A whole new world!

Sunday June 8

We woke up rather early this morning so we would have time to make the long drive to Switzerland and still have time to explore. We ate breakfast at our hotel again, which was delicious. Yesterday I forgot to mention my favorite part about this breakfast. Not only do they have delicious breads and such, they also have a delightful bran cereal that has chocolate flakes in it. With a little bit of granola mixed in it is amazing! Of course, anytime you get to eat chocolate for breakfast is always exciting.

After checking out of the hotel we took a boat ride back down the Grand Canal and back to the parking lot where we left our car. We saw the beautiful canals and bridges one more time before we left the country. Afterward, we took about a 7 hour drive from Venice to Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.

The drive was beautiful! We saw more of the Italian landscape, but before long we were into Switzerland. The mountains were much larger and we were constantly switching between tunnels and high bridges going over valleys and between mountains. Many of the tunnels were short, but we did go through a tunnel that was 17 km long (about 10 miles). It wasn’t very pretty, as you can imagine, but it was a pretty impressive tunnel.

Switzerland is completely different from the places we went in Italy. It feels like we are a completely different world, and I guess in a way we are. When we were about an hour or two outside of Interlaken we started to see huge waterfalls here and there. By the time we reached Lauterbrunnen we probably saw over 50 different waterfalls, and that is not an exaggeration. It seemed like every few seconds someone would say “There’s another one!”

Also while we were driving we saw a few marble quarries. There were huge slabs of marble and also open pits where they were cutting the marble out of the mountain. It was amazing to see.

There were a lot of little towns mixed in with the waterfalls. Some were down in the valley, but others were high up the mountain and it looked like the only way to get there was to hike. It was amazing to come around a turn and see a city near the top of the mountain.

(view from our hotel window)

Once we arrived in Lauterbrunnen, which has several waterfalls of its own, we checked into the hotel and then walked around the city. It was a little bit rainy and chilly so I decided to wear long pants, and since I was told we were going to be walking I didn’t wear my tennis shoes. Well…

One of the first places we went was to a waterfall (which we could see from our hotel, an incredible view) called Staubbach Falls. We did start out walking along the street, but once we got to the base there was a trail going up to it. So we took the hike/walk (depending on who you ask) up the falls a little way. It was pretty steep and muddy, but I did it, even without tennis shoes.

(The fence you see is the path we walked up)

The waterfalls surrounding our hotel are very impressive. There is a ton of water coming off each one and they are all extremely tall. The combination of the waterfalls and the unique buildings is a sight to see. It is definitely completely different than the parts of Italy we visited.

We walked around the city more and then also took a drive out to another city which took us to more waterfalls. It was raining pretty hard so we didn’t get out for long, but the falls were gorgeous! We will probably visit a few more tomorrow and see a castle or two as well. But that’s all for now. Tschuβ!