventure wasn’t quite over.

Now it was on to the cable car for the way down. I mean we had to get down 7,000 feet somehow and I wasn’t getting back on that train.

But after taking the cable car, maybe I would have…

Ok, the cable car was cool. But it was also scary. You get on this big cable car with 20 other people and it zooms down thousands of feet from the top of the mountain as you dangle in the air. I was too scared to move during the ride so I took a photo once we were safely on the ground.

From here I was informed we had two more cable car rides, but in small little four-person gondolas. Oh goody!

I want to note that Jacob, who is not a fan of heights, thoroughly enjoyed this part.

Even though I was 80 percent sure we were going to careen to our death I have to say the cable cars were awesome and the whole experience absolutely worth it.

For the next three nights we will be in Thun making short trips here and there. We plan to visit the Jungfrau and Lautnerbrunnen Valley. Tonight I am enjoying our room service and putting my feet up to rest.