Picture perfect

Ok, lets just get this out of the way right now, Lauterbrunnen is unbelievably beautiful. Everywhere you look is a postcard and quite out of the capability of our iphone cameras to capture the surroundings.

So check out the photos and then in your head try and sharpen the images (air is so clear and still), then add brightness and colour depth and then, this is the hard part, add sheer scope - the mountains are huge.

To get there we took the train to Basel and got off between the lakes at Interlaken. Interlaken is kind of the base for most of the adrenaline junky sports of the area - paragliding, canyoning etc. Its still a small town but not as small as the (essentially single street) town of Lauterbrunnen.

The Interlaken train schedule told us that the Lauterbrunnen train left at 3 minutes and 33 minutes past the hour. And it did. And so did we.

Lauterbrunnen is in a valley and gives access to a number of close by towns, connected by railway and trails (a bit like Cinque Terre except the railways and buses always run on time to the second, all are signposted in a way that is both easy to see and clear to understand and above all are spotless - no trash anywhere to be seen.

 

 

 

 

 

The clock that apple copied

 

 

Arriving in Lauterbrunnen

 

 

 

OK so i lightened the photo above up a bit. It was raining when we arrived but in a gentle Swiss way - soft drops plopping onto the road. Not too cold either - at least 3 degrees.

 

 

The clouds come into the valley. Walking the 500m from the station to our hotel

 

 

 

And there is a swimming pool that opens on the day we get there! Season opening - perfect.

 

 

Looks good

 

But because the weather hasn't been great, even in light of the sign above, the sign below held sway. Geschlossen is a great word isnt it? Get sloshing.

 

 

All those going for a swim step forward.....not so fast Lozza

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lost cloud

 

 

 

We hired some waterproof hiking boots from the sports store across the road, got some loan winter jackets and woolens from the hotel and were set for the next few days. We were so lucky in that the hotel had four loan jackets, and three of them were perfect fits. Drew missed out but he has a good jacket so not a problem.

The tourist office and the hotel thought the weather would be cloudy for the next few days which is a real problem as we were hoping to go up the Jungfrau to the highest easily accessible viewpoint in Europe, but NO point if you cant see anything.

We were quietly confident that we would be able to get up though - the weather Gods have not let us down so far.

 

 

Enough