Grindelwald, Switzerland

Warning: I took over 600 pictures on this trip, so be prepared for a lot of pictures!

We were both lucky enough to have Memorial Day off this year.  It was also our 1st anniversary weekend which made it a double bonus.   A few weeks before we had talked about where we wanted to go - my only preference was the mountains.   It seems like we haven't seen much of them lately and I thought it was only fitting that since we got married in the mountains we should go back there for our anniversary.   So the long process of where to go and where to stay began.  I'd say we probably waited until the last minute to take care of everything, but it seems thats how we do things around here (or at least anything I'm not in charge of).  So after a few days of looking at hotels, reviews, stars, and anything else you can think of we finally decided (by process of elimination) where we were going and staying in one feat.   The chosen location was the Gletschergarten Chalet in Grindelwald, Switzerland.  (On booking.com it had a 90 out of 100 which was the highest rating, it was called superb, and all the reviews said the hotel food was awesome.)

Our trip started Saturday morning when we started our drive down.   This was both of our first time to Switzerland.  Since we are on the southside of Kaiserslautern the GPS had us taking a bunch of back roads and then with the road construction it ended up taking us through France.   We didn't really want to go to France, but we did it anyways.  This was also our first time in France by accident or on purpose.  On our way back into Germany we go stuck in a stau (german for traffic jam) waiting for construction to let us pass.   We were waiting there so long I was beginning to think they weren't going to let us back into Germany!   We were finally able to pass, allowing us back in Germany.  We were on our way (again)!    

Welcome to France!

This was our view while waiting for the construction - The Rhine River

Once we got the Swiss border, we stopped to get a road/toll pass.  I really have no idea what its for, but it sounds like its mandatory.  It wasn't as soon as we got into Switzerland, but we eventually saw the mountains in all their glory.  Snow capped and awesome.   We finally made it to Grindelwald, our final destination.  This little swiss town is right at the foot of Mount Eiger.   Like I mentioned before, our place was called Gletschergarten Chalet.   Its a B&B owned by then nicest people (who speak good English & French, with their native being German I believe).   We had made reservations for a smaller room - after all we were just going to be sleeping in it, but once we got there they gave us a choice between the smaller room we reserved and a much larger room.  We choose the larger one even though the view on our private balcony wasn't AS spectacular as the small joint balcony.

First sight of mountains

Coming into Grindelwald

View from our balcony

Once we unloaded the car we changed clothes, found a good hiking trail (thanks to the suggestion of our awesome B&B owners), and were out the door!   There was a gondola that we could have taken up the side of the mountain, but of course that wouldn't be hiking.  So up we walked from Grindelwald starting at 1034m to Pfingstegg at 1391m.   Once we got there we didn't really do much, there was a restaurant but we choose to keep hiking.  As soon as we were past the restaurant we came across a little cluster of cows roaming all over like they owned the place.  {Sidenote: we never saw large herds of cattle, only clusters of 5 or 6.}  They all had cowbells on and they were huge.  I never realized how big the bells actually were.  Apparently the Swiss love their cows so much they provided a water fountain for them.  When I say water fountain I mean it in the literal sense.  Like the ones humans use by pressing a button and water coming out, well this one worked the same way.  I'm not really sure what the cows pushed, but when she put his mouth to the fountain water came out.  When she moved her mouth the water stopped.  How cool is that?!  I'm still amazed by this.  It just goes to show how smart cows are ... or maybe how trainable they are.

What you see as soon as you walk out the front door

Looking down to Grindelwald

Living the life in Switzerland

Cow water fountain!!!!

Ignore the crazy look on my face .... 

There was also a summer bobsleding course/slide.  We didn't try it, although it was very tempting.  From there we headed west and hiked across the tree line to Milchbach.  From there we headed back towards the ground to the Hotel Wetterhorn.  There was a bus stop there where we planned on catching the bus, but since we had already missed the once an hour stop it makes there we kept walking.  Missing the one bus that comes hourly seems to be a pretty frequent trend for us.  Sooner or later we'll figure it out, or at least I hope so!   After a few shortcut paths we made it back to our village.

The tunnel Todd wanted to go through

PURPLE!

Our B&B made dinner every night for their guests only.  Let me just say I've never had a better meal at a restaurant/hotel.  It was a four course meal that wasn't super expensive and it was freaking AWESOME!!  Our first course was a cheesy tortellini; second course: salad bar; third course: Sirloin steak in a creamy mushroom sauce, with small fried mashed potato things, spinach, and one other thing.  The final plate was dessert: fresh strawberries with strawberry ice cream.  It was awesome!!  With how delicious the food was you'd think it was some super fancy restaurant in NYC that you have to pay an arm and a leg.   After dinner we had another beer or two and had a nice conversation with an older couple on holiday from Canada.  I say conversation, but it was more like they talked and we listened.  They had a story about everything.  We really couldn't get 2 words in between the 2 of them.  Oh well, at least they were nice.  

Sunday morning started off great, especially since it was our 1 year anniversary!!  We ate breakfast at the B&B German (or maybe its European) style.  Breads, cheeses, meats, & yogurt.  Before we could get out the door the Canadians said Happy Anniversary to us, which was really nice.  We also made a stop at the front desk for another hike recommendation.  We pretty much stuck to the plan the owners gave us, we just changed the directions of a few things.   Our hike was pretty much along the side of Mount Eiger for the whole day.  Here's what we did ....

We walked down to Grund (948m) then headed up to Brandegg (1332m) which was about half way up the mountain.  Next we hiked to Alpiglen (1615m) all the way to Kleine Scheidegg (2061m).  And last but not least to Mannlichen where we rode the gondola back down to Grund.  I must say this hike was awesome!!  For pretty much the whole hike we were surrounded by fields of wildflowers.  These wildflowers were in all different colors - white, yellow, purple, and even blue.  For those of you who don't know me, I absolutely LOVE wildflowers especially blues and purples {My wedding bouquets were supposed to look like wildflowers.  I'm not sure if they did, but I loved them anyways.}  Anways, back to the hike ... 

At each place starting with Brandegg, there was a little restaurant to eat and drink.   Once we got to Kleine Scheidegg it was an even larger touristy place.   This is also the location where you can catch the Jungfrau Cogway to go up to the Jungfraujoch.   Its 3454m above sea level and the only way to get to it is by cog.  Its been labeled "The Top of Europe" because it is located between the peaks of Monch (4107m) and Jungfrau (4158m).   I think it might be the highest cog station in all of Europe.  This is one of the main reasons why we went to Grindelwald, but in the end we didn't end up doing it.  It was SUPER DUPER $$$$ - we are talking something like $150/person (probably more) for a 50 minute ride on a cog through a mountain tunnel that you can't see through.  The only views are once you get to the top and once you get up there you have more touristy things like a restaurant, souvenir shop, etc.  No trails or hiking or anything else we might be interested in so we decided not to do it.   Another thing is that most people don't even hike up to Kleine Scheidegg - they ride another train (which you have to pay for separately).  I think out of all the "hikers" we saw that day there was only 1 other person hiking up (and he looked a little crazy-eyed).  All the rest were headed down.   

I told Todd I wanted to frolick through the meadow, so I did.

There's a tiny airplane in this picture ... can you find it?

It was super cold, but since it was so hot out it felt really nice

All in all it took us something like 3 1/2 hours to get up to Kleine Scheidegg.   Once up there we treated ourselves with lunch.  Todd got a draft beer and some cheesy German dish while I got a weiswurst (white brat), french fry/hashbrown thing, and a draft beer.  Turns out we totally got played by ordering the draft beer - it was MGD.   BOO.  I don't even drink that stuff back in the states!  Not to mention it costs us more a German beer would have.   Lesson learned.   After lunch we hiked on over to Mannelichen.  From there we had the best views of the mountain range.  We were surrounded by snow capped mountains.  Once we were done on top we headed back down to Grund by gondola.   Just when we thought we were done with the hiking we missed the only bus for an hour that was headed to our B&B.  Clearly we need to work on how to ride a bus and learning bus schedules!  It probably took us another 30 minutes to an hour to get back to our place.  The one cool thing that happened on our walk back ... I saw a guy wearing a #2 UnderArmor Shirt clearly representing Cam.  I shouted out "War Eagle" and got one back in return!

My lunch and crappy MGD

Kleine Scheidegg with Jungfrau Cogway behind us

Silly Toddy.

Eiger Dreams

We were getting fried by the sun.

Top of Mannlichen

When we finally made it we jumped in the shower to get ready for dinner.  While getting ready Todd discovered they had left us a little bottle of champagne, a note, and some chocolate.  It appears someone had told the owners it was our anniversary.  I suspect the chatty Canadians.   Instead of opening the champagne, we opened the bottle of wine that TJ had given us as a wedding present.  The wine came from a winery in Estes Park and was personalized with our picture and wedding date on the bottle.  Even though it was over a year old it wasn't too shabby.  {Obviously we didn't try to bring our wedding cake topper with us to Germany.  We ate that about 6 months after our wedding on our last night in Cheyenne.}  After a glass of wine we went down to dinner.  They had saved the best table with a view of Eiger for us and decorated it with rose petals.  We ordered a bottle of red wine to compliment our (once again) delicious dinner.   The second night dinner was more traditional Swiss food.   First course: White asparagus in a cheesy cream sauce; second course: salad bar; third course: Rosti (hashbrowns) and some other things that I've forgotten; and fourth course: custard.   After dinner we went back to our room and finished our bottle of wine from TJ.

We got more than a little sunburnt

Our view as we drank our wine after dinner

We slept in the next morning, ate breakfast, packed up, and headed out the door  We made one sightseeing stop to Trummelbach Falls (see next post) and then headed back home.

It was an incredible trip and I would go back in a heartbeat!!!