Off
to Interlaken!
A snail I saw across the street from our AirBNB. Also, notice the blackberries growing there!
We were only going to stay there for one night, so we took
an earlier train. It left at 9:30, and got us to the Interlaken East train
station at about 11:30, with just one transfer in Bern. Nice and easy!
The weather was absolutely gorgeous in Interlaken. Very cool
but still bright and sunny and just wonderful. We left our suitcases at our
AirBNB (since no one was staying there the night of the 28th, and we
were going to stay there again the night of the 29th), and just
brought a few small bags with us. Because of that, the 15ish-minute walk to the
hostel was a breeze.
The hostel we booked was really nice, but it was a good
thing we didn’t bring our suitcases: the room was teeny tiny. The guy at the
desk who checked us in told us that we had full access to public transport and
this activities center in town (which included swimming pool and mini golf) for
free as guests of the hostel. Of course, we never made use of the town’s bus
system—it was too nice out to not walk!
Before we did anything else, we needed lunch. There was a
place in the main town area that looked pretty good, so we sat down there.
Kayla had schnitzel, and I had risotto. It was pretty good!
The whole reason we came to Interlaken was because Kayla had
heard about a tin toboggan slide thing on a mountain that she was absolutely
dying to do. In order to do the slide, we had to take a train to a little town
called Grindelwald (I know, just like Harry Potter!)
The train ride only took about half an hour, and it was very
scenic. When we got to Grindelwald, I was surprised to see how many tourists
were there and how “happening” the town was. It was bigger than I expected, and
had lots of shops and restaurants and things. We just went straight up to Pfingstegg,
though, to do the slide.
For some reason we thought we needed to take a bus from the
train station to the site where you get on the cable car up to Pfingstegg. It
took us a while to figure out which bus we needed to get on, and then we had no
clue how to buy a ticket. We went inside the train station info area and waited
FOREVER just to find out that you buy your ticket on the bus.
It turned out that we were only two stops away from where we
needed to go. I mean, it wasn’t a super short distance, but it wasn’t worth
3.60 Francs a piece. We knew we’d be walking back after!
We paid for our cable car ride and got right on it. It was
pretty cramped, but super cool looking out on the mountains and whatnot.
At the top, we found the ticket office for the toboggan
slide and again had to wait forever
in line. The people in front of us were so incredibly slow…I still don’t know
what they were doing. Meanwhile, I was kind of freaking out because I found out
that you control the speed of your own toboggan. I thought it was just like an
automatic thing! I don’t know! I’m too Disney-fied I guess. I was almost too
scared to do it, but I decided I would just go slow if I got freaked out.
But I survived! And it was really fun. I think the people
behind me wanted me to go faster, but too bad for them.
After taking in all the views from Pfingstegg, we got back
on the cable car and went back down to Grindelwald. As we walked back toward
the train station, we were on the lookout for ice cream. However, there wasn’t
any to find! Well, lots of stores sold pre-packaged ice cream bars, but we
wanted the real deal. It just wasn’t meant to be though, I guess.
Our train back to Interlaken was a little rough; my ears
were popping a lot. But it was short, so it was fine. We went to our hostel for
a little while before going out for dinner.
We actually had dinner at the same restaurant where we had
lunch. This time, we got cheese fondue! I know fondue isn’t really a summertime
thing, but hey, they were serving it, and it was cool enough outside that we
definitely didn’t get hot or anything. And it was very good! Although I
actually think the fondue I made at home with my mom and my friend Carly over
last winter break was better, but whatever. For dessert, we went into the
chocolate shop section of the restaurant where, once again, Kayla got
macaroons, and I got truffles.
Kayla and I had been thinking we might want to go swimming
after dinner, but before we went back to change, we decided to go find the pool
and scope it out. Turns out the outdoor pool was already closed! However, the
mini golf course was open, and no one was playing, so we decided to just do
that. We both kind of sucked, but it was pretty fun. Kayla beat me by 4 points
(although our scoring system was a little off—she probably beat me by more than
that).
The rest of the night was pretty chill. We took showers and
all and then just chilled until we were tired enough to go to sleep.
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