Weekend trip 1 Part 2: Grindelwald
Sorry this took so long. Our son came out to visit for 2 months, and I got sidetracked with tracking his flight, picking him up from the airport, a little light sightseeing, etc. over the weekend. Now it’s Monday, and I can give you part 2 - Grindelwald!
The legs of these train trips were really reasonable - Zürich to Bern was about an hour, Bern to Grindelwald was about an hour and a half. This trip was interesting because they had the Grindelwald passengers board in certain cars and Lauterbrunnen passengers board in others. At some point during a stop (Zweilütschinen, I think), they split the train off and we went in different directions. The first 2 pics are from the train ride, and the last 2 are what you see as soon as you get off the train at Grindelwald and our view from the balcony of our hotel room.
Funny story: I booked the hotel in Bern the day that we left, so Cass booked the hotel in Grindelwald the morning that we left Bern. He used booking.com and thought he had booked the Sunstar Hotel Grindelwald, but he had actually booked the Sunstar Hotel Wengen (which is over by Lauterbrunnen). Since it was done on booking.com, the hotel in Grindelwald couldn’t really help, so we just got a room (at the $$$$ rate) at the Sunstar Grindelwald because it is practically across the street from the gondola we were using for our hike. We thought we were just going to eat the cost of the other room, but he managed to get someone from booking.com on the phone, and they got it canceled and refunded. Score!
After we got checked in, Cass wanted to go up the gondola just to look around. He likened it to when you get to Orlando and you just can’t wait to get into the WDW park. So we stopped at the restaurant by the hotel and had some Rösti. It was delicious - this was the kind with cheese, bacon, and a fried egg on top. Best Rösti so far. These are the pictures that I took from inside the gondola on the way up to First. There are 2 stops on the way up the mountain (which is called Schwarzhorn) - the first one is Bort, and the second one is Schreckfeld. Bort is about 1561 m (5121 ft), Schreckfeld is about 1954 m (6410 ft), and First is 2167 m (7111 ft). At each gondola stop, there is a restaurant and/or equipment rental places. They have scooter bikes and mountain carts that look like big tricycles that you can ride down the mountain. There’s also the a glider and kind of a zip line that you can ride down from First to Schreckfeld.
These are some pictures of the views from the restaurant at First. The middle one is the Cliff Walk, which Cass did but I did not.
All of the trails are marked by yellow signs, so it’s really easy to not get lost up on the mountain. We decided we would hike down to the Schreckfeld gondola stop, which really isn’t very far and you can see it from First, and then take the gondola down to Grindelwald from there. If you look at the first picture of the green mountains, you can see the dark clouds that showed up just as we started to hike down. We got about a third of the way down, and it started to sprinkle. Then it started to hail. We decided to cut through a cow pasture (off trail) to get there quicker, and it was quite tricky to navigate. In the picture of the cow, you can see the blurry hail. The last pic is clearly out of order, but it’s pretty - idk when it was taken.
On Sunday, we went back up to First and took the hiking path to Bachalpsee (Bach Alp Lake). The first part was pretty uphill and had me questioning my ability to even hike, but then it got better. Then we saw cows! And flowers! More cows! Cows on the trail! It was about a 50 minute hike to the lake. There were lots of people there picnicking and enjoying the weather. And the cows. They were a lot like dogs coming over to beg for some of your picnic food. Most people were scared of them, but I got to pet the one who came over to us. I did not share my Cheez-Its with him though. The rest of our lunch menu was Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, beer, and water.
I wanted to hike down to the Bort gondola stop, but Cass thought it would take too long. He went and looked at the yellow signs, and it claimed it was a 90 minute hike down, so I won! However, I was not prepared to go from a nice, wide gravel hiking trail to a narrow, rocky, steep, right on the edge of a steep drop-off hiking trail. By the end of it, I was an expert. (ha!) There were more flowers, some ancient stacked rock formations (lol), and a dog that I got to pet (unfortunately not pictured)! We did finally reach a nice wide gravel trail, but it was short lived. Not long after we got on it, there was a sign that said this way (straight down) 40 min to Bort, or this way (nice wide gravel trail) 60 min to Bort. Cass, of course, chose 40 min straight down. That was, um, fun. It was a dirt path that was full of switchbacks. We did survive it, however, and made it to the Bort gondola station, then rode the gondola down to Grindelwald. Our souvenir collection: 2 shirts, 1 cowbell, and 1 sticker for the Canton of Bern. I have a collection of stickers on my laptop from the cantons that we visit.
The trip back to Zürich was a little less nice because every single train was totally crowded. We had missed the weekend crowds on Friday because we left early, but Sunday was peak crowd time. It was nice to get home, and we were sore for the next 2 days, but I’m ready to go again!
