[We have been so busy, I haven’t had time or energy to write much. Well, I’m writing, just unable to finish it and post it.]
Today, our first full-day in Wengen, Switzerland, was an adventure and included hiking… lots of hiking.
We started out in Wengen, finding the trail to Lauterbrunnen, a town below Wengen. None of us bothered to review the trail before starting. We only knew that it went down to the town from Wengen and supposedly only took 35 minutes to hike. Yeah, right.
I actually think that was the time it took to bike down to Lauderbrunnen, because hiking the walking tail took us longer. As my Minnesota friends would say, “Oof da! It was downhill alright!” But it was worth it as it’s a beautiful trail and the town of Lauderbrunnen is the gem you are presented with at the end as your reward. I don’t know what grade the trail was, but it was steep! When we looked it up later, one reviewer referred to this trail as the “knee-killer”! Just as well we didn’t know that, we wouldn’t have done it and missed an adventure!
From Lauderbrunnen we took a cable car up to Grindelwald, a fun ride up the mountain! Once there we started hiking again, downhill again, to another little town with a difficult name, then back up in a cable car (very fun) and of course, another hike downhill to catch a short train and bus back to Wengen. We easily hiked 6 miles or more (according to Denise’s fitbit), which is good, but almost all of our hiking was downhill. This means today the front sides of our thighs and shins are barking and our calves are complaining too because for all that downhill hiking, there was a lot of uphill walking too!
Here are some photos of the trail we hiked to the town of Lauderbrunnen. “Picturesque” doesn’t quite do the scenery justice:
Our downhill trail begins!
The way was steep in many parts, but the trail was in great shape.
There are apparently over 70 waterfalls in the Lauderbrunnen Valley!
Swiss train service is great!
Farms all around, everyone had some animals.
Lauderbrunnen was so serene it was surreal!
Entering Lauderbrunnen.
Our adventure on Monday will take us high into the Swiss Alps, to the “Top of Europe”!
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