Switzerland… the most beautiful place so far!!
The drive to Switzerland took a lot longer than expected. We came to a standstill on the motorway; not knowing the reason, we sat, we waited, we moved a few metres, we sat, we waited. Anyway after at least an hour of this we finally reached the bottleneck, a set of traffic lights used to separate the 2 lanes of traffic for the 16km long tunnel ahead, that’s right a 16km tunnel!!! The tunnel “St. Gotthard Tunnel” is only 1 lane in each direction with a speed limit of 80km/hr (just googled it and it’s the 3rd longest tunnel in the world at 16.4km)
In the back of our minds was “you wouldn’t want to break down in here” but neither of us said this out aloud, as we didn’t want to jinx it.
The rest of the drive was beautiful, winding roads through the mountains. At one point we were driving through the clouds!! The temperature had dropped to about 15 degrees, it was nice to feel cold.
We arrived at the campsite (about 2km from Interlaken) just after 8pm and were amazed at the cleanliness of the amenities, the best so far.
Day 1 (cloudy & raining), saw us take a leisurely stroll through Interlaken.
Day 2, a well deserved sleep in; more window shopping in Interlaken and to finish off the day; a 3 course meal: 1. Cheese fondue, 2. Meat fondue, 3. Chocolate fondue. The Chocolate fondue was by far the best!!
Day 3, the bad weather had cleared as expected so we took the opportunity to travel to the “Top of Europe”, Jungfraujoch (3454m) by train. The train(s) took about 2 hours and included a 7.3km long cog railway and gee it was worth it!!
We first checked out the Sphinx, a peck with an observation deck 108m above the train station. Next was the Ice Palace, this was cool (in both sense) and neither of us managed to slip on our butts. We then took a walk out onto the snow to check out the view from the top. We then headed back down to the base of the Jungfraujoch where again we walked out onto the snow. Violeta nearly killed herself on the toboggan/snow disc (check out the photos). Violeta had to make a snowman before leaving, it was enormous and named “Carlton”, after this we jumped on the last train at 5:50pm for the 2 hour ride back to Interlaken.
Today we head off to France again.
 
 
Hey guys!
I’ve just caught up on all your blogs (spend the last 2 hours doing so lol) and loved every word of it! Sounds like you’re having a ball like we are – can you believe it’s been over 2 months already?! OMG!
I still have to go through some of your photos, but given it’s 1.40am here in Cape Town, I’ll leave that for tomorrow night
And I’ll catch up on Kevin and Sonia’s then too!!
Take care!
Phillipa
hey guys,
glad to hear you loved interlarken area, we thought it was amazing too…
didnt sound like u got into the extreme sports out there, but at least u managed to get upto the top of europe.
nice pics for the rest of theblog too
see u in paris