Friday 09/20/19

Said farewell to Lucerne this morning, somewhat reluctantly. Last night I stopped by the neighboring hotel Montana and they had a wonderful bar scene with a full jazz quintet jamming, great way to end the day. This morning, it was a 2.5 hour 3 part train ride to get from Lucerne, to Interlaken, then to Lauterbrunnen and then to Wengen. My AirBnB host, Florian was waiting for me at the station and showed me to a lovely half of a chalet not far from the main drag. Small living room kitchen with a grass patio and then a bedroom under the eves upstairs. Feels perfect for the place. Wengen has mainly electric service vehicles and no cars. Apparently the vehicles that are here have to be brought up on the train. I was able to have some lunch and then take a gondola up to Mannlichen. This was really cool because for an extra 5 francs I could climb up and ride on the roof! Well worth it! From there a good brisk 1.5 hr. walk along a fairly level trail to the Kleine Scheidegg station from where the train goes back down to Wengen. Met some nice people from the east coast who gave me recommendations. Tomorrow, I plan to take the first train, 7:24am, up to the top of the Jungfrau. There is a look out station between the Jungfrau and the Monch, with the famous Eiger being the next peak in line. This place is almost like a fairy tale. The trains climb so steeply it’s hard to believe, the track gauge seems to be about 2 feet, almost like a toy! While I was taking a timeout on the patio, I noticed a restaurant just below me, it turned out to have excellent reviews, so went down, and it was very good. They had a good price fixe that was GF and fairly priced for Switzerland, most excellent cabbage soup, salad, fish medley, crepe Caramel. Anyway here are some pix from the day:

Jungfrau on the right, Monch on the left, station in between Eiger further left but not in photo.Rooftop ride on Gondola, I’m passing going up as this one is going down.Looking down towards Wengen from the roof of the cable car.

The Jungfrau