Thunersee Lake Cruise and Adelboden

Finally it is Monday, we can go grocery shopping! Nope today is some holiday here and grocery stores are still closed!

Today we went to the train station and got our Swiss Pass which will allow us to have unlimited train/bus travel in all of Switzerland. Lucky for us there is a 2 for 1 special until the end of the month that saved us a bunch of money and with the pass, Ally will be free. There is exception for the mountain top trains for us but we will get a 50% discount on those. When I added up our costs without the pass we would about break even with the pass but having the pass means no ticket counters and we can hop on and off any time. For our first adventure we wanted to go to Adelboden which is where the very first Girl Scout Chalet was built and is a Girl Scout World Centre. Ally was very excited to visit it to get a special pin and patch. But first we decided to get there the scenic way. First we hopped onto a cruise boat to go from Interlaken West to the lakeside town of Spiez. The views were breathtaking.

 Eric enjoying his cup of hot chocolate

 My beautiful daughter with her hot chocolate mustache

 The paragliders are a treat to watch. We can see them appear from many of the mountain tops a couple times an hour.

We were 2/3rd the way through our cruise when they came through to check tickets. The guy informed us that where we were sitting was actually for first class so we would need to move. We never saw any signs. On the way down we saw a little sign that said: 1.Klasse. I guess if I spoke German I would know that it meant 1st Class. The sign was on the wall opposite from where we face when we enter the stair well. They didn't make a big deal about it. We just went down to the second level for the rest of the cruise. We arrived in the town of Spiez and had about a 25 min walk to the train station. We decided not to pay for the mini-tram, little did we know it was uphill the whole way, but it still had beautiful views.

Then we took a train to the town of Frutigen where we hopped on a bus to Adelboden. From the bus stop we had a 20 minute walk uphill again with breathtaking views.

 We love the cows and their bells on! It makes me wonder if they ever get sick of the ringing. Just chewing makes the bell ring.

We had a another great day!

Guten tag!

When planning our trip to Switzerland I read that English is one of their official languages and we shouldn't have a problem. This is mostly true. Everyone I have spoken to speaks English to us but every single sign here is in German. If we are lucky, we can sometimes find English in the fine print. But so far we are not having any problems getting around.

When we arrived in Wilderswil we were met by the woman we were renting an apartment from. The place is just a 5-8 min walk from the train station. We got a quick tour and then we wanted to head off to get some dinner. She gave us a good recommendation for a fondue restaurant and it was only a 10 min walk. We ordered just the basic cheese fondue with a basket of bread and about 20 finger potatoes.

When we asked for water they brought out a bottle of mineral water. Our bill came to $95! Well, now we can say we enjoyed authentic cheese fondue in Switzerland and we will be sure to go to the grocery store in the morning. We had a lovely walk back to the apartment, here are some of the views where we are staying.

 These poppies are huge, larger than my hand!

Even the bees are huge!

The next morning Eric went to the grocery store only to find it is closed on Sundays. So he picked up just a few provisions for breakfast at a market similar to 7-11.  We have some toast and bananas and we head off to check out some 12th century ruins just up the hill from the restaurant. I start to take some fabulous photos to find I left the SD card in the laptop. You will just have to use your imagination, it was beautiful.

Next we head into Interlaken by bus to find a market and lunch. Looks like all supermarkets are closed on Sundays so we try to find an inexpensive place to eat. Some places we were passing were pretty expensive and I saw the familiar golden arches and thought we would just save some money and be able to compare Swiss McDonalds to American. I walked in and took one look at the menu and my jaw hit the floor!

Am I reading this right? A small value meal with a big mac is 11.50 franks? That is $10.50 US. Apparently all the restaurants try and keep a price standard. So we figured at least we would know what we are getting so we got 3 Big Mac's, a medium fry and a medium coke and it was $27. Oh my, we are really going to need a grocery store soon!

I thought this vending machine on a street corner was hilarious, it is it's own little mini mart. From top left: Candy bar, licorice party sticks, a pregnancy  test, cigarettes, lighters, cigarette papers, bottled water, cannabis iced tea, Capri-Sonne(sun), and box of chocolate milk.

Next we headed to the Seilpark Ropes Course. we had fun navigating obstacles and zip lining!

We didn't get to go through all the courses before they closed so we were a little disappointed but we still had fun. It was a long walk back to the bus stop, we stopped and picked up some deli sandwiches for dinner, and headed home.

Switzerland here we come!

After a late night of partying we had to be up at 7 am for our long journey to Switzerland. We had to make so many connections that are precisely timed and one wrong move and it could throw it all off. We discovered first class was only 100 euros more total for the whole trip so we decided to splurge since we had saved so much money not eating out for last 2 weeks.

We arrived at Laval Station 10 minutes before the train arrived at 8:40 am that took us to Paris Montparnasse Station. Then we had to enter the metro with all our luggage and go to the Bercy Station then change metro trains and go to Paris Gare de Lyon. We had only an hour to do our metro switch and with all the stops we were starting to get really nervous. We entered Gare de Lyon with only 20 minutes to spare and no idea how to get from the metro to the SCNF train platforms. It is a huge station. We see the signs that look like the train and we follow it to a main lobby and then NOTHING, there are no more signs directing us where to go and we start freaking out. I then saw a sign at an elevator that said to "Grande lignes" and hoped this meant that one of our trains could be found on a Grand sized line. A woman who was waiting for the elevator didn't speak English but when I pointed to the elevator and asked if SCNF was there she said "oui". I decided to put my faith in her and we got in. We now had only 15 minutes until our train departed. I think she sensed how stressed we were and she motioned for us to follow her and she would show us where we needed to go. Thank goodness she did because we had to make a few more unmarked turns through Gare de Lyon. She took us to the main train lobby, a completely separate and unmarked station within the metro station, and finally we see our train up on the board with 10 minutes to spare. After validating our tickets we start looking for our train car and see we were starting at car 18 and had to go up to the front for first class in car 2. Holy Moly! It is about 1/4 a mile to the front of the train. We get to the front and it is only car 12! Oh no! We ask someone and he says that there was a mistake and we are supposed to be in 12 not 2. Phew! We finally get in and find our seats. Oh crap! Someone is sitting in our seats! After comparing tickets with them we found we went the wrong way and were in car 13. Okay, turn around, go to the other entrance and find our seats. Oh *$!%! Someone is sitting in our seats. After comparing tickets we find that our seats were double booked because of the mistake. They try and tell us that we must have the wrong train and we find another conductor coming through. He directs us to just to take some empty seats on the other side of the aisle. If this is how things go in first class I can only imagine what the people in second class had to go through. But finally we have a seat and we are exhausted, maybe we can take a nap. Nope, the family who has our original seats have a toddler who is behaving, well, like a toddler. This is going to be a long 3 hours until our next connection. Luckily they ended up getting out in Dijon halfway and we take our assigned seats back and I spread out onto 2 seats and try and take a nap. The seats are much more comfortable in 1st class =)

I wake up 10 minutes later to find we are stopped at a station. There are announcements overhead in French and people start standing up to stretch their legs. Eric found a gentlemen who speaks English and he explains there is something on the tracks ahead and we must wait for it to get cleared. I look out the window and this is what I see:

 Umm, what exactly is on the tracks ahead? Hopefully they always protect their stations in the middle of nowhere this way. 30 minutes later and we are on the move again.  Phew! Luckily we had an hour layover in Mulhouse so we should be okay. It is so frustrating when they make announcements into the intercom on trains. They speak fast and it is a bit garbled so even if we spoke decent french they would be hard to understand. Luckily there has always been someone kind enough on trains to translate information when we ask.

From Mulhouse we headed to Basel. We discovered that in France they call it Bale (when there is a hat on a letter that means that a "s" has been omitted. I learned that from a local in Paris =) So after lugging all the luggage up to the designated platform 7, we check the sign again and it says to platform 5, which is where we just came from. Back down the stairs we go with all the luggage. The train starts to come in and everyone else turns around following an announcement in French and we discovered our train actually came into #4. Good thing we aren't jet lagged travelers (maybe just a little sleep deprived). While waiting on the platform, Ally was eyeing the candy in the vending machine. We had already spent all of our Euros so she was disappointed. She was swinging the door of the machine to pass time and a miracle occurred, a bag of M&M's fell out. She was grinning from ear to ear and wanted to make sure I told all my blog viewers about her lucky day! On the train to Basel we were asking a local how easy it will be to get to our next platform since we only had 9 minutes to switch trains to go to  Interlaken Ost. He spoke great English and helped run us through the station and we made it with 2 minutes to spare. Traveling can be so stressful but as soon as we crossed the borders into Switzerland our stress seemed to melt away with the beautiful views.

 Every time I tried to take a picture this lady kept staring at me in the window.

 Taking pictures on a moving train with tinted windows is more difficult than it would seem, I just wanted to give you an idea =)

 The nice comfortable seats in first class

When arriving in Interlaken Ost we needed to take a local train to Wilderswil and we knew there was one leaving 5 minutes after we arrive if we could find the train, buy tickets, and get on the train in time. Knowing there was another one 30 minutes later we weren't too concerned. We made it to the train but couldn't find a ticket counter or machine. I found a worker and she said that we should buy it from the counter next time but she would sell us tickets once we got on the train so we didn't miss it. We finally arrived at our destination and can't wait for our new adventures.

 Here is the list of people I would like to thank who enriched our lives today:

To the lady who helped us find the trains in  Paris Gare de Lyon
To the toddler who reminded me why I use birth control
To the man who translated the overhead announcements so we knew why we were stopped
To the man who led us through the crowded train station so we could make our connection.
To the woman who agreed to sell us a ticket on the train so we could make the connection and
To the vending machine for freely dispensing candy and cheering up my child who was being so good during such a long crazy journey. She carried her own luggage on her back and ran through the stations when needed. She was such a trooper!