Swiss chalets and cowbells

Tuesday 6^th May

A leisurely drive today from Fluh (near Basel) headed to Schwanden between the towns of Thun and Interlaken – some of you may have heard of Interlaken. Zofia (our host last night) sent us on our way with supplies for morning tea and leftovers. She was so hospitable and tried so hard – she is keen for us to come back one day and says she will cook dinner for us gratis. She tried so hard with her English – it made me embarrassed that we had no words of her language at all. One word that will stick with us though is ‘catastroph’ (no ‘e’ on the end) – the banks, catastroph; the government, catastroph; my English, catastroph. Very funny.

Our B&B - a bit kitsch.

Our host - Zofia

 We followed reasonably major roads and avoided a couple of tunnels that would have cut some of the scenery. Until we got to Bern the scenery was really nothing special but on the outskirts of Bern we got our first glimpse of the real Swiss Alps. We both went WOW! And it got more WOW the closer we got.

Just one of the views along the way.

We stopped in the town of Thun for lunch and wandered the old village streets for a while. We were quite alarmed at the prices of food - they obviously earn a lot higher wages than we do because people were still eating lunch out.

The river that passes through Thun after exiting Lake Thun.

Now we are at our hotel and whilst we have a north facing room which gives us swiss chalets and cow bells, out the front of the hotel the views of the mountains are nothing short of spectacular. The hotel is about 3k off the road that runs alongside the lake, and about 500 metres higher, so it is a pretty steep, narrow and twisty road to get here.

 

What we can see from our hotel window.

The sound of the cow bells as these cows grazed
was just beautiful.

The next few are all from in front of the hotel.

We did a short drive along the lake looking for somewhere for dinner and eventually headed back into Thun. Again the price of food was astronomical and in desperation we settled for McDonalds. This was cheap compared to all the alternatives and *only* cost 30 swiss francs which is about 38 AUD. OUCH!!!

At least standing on the edge of the terrasse at Maccas
we had some sort of view.

Tomorrow we plan on taking the train to the highest railway station in the world - Jungfrau. It will be a very early start – 5am to catch the 6.30 train. We are charging up the camera batteries ready for some stunning shots tomorrow. Fingers crossed for the weather!