Last Update:01/06/00 About This Site About the Author

We barely made it to the train station in Milan this morning. If we had caught the trolley to the station any later we'd have been out of luck. The ride to Interlaken was nice - mostly through the mountains - lots of tunnels. Our original plan was to arrive in Interlaken and go straight up to Jungfraujoch (the Top of Europe) and back down to Interlaken. We didn't realize that our Europass's didn't cover the trip to Jungfraujoch (it is quite a bit extra and worth it). So after the conductor brought this to our attention, we jumped off the train at the next stop and hiked back to Interlaken. When Sharon got tired of walking, we stopped at a VW dealer and a girl mechanic told us how to find our hotel. Her name was Stephanie.

Interlaken is situated in a mountain valley in the Jungfrau region of Switzerland that contains some famous peaks such as Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. It's a beautiful tourist town surrounded by huge mountains. It's too bad we're here in the off season.

Today ended up being a rest day. After settling into the Best Western Chateau Oberland (not as bad as it sounds - we're in a new building), we walked around town and found out what our options were for going up to Jungfraujoch. Any way you do it, it's pretty expensive to get up there, but as long as we're here....

Highlight of the day was watching some mallard ducks play in the strong current of a river flowing through town. They would jump off a ledge and let the current carry them down a little ways and then paddle back over to shore.

There are a bunch of shops with everything you would want from Switzerland - knives, watches, cuckoo clocks, chocolate, and knives (I know I already mentioned this). We'll get most of our Christmas shopping done tomorrow I think.