Switzerland vacation: Monday in Interlaken

What a perfect week. Sarah and I had a glorious time exploring Switzerland. We lived by only a few simple rules for the week:

#1) travel within Switzerland, keeping an open and flexible itinerary
#2) consume cheese, chocolate, and wine at least once a day (not necessarily at the same time)
#3) take in scenery and experiences whenever possible
#4) plan our excursions based on where the weather looked best each day
#5) wear braids in our hair for as many days as possible in order to channel our inner Heidi

In recapping our experiences, I thought what better way to share then to provide a day-by-day recap of our adventures, starting with Monday...

After waiting for Sarah's suitcase to be delivered to our apartment (the lovely Iberia airline decided to lose it for a few days somewhere between Miami and Madrid), we headed out to the train station to embark on our adventure.  We decided to travel by train for the week since the trains here are very frequent, reliable, clean, and it would allow for both of us to take in the scenery and not be stressed by driving on mountain roads.  Sarah bought a "Swiss pass" at the train station that let her travel on all government run transportation (trains, buses, trams, and boats) for free for a specified number of days. This turned out to be hugely convenient because it covered almost every form of transportation that we used for the week, and for what it didn't cover, it offered a 50% reduction (i.e., on tourist cable cars and trains that aren't run by the government). As a resident of Switzerland, I already own a 50% discount pass.

Waiting for the tram in Geneva to take us to the station

Our destination was the town of Interlaken, famous for its views, adventure sports, the "trio" of famous Swiss mountains (the Jungfrau, Eiger, and Monch), and last but not least, for my female readers -- the site of the finale of the Bachelorette for Ben's season.

Interlaken is situated in between two gorgeous lakes

Taking in the views on the train ride to Interlaken

Arriving at our hotel (Hotel Rossli) with a balcony view

Our first order of business was to get ourselves acquainted with the Interlaken area by exploring the center of town. The weather in the early part of the week of our trip was VERY hot for Switzerland (80-90 degrees), so everyone was out and about and the town and lakes were mobbed by tourist groups as it is also a very popular summer destination for tourists in Switzerland.  While the town of Interlaken itself was a bit too busy and touristy for our liking, we soon found that there were still plenty of quiet spots in the town, mountains, and idyllic Swiss pastures in the area for one to feel serene and alone and we couldn't wait to escape into the mountains the next day.

The view of the Jungfrau from the park in the town center 

For Bachelorette fans, the hotel that Ben and the ladies stayed in

If I were a better photographer I would be able to figure out how to get both us in the shade and the sunny Jungfrau mountain in the background to show up in this picture, but alas, you will just have to imagine that I was able to capture both in one picture :)

The river in town - all week we noticed that the rivers and lakes in Switzerland are an icy blue color, and upon further investigation found that this is due to the way the fine rock powder sediment from the mountains is carried downstream and suspended in the water, refracting sunlight in a particular manner to create the gorgeous blues 

We grabbed a mini bottle of wine and paper cups from the grocery store in town and had some wine in the park while we contemplated the views and researched our dinner destination

We decided on a traditional Swiss restaurant for dinner (Restaurant Zum Baren) that had good reviews on TripAdvisor. It had super convenient maps of the Interlaken area for placemats so that while waiting for dinner, you could plan your adventure for the next day

Our meal consisted of Rosti, a traditional Swiss dish of shaved potatoes browned with oil, ham, butter, and other artery clogging ingredients and topped with melted Swiss cheese and an egg. 

Post-prosecco picture opp at dinner

We ended the night by taking in the stars from our hotel balcony and Face-timing our beloved third college roommate, Julia.

For fun, here is how we met our cheese/chocolate/wine requirement for the day:

Cheese: Cheese on our rosti dish
Chocolate: Toblerone bars on the train ride as a post-lunch snack
Wine: Wine purchased at the grocery store in Interlaken and prosecco at dinner

As always, to see more pictures from Monday in Interlaken and our summer season in general, click on the link to the right of the page that says "Our Summer 2013 photos", which will bring you to a photo dump of all of our photos.