Rushing water and mountain scenery

Today was our last of three full days in the Swiss Alps. Of our remaining travel plans, today was a visit to Grindelwald, one of the more touristy destinations in the Alps, mainly due to its location. I also wanted to visit Reichenbach Falls. For those that don't know what it represents in fiction, Reichenbach Falls is where Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty.

I've added some photos to the Swiss Alps set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/

As well as adding a new set for Grindelwald:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645543302097/

We'd started out a bit later than planned, meaning we got to Grindelwald at about 2 in the afternoon. We drove around for a while trying to find the best place for a panorama, before driving in to the centre of town:

Grindelwald town

After getting some smaller change, we wandered around for a while. It was very touristy, and prices were outrageous - around AUD$60 for a steak! But then everything in Switzerland is expensive.

The views though are amazing. It's basically surrounded on all four sides by the Alps, and the results are quite spectacular:

The mountains in Grindelwald

We got as far as the train stations, where trains leave to go to Jungfrau, one of the more famous mountains in Switzerland, behind Matterhorn. By then we'd mostly had enough, so we wandered back to the car and headed towards Reichenbach Falls.

It was fair way there, and by the time we'd got there, the cable car up to the falls wasn't running. So we instead made the half-hour hike up. Dad went on the roads instead, so it took a bit longer than planned, but the end result was absolutely spectacular. You can see the mist being pushed by the falls from the bottom of the hill, and the volume of water smashing into the rocks is something to behold:

Reichenbach Falls area

There was also some decent scenery on the way up, with a view of the towns in the valley below. It was getting quite late, so we hurried back down to the car and then back to the chalet. After a late dinner, we'll head off to Strasbourg tomorrow. See you there!

The Chalet

Well, as promised, here is a description of our chalet in the middle of the Swiss Alps. Here's a Google Maps location of where it is relative to everything:

http://tinyurl.com/l8xzcrk

It's surrounded by a few other chalets, but it's summer, so they were mostly unoccupied while we were there. On the inside, the chalet has a lot of small rooms in order to function properly.

The kitchen has a stove and oven, while the fridge is located in another room:

Kitchen

There are two toilets which are next to the bathroom, which just has one long sink:

Bathroom

The dining room consists of a few tables and wooden bar stools, as well as a cushioned seat running the length of the room, joined to the wall:

Dining room/living room

There's one small bedroom, which usually houses the chalet's manager during winter when it's busy:

The bedroom

Upstairs is where things get interesting. We calculated that there's room for up to 24 people, squeezed into small spaces (like each person has 75cm of width small) in terms of both width and height. I could barely stand upright in the tallest space, let alone while lying down:

The upstairs dormitory

Down... and up... and down...

The weather today was actually surprisingly better than we thought it would be. We'd come up with two travel plans for the remaining two days we had here. Today we chose to go down the highway to see Chillon Castle, on the banks of Lake Geneva near Montreux, and to come back up the highway via Fribourg, which is another European city with a really lovely old town.

Check out the two Flickr sets I've got for today. First one is for the Swiss Alps, second one is for Fribourg only:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645535225457/

So after heading down the hill, once again in pretty treacherous, foggy conditions, we flew down the highway towards Lake Geneva. Seriously, that 40 Francs for the vignette was money really well spent. I took a couple of photos of the lake in Montreux, and ended up standing next to a family who were talking, in German, about their upcoming holiday to Australia. I joined the conversation and gave them a few pointers on what to expect.

We got to Chillon Castle to find out that you need a 'disc' for parking. Swiss roads/car parks are strange. We got one for free from the people at the castle, and put it on the dashboard. All it basically does it tells you what time you arrived, so there's a limit of 2 hours enforced properly.

I hadn't ever intended on going into the castle, and for good reason - there were plenty of people queueing to get in, and it's not exactly a big castle by European standards. We gave it a miss and instead wandered up and down the lake taking photos for a while:

Chillon Castle

About 90 minutes later we got back in the car and went back north towards Fribourg. This time we could only find paid parking, so we put an hour's worth of coins in and set off to explore. After dad and I went our separate ways, I went down this REALLY large (like 200-large) flight of stairs down to the bottom level. "Takes lots of photos".

After a while I stumbled upon free 'disc' parking, so I sent dad a text with the GPS coordinates asking if he could drive down here so we could do some more exploring. After 20 minutes and no response, panic mode set in and I sprinted back UP the staircase to the car park, to find no Renault Megane any more. Cue phone call: dad had gone down there without sending a message. So I had to go all the way back down the staircase AGAIN. My knees wanted to die after that.

Anyways, we did some more exploring and took some more photos:

Lower old town of Fribourg

After which we headed in a straight line back to the chalet, except going on toll-free roads instead of on the motorway. We came across a couple of nice looking wheat fields, and stopped a couple of times to take photos:

Wheat fields of Switzerland

Hopefully tomorrow we'll make it to Grindelwald, which is right in the middle of some of the biggest mountains in Switzerland. See everyone then!

Picturesque Thun

Today we weren't quite sure what to do. It was our first of three full days in the Swiss Alps, and we had sort of planned out some day trips, but nothing was set in concrete. It was all dependent on the weather.

The Swiss Alps gallery is small, but is still on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/

Also check out the more extensive Thun library:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645531251897/

We decided that we would definitely need some supplies to see us through until the end of the trip, so I googled some supermarkets. The nearest ones were all half an hour's drive away, one of which was in Thun. After getting the coordinates for it and plugging it into the GPS, we set off.

Of course one of the issues with only being in Switzerland for 4 days is that everything is in Francs. And although the supermarket we found (a Coop) allowed us to pay in Euros, albeit at a slightly poorer exchange rate than normal, the paid car park required Francs. So we had to get 20 Francs out, and get it changed into coins. Luckily the lady at the Coop counter was very helpful.

After doing some shopping, we headed to another car park, this time nearer to Thun's old town, and paid for a couple of hours. There are a few things to do, and we started ambling down the river. Immediately the nearby medieval bridge caught our eye. It's one of those old-style Swiss bridges designed to regulate the flow of water:

Medieval bridge in Thun

We realised we would run out of time about halfway between the bridge and Thun's old castle, so we rapidly made our way back to the car park. No little piece of paper under the windscreen wiper, yay! Our second stop was a panorama point, where there is supposedly a panorama made by a local artist ages ago. We never saw that, but there is a castle called Schadau, so we explored the gardens a while before heading back to the car, and back to the Alps:

Grounds of Schloss Schadau

Here's a couple of other standout photos from today:

Other good photos from today

The drive back up the hill in Diemtigen was hairy. Really hairy. The fog had really rolled in, and by the time we got all the way up the hillside you could barely see anything. I promise you that there was a chalet about 20 metres in front of me when I took this picture. No, really:

There's a chalet here, I promise

Tomorrow's plan is to go down south to the shores of Lake Geneva, and then visit a town on the way back. Until then!