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A bit of a mixed experience today, some good and some not so good. Got packed up and out this morning by 10 am. We were headed towards Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Grindelwald, like most Swiss towns in the mountains, lies on the floor of the valley sandwiched by mountains on both sides. Our drive to Zermatt required us to leave the valley and go through another. The highway takes you up and up until it is blocked by the mountains. It is impossible at this point to drive any further south. If you want to proceed, you have to either drive clear around the mountains or drive your car onto a train which then transports you through a six mile tunnel to the other side. It is a strange, but cool experience. Unfortunately it is the height of tourist season and a Saturday so when we got there, there were already dozens of cars in line. We inched our way forward and soon came to a complete stop. The way the train works is that there is a train at each end of the tunnel going in opposite directions. One goes and then the other. The cars from the first train disembark, more are loaded and the process continues in the other direction. People in our line began to get restless. Many went to the station bathroom or visited the small convenience store on site. A man in front of us sprinted with his son in his arms to the side of the road for an emergency potty break. Two young employees of the railroad walked from car to car dispensing packages of Stroop waffles. Finally after 90 minutes of waiting, it was our turn. We drove up on the rail car, turned off the engine and we were off.
Riding the car-train ferry through the mountain.
Riding in the tunnel is somewhat disorienting. The walls of the tunnel whiz by in the dark a mere few feet from where you are sitting. It is loud. The only lights are a few tunnel lights and the distant lights from the engine. The trip is loud. The whole journey takes about ten minutes. We drove off at the end and continued our journey. While finalizing our route, we decided to pull over to verify our map and reservations. To our surprise and shock, we realized that our reservation in Visp, our next stop, wasn’t for today, but tomorrow! Big oops. Dave had thought that he’d made the reservation for three nights when it was actually three DAYS. What to do, go ahead and hope that we could find a place to stay or get back on the train and go all the way back to our previous AirBnb? Out of desperation he first contacted the AirBnB that we had just left and the AirBnB that we would be at the the following day hoping to get an extra night on either end. That was not possible in Visp, but the manager in Grindlewald said that we were in luck, that they were open another night and we could stay for $150 cash. So we got back on the train and headed back. Came back to the house, pulled out all the food and made a nice picnic lunch of fresh bread, cheese and salami. We decided to salvage what we could from the day and take a hike.
Our destination was Murren. Don mapped out a route and off we went. Curiously, we ran out of pavement right away and the road shrunk to one lane with precipitous drop offs on one side. There were many switchbacks so driving was slow and careful. We were all alone except for a few farmsteads and a few cows. This couldn’t be right. Eventually the Google Map’s route just stopped so we aborted our trip. The reason that we hadn’t seen any cars was because there were not supposed to be any cars on the road. It was reserved for hikers and bikers. Who knew? So we slowly retraced our steps but were still determined to walk somewhere. We drove back to Lauterbrunnen and hiked along the river in the valley at the base of the giant massif and the waterfalls. It was an easy walk along a fine gravel walkway.
We walked and photographed for about 45 minutes and then turned back. It was time for dinner and a beer, so we stopped at a restaurant in the middle of town. Had a brat and fries and steins of the good local lager. Afterwards we headed home, unpacked once again, showered and hung out until bedtime.
