Hiking the Swiss Alps

Waking up in the Swiss alps was amazing. The views out of the windows are spectacular everywhere you turn.

After our $120 vegetarian meal, we decided we would eat the leftover bread for breakfast and take a picnic from the grocery store for our hiking day.

We had two hikes planned, one “fairly easy” and the second just a long stroll.

The picture above is showing the “funicular” which takes us up the mountain. It’s very hard to see how steep it is in the photo but I can tell you that all I could think of was “the tower of terror”. It was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. As soon as we were let out at the top, it started to rain. But we set out on our hike, guided by Rick Steves.

The views were still spectacular but we were getting a bit muddy and slippery. We laughed a lot about not having hiking sticks.

I’m sure during the summer this hiking trail is much more crowded. We only ran in to one other couple twice so it was relatively isolated and really so beautiful.

We ran a lot of times to get the self timer pictures perfect.

As I have mentioned, the gondolas are pretty frightening. I understand that they work but I’m not a huge fan of hanging suspended in mid air thousands of feet above the ground. I’m less into it when I find pieces of the contraption on the ground while hiking. Do you think this piece might be important?

We had a good scary laugh about that as we trudged along.

Thankfully the weather cleared up a bit and we passed by cows and wooden huts and even honestly cheese stands/refrigerators where you take the cheese and put money in the box. We stopped around noon and had some tomatoes, meat, bread, and butter. It was a very light but delicious snack. The produce is just so much better here.

We walked for hours and ended up back in Murren which is the town next to us with a grocery store. We decided that we would buy more groceries and cook dinner rather than go out. And we also had the bright idea to walk back to Gimmelwald from Murren since the silly 4 minute gondola is $15.

The walk was beautiful, but it was all downhill (better than uphill, but steep) and a bit tiring. The sun finally came out which was lovely, but now we were warm and carrying groceries. Still, it had the best views ever.

We stopped in a little craft shop that sold hand knitted items and had an amazing view. Bought one tiny thing. Sorry friends and family, this place is way too expensive for souvenirs. I’ll get you next trip :)

When we finally made it back to our chalet, we had a bit more snacks, put away our groceries, rested, and then plotted for hike #2 which was really just a nice walk.

At the start of our walk, we passed a donut stand where they were making donuts fresh to order. We could not pass up that sweet treat with Rebecca being a Dunkin gal and donut enthusiast.

The donuts were amazing and worth every calorie.

We walked along Lauterbrunnen Valley partially through a forest and partially along a river and past a bunch of pretty but unexciting waterfalls. More exciting was watching the base jumpers leap from the top of the mountains. I never need that much thrill in my life.

We came back to our chalet around 7 and cooked up an absolutely delicious meal of pasta with shallots, garlic, tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, and zucchini accompanied by garlic bread. Both of us agreed that there is no such thing as too much garlic so we used the entire clove in cooking this meal. Half of it in the pot and the other half on the bread. I will say, I think we have found the garlic limit. This meal may have included too much garlic. I didn’t know this limit existed until 3am.

The meal was absolutely amazing and I was so hungry after my food poisoning bout and 28,000 steps and not having eaten a lot that I totally gorge myself and ended up with the biggest stomach bloat of my life.

We laughed and laughed about my tummy ache, went for a late night walk to help digest, and ended up playing in Gimmelwalds playground and swinging on the swings under the bright, almost full moon.

All in all, a spectacular day. We will be so so sore tomorrow.