Interlaken name comes from ‘In between lakes’ – namely Lake Brienz and Lake Thun.
Dont think they are lakes. They never looked like because they are very big.. On 22nd July evening we reached Interlaken. After a quick bus journey there is this little town Ringenberg. We stayed at Hotel Brienzersee for two days right at the Brienz lake shore. Plan was to visit Schilthorn for a day and Jungfrau the other day. Both the places have extraordinary views and almost we could say prime of Swiss tourism. We had our long dinner and quickly settled for the next busy days.
On 23rd morning, we headed to Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen from there, we had to catch a bus to stachelberg. Another sweet little town. From there, its 3 cable cars journey to Top (Piz Gloria – Schilthorn). Its a real aspirational project. From stachelberg, first stop was at Gimmelwald. A lovely sweet little charming village which is car free. Houses are filled with small pots of heavenly looking plants which are full of flowers of colors people would die for. 🙂 It was amazing.
Next stop was at Murren, which is again small little car free village. Its a pretty easy 20 mins walk from Gimmelwald but not when you want to visit Piz Gloria first. From Murren thats another stop called Birg. From Birg to Schilthorn is long and really a engineering marvelous. At the end waits the Piz Gloria which is a revolving restaurant which offers great views of all surrounding peaks. Piz Gloria has its special appearance on the james bond movie called “On her majesty’s secret service”. Peak has a free theatre which continuously runs the clips from the movie and festive pictures of nearby villages.
At summer, I dont see Schilthorn is really amusing. For sure, you can skip Piz Gloria at summer but not murren, gimmelwald and Allmendhubel. In winter, I swear Piz Gloria will be with its full glory. But that needs extra set of great cloths to withstand winter cold. 😛
After sipping a hot chocolate drink, we headed to Murren. Swiss can be covered by cable cars where we cant walk (which requires great level of fitness and if you walk it will take months to cover swiss). We further headed to cog-wheel train station (bahn) to go to Allmendhubel. Plan was to do a small trekking to gimmelwald via the scenic route. As the maps were not clear (we have numerous walking trails and all of them are beautiful), we took the route back to murren which was good and beautiful. After couple of hours with many camera stops, we reached Murren. We further descended the same way to Stachelberg. Even though we were tired, we wanted to cover trummelbach falls which ravines hills for ages and made almost the falls ‘inside’ the mountain. trummelbach means “the sound from the drum”.
It was not only gorgeous but scary too. In front of nature, we are nothing, anytime. We gotto be careful when you visit as the steps and handrails are old and cant rely on them completely. With that the day came to an end and we headed back to Interlaken. 😉
Catch you at Jungfrau entry.. 😀
Better version of images. Download at Schilthorn
2 Comments
Kostenlos · May 1, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Die Seite schaut auch am iPhone gut aus.
senthil · August 8, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Machi, No words to express my feelings..it’s so amazing place and great photography…Keep it up machi….