Bernese Oberland

Dang, I am tired. Today I hiked most of the way from Grindelwald in the next valley over from where I am staying in the Lauterbrunnental up to the Kleine Scheidegg, which is this high mountain pass, then on over to Wengen, which is across the valley from the village where I'm staying.

I took so many pictures today. I was hiking for almost six hours! I needed a lot of rest breaks!





Here's the restaurant where I ate lunch -- that's the North Face of the Eiger in the background.

After lunch, I realized I was starting to get a blister on my heel, so I took the train from Alpiglen (where the restaurant is) to Kleine Scheidegg. One of the nice things about this hike is that it roughly parallels a narrow-gauge cog railway, so there are lots of bailout points. I bailed out at Alpiglen. But then in Kleine Scheidegg, I bought some blister dealies, and I put them on, and I felt good! And I had just skipped a few hundred meters of climbing by taking the train, and it was all downhill from there, so I kept going, down to Wengen, where I bailed out once again. So convenient!

Anyway, the place where I am staying is in a village called Gimmelwald, which is just below Murren. You have to take a cable car to get there. Yesterday it rained most of the day and when we got up into the town we were basically in a cloud. It was very cool, but hard to photograph.

This morning when I woke up this is what I saw out of my bedroom window:



I went back to sleep because it was early, and when I woke up properly the clouds had come back in, so I was glad to have taken it when I did.

OK, now there is more that I would like to post but I am so exhausted I just have to stop. I did put a ton of pictures up on Flickr (too many -- I will edit them down later) -- you can get there from the badge on the right-hand side of the blog.