“I left the view of Jungfrau with deep regret: eternal snow, etched as it seemed against eternal sunshine, and the Silberhorn sharp against dark blue: the Silvertine (Celebdil) of my dreams.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Note: This is leg two of a six-part journey. Leg three (Spiez/Thun to Montreux) will be posted on Thursday.

When you think Switzerland, you think mountains. And boy do I have some mountains for you today! In this chapter of my Switzerland adventure, we will leave cities of Lucerne and Bern behind us and venture into the snowcapped peaks and verdant valleys of the Jungfrau region.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGFRAU

The Jungfrau (which translates to “maiden”) is one of the most prominent mountains in the Bernese Alps in central Switzerland. Together with its neighboring summits, the Mönch (“monk”) and the Eiger (“ogre”), it makes up a massive wall that overlooks the Bernese Oberland on one side and the Swiss Plateau on the other. Covering the top of this wall in a layer of ice and snow is the Aletsch glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps, encompassing an area of 81.7 km². The surrounding area of mountains, valleys, and lakes is known as the Jungfrau region, and it is with good reason that this is one of the most popular parts of Switzerland to visit. It’s a place of special beauty, awe-inspiring heights, extreme contrasts, and charming villages. It’s a place where you can see snow 365 days a year, but where summer activities abound. From hiking and rock climbing to mountain biking and downhill go-kart racing, from watersports and paragliding to skiing and snowboarding, you can do it all here. Or you can simply relax on a chalet-style hotel balcony with a good drink and take in the view.

Below the mountain massif that Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger make up lies the green valley of Lauterbrunnen. Surrounded by sheer cliff walls and dotted with waterfalls, this stunning sight was the inspiration for the elven city of Rivendell in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien visited Switzerland in 1911 and according to a letter he wrote to his son, Michael, the journey of Bilbo Baggins from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains was based on Tolkien’s own adventures in Switzerland. The letter references numerous places in the Jungfrau region and the Bernese Oberland, as well as the Matterhorn and several other locations in Switzerland. It’s a fascinating read and if you’re a fan of Tolkien’s work, I encourage you to read it for yourself. You can clearly see the resemblance between Lauterbrunnen and Rivendell if you compare Tolkien’s illustration below with my photo at the top of this post.

From the moment my train pulled into the station at Lauterbrunnen, I immediately understood why Tolkien was so captivated by this place. But my journey from Bern via Interlaken (a town which, as its name suggests, sits between two lakes: Lake Brienz and Lake Thun), was not quite over yet. From Lauterbrunnen I switched to a mountain train that would take me a fraction of the way up the mountain massif to the cliffside village of Wengen. In the winter, Wengen is a bustling ski resort, but in the summer it’s a serene retreat from the outside world and a convenient base from which to explore the rest of the Jungfrau region. Although Wengen is officially a car-free village, exceptions are made for certain work vehicles, and I was able to get a free shuttle from the train station to my hotel, the Alpenruhe. It was a good thing too, because although the hotel was less than a 15 minute walk from the train station, it was up a rather steep hill and I was hauling around 3 weeks worth of luggage.

My room wasn’t ready yet, so I dropped off my luggage and began to explore Wengen. The Alpenruhe was the last hotel on the street, quiet and secluded at the top of a hill. From the front garden, you could already see a stunning view of the mountains and the valley below. I wanted to get an even more direct view of Lauterbrunnen encaged within its rocky prison, so I walked a little further up the mountain and then turned down a narrow mountain road through a wooded area to the quiet, residential part of Wengen that sits on the central cliff edge. From here I could see a direct view of the entire Lauterbrunnen valley flanked by cliffs and mountains and with a large waterfall in the distance where the valley disappears into a curving canyon.

After enjoying the view for a while, I headed back the way I had come and then passed my hotel to descend the hill into the center of the village. A variety of shops and restaurants beckoned to tourists and I bought some postcards which I brought to the nearby post office to send. I ate lunch at a pizza place that had a shaded outdoor patio with a great view. Then I returned to my hotel and checked in to my room, a small but comfortable space with a private balcony overlooking a spectacular view of the mountains and valley. This would be my home for the next four nights, the longest that I stayed in one place during this trip. I never got tired of that view, and I doubt I ever would, even if I had lived there for a month, a year, or 10 years. It was paradise. After settling in, I went back out and wandered the village a little bit more. To save money, I bought a sandwich from a local grocery store instead of going to a restaurant, and as it began to rain, I made my way back to the hotel. It wasn’t a big storm but there was a little bit of thunder, and you haven’t heard thunder until you’ve heard it in the mountains. It sounded like an invisible army was firing massive cannons from peaks above me.

TOP OF EUROPE

The next day, I rose early and was the first in line for the complimentary breakfast. I sat down to a breakfast of fresh fruit, local cheese, flaky croissants, delicious rolls, and a locally-made yogurt brand called Eiger Milch (like Tiger Milk but named after the nearby Eiger Mountain). The very nice hotel staff people brought me hot coffee and offered to make me eggs, but I’m not a big egg person. At home I’m actually close to (though not entirely) vegan. In Switzerland I ate about 10 times the amount of cheese that I would eat at home, as it’s pretty much the main food group here, but I did politely decline the eggs.

After breakfast, I walked down to the train station and boarded the train. The direction? Up! The train took me further up the Jungfrau mountain massif to the transportation and hiking hub of Klein Scheidegg. From there, I purchased a ticket to the world’s highest cogwheel railway, the Jungfrau “Top of Europe” line. The train took me past the Aletsch glacier research station and continued all the way to the top of the mountain: Jungfraujoch. I stepped off the train into a dark tunnel.

I should mention that there is a new way to get to Jungfraujoch called the Eiger Express. It’s a cable car system that uses cutting edge technology to minimize environmental impacts while maximizing speed. There are far fewer pylons than a conventional cable car system would need. The cable car connects the village of Grindelwald to the Aletsch glacier station and only takes 15 minutes, where it would take more than an hour to make the same trip by train. However, since I was staying in Wengen, which is already in the foothills of the Jungfrau, it didn’t make sense for me to go this way.

After getting off the train and passing a glacial cave wall and a collection of photos and artifacts about the early days of constructing the Jungfraubahn railway, along with 30 memorial plaques remembering the miners and railroad workers who died building the railway, I reached a giant snow globe and followed the signs to the Sphinx Observatory. There was a very large tour group from China just ahead of me and I had to wait for the two elevators to go up and down three times before I could fit inside. (There were no stairs.) These big tour groups were a frustrating presence throughout my time in the Jungfrau region, and to a lesser extent in some other parts of Switzerland as well. Not only did they crowd the observation areas and the routes to and from them, but also the trains. However, I had read about this beforehand and I knew that the overcrowding gets a lot worse from mid-July through August. That’s why I had purposely planned a route that would take me to Jungfrau in the first week of my trip, when it was still early in the summer, and save less-visited places like Liechtenstein for later. The big tour groups were annoying but manageable. By waiting for them to get ahead of me, I was still able to maintain enough personal space to enjoy my time on the mountaintop.

But I do think this is a good time to emphasize the benefits of independent travel. I’ve met plenty of people who have traveled outside the United States but only as part of a tour group or by going to an all-inclusive resort where the food is shipped in and the experience is manufactured from start to finish. Not all tour groups are the same, and I can definitely see the advantages of joining a small tour group from a thoughtful socially responsible operator like Intrepid Tours or an educational trip for kids or teens like EF Tours. (These tour companies are just examples that I’ve heard of. I’m not specifically endorsing them, nor am I getting compensated by them in any way.) I myself have joined group tours to go to specific places during part of a larger trip, and I plan to do it again when I visit Morocco in December. But to only experience the world through group tours and never venture out on your own is to miss out on a great deal of what makes international travel such an amazing experience. Planning your own adventures, going off the beaten path, meeting locals in authentic settings, and having the freedom to go at your pace and the space to do it without other people around you all the time is something I would never want to give up.

When I got off the elevator, I found myself in an open indoor space with a snack bar and a gift shop. All around me were large windows, but you couldn’t see anything out of them. It was as if someone had just taken an extra hot shower and fogged up all the windows. I stepped outside onto a metal grid and was immediately assaulted by a wintery blast of icy wind. Wengen and even Klein Scheidegg had been only slightly cooler than the warm summer weather at the valley floor in Lauterbrunnen. But here at 11,632 feet above sea level, it was eternally winter. The observation deck was covered in snow and ice with icicles hanging from the railings. I had not yet put on the jacket I had packed in my backpack but I was wearing my windbreaker and after a few minutes I donned the thin but warm Icewear buff that I had bought in Iceland last year. I also took out my adjustable trekking poles, which had been sitting dormant in my luggage until today but which I suddenly found very useful. With the help of my poles, I made my way across the slippery slush to the far end of the observation area. I still could see almost nothing except the other people around me and a large Swiss flag flapping violently in the intense wind. I had checked the weather for the summit ahead of time using two websites that I relied on throughout my trip–meteocentrale.ch and Mountain-Forecast.com–and I knew today was expected to be mostly sunny with some partial clouds. But at the moment, the observation plateau was completely enveloped in a thick fog. I waited a while to see if it would clear up, and it did a little bit in one direction, where I could see some glimpses of the mountains peeking out. But it didn’t seem like visibility would improve any further for a while. So I went back inside and continued on to the other attractions, knowing that I could return to the observatory again later.

Although the mountaintop itself is obviously the reason anyone comes to Jungfraujoch, there are also a number of indoor attractions to see while you’re here. I had already seen the Alpine Experience (the history exhibit and the snow globe that I had passed on the way to the observatory). I now walked to the next exhibition, the Ice Palace. This was a lot more impressive than a snow globe. A labyrinth of ice tunnels and caverns decorated with large ice sculptures, it was like being in some North Pole Christmas fantasy land. Lindt Swiss Chocolate Heaven was just a glorified store masquerading as a museum but they had a huge selection of chocolate varieties that you could buy as singles and I had fun trying different flavors of Lindt chocolate that aren’t generally available in the United States. My favorites were the blood orange truffle and the fondant (both milk chocolate and dark varieties). After sampling some chocolate, I walked down a long tunnel to a doorway that opened up onto the massive 800 meter thick glacier that covers Jungfrau and its sister peaks. I put on my jacket, zipped it up, and stepped through the door.

Stepping through that door was like stepping into another dimension where summer doesn’t exist. The ground was covered in a thick blanket of snow and a short distance away, people were skiing, sledding, and snowboarding. Just beyond the snow park was the open expanse of the Aletsch Glacier. The fog was beginning to clear now and the other peaks of the Jungfrau range were becoming visible. Directly ahead was a trail of footprints in the snow leading across the glacier to Mönch. I knew that at the other end of this trail was a mountain hut with a restaurant, the only outpost of civilization to exist at the top past this point. It was less than two miles away, but it would feel like 20 as I sunk down into the fresh snow from earlier that morning with every step I took. I adjusted my trekking poles and starting walking into the white void.

In contrast to the crowds earlier, there were few people on the glacier trail once I got past the snow park. Every now and then someone would pass me coming the other way but most of the time I got to enjoy the solitude of being on top of the world. The clouds and fog cleared up considerably and I had a great view of Mönch, the Eiger, and several other mountains. The clean snow-swept landscape was mesmerizing. I wasn’t really dressed for winter weather but the combination of my black spring jacket and my windbreaker underneath it kept me warm enough now that the sun had come out. And although I only had thin travel pants on since I don’t own any snow pants, my thick SmartWool “Mountaineer” socks kept my feet warm and my waterproof Merrell hiking boots kept them mostly dry even though I was well beyond ankle-deep in snow most of the time. That sun that kept me from freezing proved to be a problem the next day though. I knew that you can get sunburn regardless of the air temperature, that the sun’s radiation is more intense at high elevations, that the sun reflects off of snow, and that my skin (which must have come entirely from the Irish side of my gene pool and not the southern Italian side) only comes in two colors: pasty white or bright red. I didn’t notice it at the time, but whole time I was on the glacier, my face was getting burnt to a crisp. Only the top of my head, covered in a buff, was spared. The next day I looked like Marv from Home Alone after he got hit in the face with a hot iron. Over the next week my skin went through various stages of gross peeling before finally returning to normal.

Although I have enjoyed hiking my entire adult life, I am not very physically fit, so the combination of the sinking snow, the constant uphill incline of the trail, and the thin mountain air that made me feel like I could never catch my breath began to take their toll on me after a while. I thought about turning back but I was knew it wasn’t really that far so I pushed on. By the time I caught sight of the mountain hut, I was exhausted. Getting up to the hut proved to be the hardest part of the entire hike. It was on a very steep and very slippery slope covered in ice made wet by the sun beating overhead. Fortunately there was a rope to hold onto but it was completely covered in icicles. Ignoring the discomfort of the jagged ice and rope burn I climbed up to the hut, pulled open the door and collapsed on the bench that greeted me on the other side.

The mountain hut was an interesting place. It serves as a guest house but of course I didn’t see the lodgings since I wasn’t staying there for the night. Upon entering the front door, you’re required to take off your boots and change into a pair of crocs that you choose from their wide selection. The bathrooms are primitive outhouses with no running water and they’re literally freezing. I can’t imagine taking a number two there. But the restaurant part of the hut is civilized, warm, and pleasant. I ordered a vegetarian barley soup, which came with a basket of brown bread and cheese. The soup was delicious and it revived both my body and spirit after the strenuous hike. I rested in the hut for a while and then refilled my water bottle, put my boots back on, and ventured back out onto the glacier.

Getting down the hill from the hut proved even trickier and scarier than getting up and with my short legs I had to resort to sliding down on my butt like a sled while holding on for dear life to the icy rope with one hand and pressing my other hand to the ground to slow my descent. This resulted in some tiny cuts and punctures on the later hand from the rocks that hid beneath the ice, and for a moment I was bleeding a tiny bit. But I rubbed clean snow onto it and then doused it in hand sanitizer and it seemed to be fine after that. By now the sun was hiding behind the clouds again and the wind was blowing with an intense ferocity. My “sledding” technique had left my clothes somewhat wet, which made me feel the cold more. Nonetheless, like Elsa from Frozen, the cold never bothered me anyway, and once I got past the area that was the most exposed to the wind, I began to relax into a steady march back to Jungfraujoch. My leg muscles had stiffened up but at least it was downhill most of the way now. The closer I got, the more that the fog and windblown snow obliterated visibility until it became a nearly total whiteout. I could barely see a foot or two in front of me. The world had been covered up by an ivory curtain. But I knew I was almost there when I started hearing voices and those voices get louder and louder until I reached the snow park where people were still standing around talking.

When I got back to the Jungfraujoch complex, I rested and peeled off the extra layers of clothes, collapsing my trekking poles and packing them away. My feet did not want to work anymore but I made them keep walking until I reached the cogwheel train that took me back down to Klein Scheidegg, where I switched trains and proceeded back to Wengen. I was dreading walking up the hill to my hotel, so I walked the easy half of the way and then paused to eat a tasty vegetable biryani and an Indian restaurant. With some of my strength restored, I made it the rest of the way up, changed into dry clothes and collapsed on my bed. I checked to make sure that I didn’t have any signs of frostbite but those “Mountaineer” socks had protected my feet very well.

“BONDING” WITH NATURE

On the other side of Lauterbrunnen from Jungfrau is another tall mountain called Schilthorn. It’s best known for being the filming location for the 1969 James Bond movie, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. In the movie, which features stunts involving skis and snowmobiles, there is a revolving restaurant called Piz Gloria where the floor of the restaurant slowly rotates in circles, allowing patrons to enjoy a 360 degree view of the breathtaking mountaintop panorama while eating their dinner. But Piz Gloria wasn’t just a movie set. It’s a real revolving restaurant at the top of Schilthorn. And because it owes its existence and continuing popularity to the James Bond franchise, the whole restaurant has a Bond theme, with menu items like the 007 Burger (which has a 007 logo burned into the bun) and drinks that Bond has drank in the movies, such as the Champagne Bollinger Special Cuvée. I assume that if you ask for a drink to be stirred instead of shaken, you will get thrown out of the restaurant. The restrooms have signs that say “Bonds” and “Bondgirls” with silhouettes of movie characters, and inside the men’s room there are signs that say “Aim like James” and “Shake, Don’t stir!”. There is even a little target like a gun sight on the urinals just above the drain. But it’s not just the restrooms. There’s a whole James bond museum on Schilthorn called Spy World.

The day after I visited Jungfraujoch, I decided to make the trip up to Schilthorn, not because I had any particular interest in James Bond (I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a single Bond movie all the way through) but because I heard it had some of the best views of the whole Jungfrau/Berner Oberland region. Plus, the idea of a 360 degree revolving restaurant on a high mountaintop was pretty intriguing to me. Getting to Schilthorn was easy but did involve a few changes, as I had to first take a train down to Lauterbrunnen, then switch to a different train that would take me up to the car-free village of Murren, where I would take a cable car to Birg, and then switch to another cable car that took me the rest of the way up to the mountaintop. Despite the multiple steps involved, it was pretty straightforward.

The complex at the top of Schilthorn is not as big as Jungfraujoch and it didn’t take long to get from the cable car to the observation platform. There’s a cut-out figure of George Lazenby as James Bond here and a plaque with an imprint of Lazenby’s hands, along with a sound stage for bands (although it was not being used at the moment). But of course I didn’t come there for any of that. I came to see the mountains. And I was not disappointed! Although there was a little big of fog and scattered clouds here and there, gorgeous views of the Alps abounded in every direction. It was a better view than the view from Jungfraujoch, and of course you could see the Jungfrau and its sister peaks, Mönch and Eiger, very well from here. At 9,744 feet above sea level, there was snow here even in summer, but only in patches. There was no glacier to explore here but I was still worn out from the previous day’s adventure, so that was perfectly fine with me.

I visited the Spy World Museum which I think I would have enjoyed more if I had either been a James Bond fan or a kid. (I say a kid because they had some really fun-looking activities for kids like a bobsled simulator and a helicopter simulator.) Then I went upstairs to the restaurant, Piz Gloria. In case you were wondering, Piz means “peak” in the Romansch language, which isn’t spoken much in this part of Switzerland, but is spoken in the Engadin Valley near St. Moritz, which is where the restaurant was supposed to be in the movie. I had a lunch reservation for 12:30 but it was only 11:00 AM. They were able to seat me right away though since it was the transition between breakfast and lunch time and the restaurant was not very crowded at the moment. As one person by myself, they were not able to give me a whole window table to myself, but they did seat me at one end of a long table where two people were sitting by the window about 10 feet away. I was excited to get a seat in the revolving section at all, because even with a reservation they can only guarantee that to groups of 4 or more. (The entire restaurant doesn’t move–only the outer circle.) They had just stopped serving breakfast but a special buffet called the James Bond Brunch was still available for a few more hours. They simply switch their hot dishes from breakfast foods to lunch foods after 11:00 but they still call it brunch.

Those who know me know that I’m a carbotarian, and I loaded up my plate with every kind of carb imaginable, including Rösti (the Swiss version of hash browns), Alpine pasta, regular pasta, and fresh croissants and rolls, along with some roasted vegetables and fresh fruit, a salad, and a bowl of vegetarian soup. I never felt more American abroad than I did hauling that overflowing plate to my table. There was even self-serve wine included in the buffet at no additional price, and I indulged in some of that as well. The food was good and watching the view outside the window gradually change was fascinating. There was no mechanical whir or even any real feeling of movement but if I put my hand on the window or my foot on the stationary part of the floor, in about 20 or 30 seconds my arm or leg would be fully extended and I’d have to let go. There were two people between me and the windows, but the entire circular wall was covered in large windows so I could still see a great view of the mountains, a view that changed with every passing moment. One side-effect of the revolving restaurant that I hadn’t thought about beforehand is that you are always next to a different part of the stationary middle part of the restaurant. So if I wanted to grab another croissant or refill my glass, I could just wait a few minutes for that part of the buffet to come to me instead of walking to that part of the restaurant! I stayed in the restaurant for a long time, partly to enjoy the view and the novel experience and partly because it was the biggest meal I’d eaten since I left the States. But at 12:30 more people started to come in for lunch, so I paid my bill and left.

On the way back down the mountain, I spent some time at Birg, the lower (but still pretty high) stop on the cable car route. There was a great view here too and the observation platform was a “Skywalk”–a metal grid sticking out from the mountainside where you could look down through the gaps to see directly down below. There was also a “Thrill Walk” which was a similar platform but much thinner that went down and around the mountainside, giving you the feeling that you’re walking on thin air. I skipped the Thrill Walk, not because it was scary, but because I saw all the steep steps I would have to go down and back up again and my legs were still aching from the day before.

However, I was still prepared to do a little hiking, provided it was mostly downhill. So when I took the cable car back down to Murren, instead of boarding the train there, I hiked along the popular trail to Grütschalp that runs parallel to the railroad tracks. The trail afforded me beautiful views of the mountains and I also enjoyed watching the little mountain trains going back and forth. You can take the trail all the way to Grütschalp or even Lauterbrunnen, but I happened to be passing Winteregg station just as a downhill train was pulling in, so I decided on a whim to hop on and let it take me the rest of the way down.

Since I had to change trains in Lauterbrunnen anyway, I decided to take some time to explore the village on foot. I had seen it from above so many times and had passed through it to get to other places, but I hadn’t actually taken the time to explore Lauterbrunnen itself up close. I walked in the direction of a nearby waterfall called Staubach Falls that had caught my attention since Day 1. However, unlike Wengen where I was staying, Lauterbrunnen is not a car-free village and I found myself growing weary of walking along the side of a road with traffic. Most of Lauterbrunnen is serene countryside dotted with little wooden cabins, but I was in the center of town, and after spending all day in the mountains, I wasn’t really feeling it, so I went back to my hotel in Wengen where I relaxed and enjoyed the view from my balcony.

THE PANORAMA TRAIL

On my last full day in the Jungfrau region, I went hiking from Männlichen, a mountain peak near Jungfrau, accessible from Wengen by a short cable car ride. Upon arriving, I started by hiking the short but strenuous trail to the peak called the Männlichen Royal Walk. It’s only a kilometer to the top (and another kilometer to return) but there’s an elevation gain of about 800 meters which starts out as a gentle slope and becomes very steep in the final section. Still, it wasn’t an especially difficult hike and the view of Jungfrau, Monch, and Eiger was outstanding. There are a number of well-placed benches and signboards with bits of historical or nature facts about the area to help break up the ascent.

Having accomplished my first goal of the day, I rested for a few minutes at a platform where a lederhosen-clad band was yodeling and blowing on massive alpine horns. (I’m not posting a photo of them because they had their backs turned to me and I have a better picture of the same type of thing in Zermatt, which I’ll post next week.) Nearby, there was a playground with a giant wooden cow. After my break, I embarked on my second and longer hike of the day, the popular Panorama Trail from Männlichen to Klein Scheidegg.

The Panorama Trail is about three miles between Männlichen and Klein Scheidegg. From Klein Scheidegg you can continue hiking to many other destinations or catch a train to Wengen or Lauterbrunnen like I did. Although the hike takes place at a fairly high elevation, it is mostly downhill, and not steep enough to be challenging as a downhill hike like harrowing downhill scramble I would experience on Ebenalp later in my trip. This was actually a very easy and relaxing hike and the effort to reward ratio was one of the best out of all the trails I’ve ever hiked in my life. There are plenty of zigs and zags along the way, and some brief and gentle uphill parts, but ultimately the trail runs along the edge of a massive cliff wall as it bends its way into a 180 degree arc around the Lauterbrunnen valley. On the right, you can see spectacular views of Jungfrau, Eiger, Mönch, and many other mountains. On the left, you can see an amazing view of Lauterbrunnen and the entire surrounding area. As if the incredible panaroma were not enough, there are also a lot of interesting details to notice along the trail itself, from wildflowers and alpine springs to massive boulders and unexpected snowbanks.

The only drawback to this trail was that I had to share it with a lot of other people, but with the vast open space to my left it never felt too crowded. I was amazed and humbled by an elderly man (he had to be at least in his 80s if not older) with a prosthetic leg who was hiking at about the same pace as me. He would slow down during the uphill parts but whenever I was about to overtake him, the trail would turn downhill again and he would speed ahead of me. Eventually I did pass him, but that guy really earned my respect. I also enjoyed sharing the trail with a beautiful dog that was running loose but clearly had great training. The dog would bound ahead down the trail, unphased by the thousand-foot drop just inches away from it, and then abruptly stop and look back at its owner in the distance before running back up to them.

There were several spots along the trail where a grassy knoll would appear where there were benches and people would sit and eat or converse while overlooking the spectacular view. I rested at one such place and ate some nuts I had packed. More than once, I thought I was coming around a corner to Klein Scheidegg, but it turned out to just be another picnic spot. But eventually I did arrive at the Klein Scheidegg train station and the end of the trail for me. I took the train back to Wengen, walked up the hill to my hotel one last time, and packed for the next leg of my journey. My time in the mountains was coming to a close for now.

The next leg of my Switzerland adventure would take me to the historic towns of Spiez and Thun on the shores of beautiful Lake Thun (Thundersee). I would spend the next couple days exploring medieval castles and relaxing on the shores of that shimmering turquoise lake. But that’s a tale for another day. Tune in on Thursday for that next leg of my journey. I want to close by noting that the free Flickr page that hosts my photo collection is full, so only the first half of the Jungfrau photos are uploaded there. I’m working on a different solution for storing and displaying my photo albums, so hopefully I will be able to post the rest of those pictures by the time the next post comes out.