Day 12 – Thursday 2 June 2016

Last night our bed was turned down & footmats placed next to our bed. Breakfast this morning is superb, Swiss sausages, cheeses, breads, pastries, fruit plus smoked salmon, we were in breakfast heaven, this hotel is truly excellent. We walked to the railway station about 100 metres from our hotel & caught the train to take us up the Jungfrau Mountain. The train is amazing, it has a narrow gauge track with a steel cogged rail running up the centre of the tracks so that the train can climb the steep tracks up the mountain. The train moved up the grassy meadows full of wild flowers and Swiss Chalets very swiftly. An interesting thing we noticed here, there are no fences. We stopped at two small alpine railway stations before reaching Kleine Scheidegg at 2061 metres (6,762 ft) where we changed trains. The next train travelled inside the Eiger & Monch Mountain, stopping at Eigerwand & Eismeer stations where there are viewing windows in the side of the mountain so that you can look out at the scenery & acclimatise a little to the height. Our final stop was at Jungfraujoch, the tallest railway station in Europe at an elevation of 3,454 metres (11,333 ft). Tereza was having a little trouble with the altitude, her lips & mouth turned blue, face was all white & the mountain felt as though it was moving so a long sit down & rest was in order at the café area.

The Jungfraujoch is well designed & engineered, there are walking tunnels under the mountain, with a lift taking you to the top of the mountain. Here there is a viewing platform where you can go outside & look at the surrounding mountains, except it was snowing & all white with cloud & cold at -3 Centigrade and windy. Some people where excited as they had never seen snow before. There are also restaurants & souvenir shops her as well for days like today. Near the lift is a tunnelled walkway & exit where you can walk out onto the Aletsch Glacier, again not much fun in the snow & wind, though I’m sure on a fine day it would be amazing. Another long tunnel through the mountain then leads into an ice tunnel inside the glacier, the walls are carved out of ice & the floors are smooth polished ice, with a handrail as it is slippery. Along the way inside the glacier there are little cut-outs where ice carvings of animals are on display, it is very well done. By the way, it is very cold inside the glacier. On the way down the mountain, when we stopped at Kleine Scheidegg we changed trains to take us to Lauterbrunnen on a different path down into another valley. As we got lower Tereza’s altitude sickness improved considerably & she felt a lot better.

The scenery down into this valley was amazing, with extreme sheer cliffs & plummeting waterfalls, all the while travelling through pine forests clinging to the side of the mountain, every bend brought a new scene, all very beautiful. The drive back to Grindelwald revealed even more magnificent scenery, it is difficult to believe it can all be so beautiful.

After an hour or so rest we were driven down to Interlaken where we had a short look around town then met by some horse-drawn carriages & driven around the town of Interlaken for about an hour then to the restaurant where we were having dinner. This is a small restaurant out of the general tourist area & is where the locals eat. We were treated to some very traditional Swiss food, starting with a cheese fondue, then Weiss Wurst (white homemade sausage) with Rosti (shredded & cooked potato) followed by local Swiss ice cream. All washed down with a couple of fine Swiss beers. It was a wonderful dining experience & we had a nice chat with some more of our fellow travellers.