The Scroop's European Holiday: Lauterbrunnen

Wow, what a day we have had today, probably one of the best so far. We got up early because the weather forecast suggested some improvement in the weather. We headed out about 7:45 to catch the train into Interlaken and take a boat ride to Brienz. It was still a little cloudy but you could see the clouds above the low lying stuff were fairly high up. The boat was docked right next to the train station and it is a beauty. It is kind of like the Rottnest Islander except this boat is awesome and not crap. The boat leaves just after 9 and starts to make its way along Lake Brienz. The ride will take about 1hour and 20 minutes to travel the length of the lake (which is about 14km) criss-crossing to various stops along the way. The scenery is mind blowing with mountains either side of the lake. When we get to Brienz our wish was to take a cog wheel train up to the Brienzer Rothorn at an altitude of 7,700ft and has views over the mountains and Lake Brienz. This ride does not fall into our pass so we will need to pay extra. When we get to the ticket counter it is about 200 Swiss Francs to go up ($240 AUD). From where we are standing it’s pretty obvious that the clouds will impede our view so we ask the girl if it is cloudy up there. She says it is but there could be a chance that could change. This is something we really wanted to do but we are concerned about paying $240 and then get up there and see a blanket of white, a bit like yesterday. I have a look at the timetable and the boat is returning back to Interlaken in 10 minutes and if we don't get on it it's a 2 hour wait for the next one so we need to make a decision so we decide to bail. We get back on the boat looking up at the cloud wandering if we made the right decision as well as being a bit pissed off with the clouds. The boat starts its journey back and the ride back is even better than the ride there because all of the low lying cloud has gone and it is now a beautiful day. We decide when the boat returns we will go up to the Schynige Platte which is a cog wheel train that takes us to an altitude similar to Brienz. On the map it looks close to the lake so we hope this will be a good substitute for Brienz and the advantage is, this is covered with our pass. We board the train and this thing is tiny. It's a bit like a novelty train you'd see at Whiteman Park. This thing starts going and it's barely nudging 10 km/h. It chugs its way up the hill and this thing is getting steeper and steeper and before too long we have incredible views over Interlaken and both Lake Brienz and Lake Thun. It's hard to describe how incredible the views are and how close these trains travel to the edges of the mountains. It gets to the top and we can see the Eiger and the Jungfrau and all the way down into the Lauterbrunnen valley. When the train stops we don't get out because there is bugger all to do at the top and we ain't waiting an hour to get the next train down so we stay on and head straight back down. This was a real highlight and we are buzzing after that. When we get to the bottom we decide to try the Schilthorn again and we are hopefully after seeing how clear it was up the mountain that maybe it will be clear on the Schilthorn. We get back to Lauterbrunnen around 3:30 and there is a cable car going up at 4pm. We quickly do some shopping and take it back to the apartment before racing down to get the 4pm car. This is the same trip as the other day, accept this time we are sharing the large cable car with Mr. Sniffy. This Asian man is on board and he's sniffing at about 35 sniffs a minute. Even worse he came over to where I was standing to take photos and his sniffing was driving me bonkers. So, I decide to sniff every time he sniffed to try and give him a subtle hint but clearly he was a pro and I couldn't sniff at the rate he was sniffing so I gave up. In the end I just had to block my ears. After the cable car ride and then the train ride to Murren we decide we had to put a gap between us and Mr Sniffy. The walk from the train station to the Schilthorn cable car is about 10 minutes, so we legged it. Mr Sniffy was off taking photos so we managed to get a pretty good gap on him. We get to the cable car ticket counter to buy our tickets and we get told the cable car is leaving in 10 minutes and it's the last cable car for today so we are pretty stoked we managed to get it. This is another of those really big cable cars and we are just hoping that Mr. sniffy has got caught up with his camera because we can't bear the thought of another second with this guy. We are watching the clock and watching the cable car driver and YES......Mr. Sniffy hasn't made it. We thought we were in the clear until we realised we were sharing the cable car with Mr. Sniffy’s wife........Mrs Coughy! This Asian woman was coughing at about 28 coughs a minute and it was one of those really annoying clearing the phlegm from your throat type coughs and not once did she stick her hand to her mouth! We are now convinced we are going to wake up tomorrow with some disgusting mad cow type disease or something. We reach what we think is the top but we are informed we still have another cable car to go. The next cable car not only went up but also crossed over to the Schilthorn peak. We arrive to sound of the James Bond theme song as this was the mountain that the film On His Majesty’s Secret Service was filmed. We have an amazing view as the only cloud around is way too high to interfere. The kids see some snow and they are extremely excited so they start playing in it. There are a few activities to do inside the building that sits on top of the peak so we have a go at those too before we have to catch the last cable car down at 6 o’clock. We get to the cable car and we are waiting for it to go and it’s starting to fill up with people when all of a sudden......sorry, I have just been informed that this bit is not allowed in the blog..........by strict orders from Kristine. We make our way home and eventually arrive back at the apartment sometime after 7. Tonight we are eating in again and we look forward to tomorrow when we get to see the Jungfraujoch.