Day 5 began really early. At about 4 AM, Denise and I both wake up due to the heat in this little hotel room. We have windows that fully open to the side Denise is sleeping on and because we are on the downside of the mountain, they open into the hill almost…about a foot below the window. I wanted to just open them but Denise was afraid Bigfoot come through the windows and sleep with her. But in the pitch darkness, I noticed solid outside shutters. They had to be the ‘screens’ that you can use to keep large animals out yet air in. So at 4 AM, I figured out how to use them. Slowly our room began to cool down. As of now, we have not shut our windows and just had these shutters in place as they do lock fairly well.
Since I was awake, I thought I’d see who was texting from the USA since it was only 8 PM in Utah. What I saw was an email from United telling me that our Tuesday flight might be cancelled or severely delayed due to lightning and thunder in the NYC area….where our plane out of Geneva originates on Monday. So I laid there thinking about all the alternatives at my finger tips to catch a flight home. I’ve monitored the NYC weather and the flight today from EWR and everything seems to look just fine. Nothing odd other than hotter than normal temperatures. I’ll continue to watch this as we get closer to Tuesday. The plane needs to fly Monday at 5 PM’ish from EWR for us to be able to get on it here in Geneva Tuesday at 9:30 AM. And you have the whole Covid testing bologna that the US Government continues to put us all through. All other countries in the 21st century value vaccinations and the fact we’ve been vaccinated and boosted. The USA does not seem to care. Big money grab it is by big Pharma making us all test. Anyway, we have to test the day before flying….but if you don’t know if you’re going to fly until the door closes and you have tickets, you might be testing multiple times as a standby flyer. Stressful it is….but I eventually fell back asleep awaking around 8 AM.
This mornings activities began at breakfast where we had a free breakfast with our hotel room. It was the usual Euro fare of bread, cheeses, various hams, some cereal, yoghurt, etc.. Lots to choose from. All very yummy.
After eating, we headed to where Mike and Jenny are sleeping to see their ‘hobbit’ hut. We eventually found it after wandering a bit and yes, I have to duck down after every beam supporting the floor above them. But it is a nice clean unit. On another note, Mike got pinged by the owner of the BNB in Paris saying that they had broken a bathroom door, a toilet seat and that we had left a pile of sheets in the living room area. The first two items are not true…the door was broke when they arrived and the toilet set swiveled already too. As for the sheets, the instructions asked us to strip the sheets from the beds…which we did and we piled them there thinking it would be easier for the cleaning team. All in all…he wants $600 more euro. I think not. So Mike will be taking this up with AIRBNB folks. This guy is trying to grab money. But we’ll see.
After seeing their flat, we headed to a waterfall nearby named Staubbach Falls. We had to do a climb, following a path of switch backs that took us to the back of the waterfall…or so we thought. But in reality, it got us close but we were not totally behind the main water. I suspect if it was flowing harder, that would be the case. It was really fun nonetheless.
After seeing this waterfall, we headed to a UNESCO Heritage site called Trümmelbach-Fälle. We jumped on a bus that took as about 1.5 miles up the river here to the entrance point. We paid 25 euros for both of us to get in. This was amazing. It is a waterfall that cuts in and out of the mountain. It is a glacier waterfall. And to get up to see it all you have to take a funicular….a train that goes up the mountain. Once you exit, you starting walking upstairs into the mountain seeing many vantage points where the waterfall is blasting through the mountain. The air was so fresh…so wonderfully cool. The water was the color of water we saw in Banff Park in Canada of a lake there as it too was fed from a glacier. The power of the water coming down was amazing. We then took all the steps down the mountains seeing many different views of the water hurling down the mountain. We did not use the funicular to come down. Most folks did it this way. Very fun, not overwhelming. It probably took about an hour to do. Maybe more. It would have been fun to walk the trail along the river back to Lauterbrunnen but we had other plans to get done today. So we caught the bus back. At that point, we split from Mike and Jenny. They were going to get ready to go Paragliding which is a sport going on here constantly. You see Paragliders coming off the mountain and then floating for about 15 minutes down to the beautiful valley floor. It must be amazing. I hope all the Hunters get to do this today.
Denise and I returned to our room to quickly shower and get cleaned up. We then went to the tram near us and paid tickets to take us up the mountain and with a train ride up there over to Mürren…a little town perched on the mountain that has hotels, eateries and other trams to take you way up the mountain to some crazy view points. We stopped at Mürren to walk this little town and to just enjoy the beauty of the earth that amazingly is surrounding us. It is amazing. Our pictures won’t do it justice. High peaks with valley glaciers towering over a valley so green, full of flowers, with a glacier river running through it. It is quite unbelievable. You can see why many James Bond movies have had parts filmed here and the Amazing Race has been here a number of times too doing such things as Paragliding. You’ll have to look up all the names of the peaks here. But one stands out in my mind called the Eiger. I remember a movie with Clint Eastwood in it called the Eiger Sanction. I think I saw it on TV. It was about a company scaling this mountain…kind of. Anyway, I have to pinch myself to tell myself that I’m really here. After walking through Mürren, we stopped at a restaurant in the edge of a cliff (with a spectacular view) to have some ice cream and apple strudel. Pretty wonderful.
We are now in our room just relaxing with the windows open, breeze blowing after a slight rainstorm wondering if all the Hunters launched themselves off the mountain (with pilots of course). We’ve heard that 3 have gone so far. I hope the other two make it. We are not sure what we will do this evening…maybe find a place to chill and play cards or something. We’ll see. More to come.
Pictures….
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