River Cruise Sept. 28/14

On Sunday, Sept. 28th, we left our hotel in Basel, Switzerland to travel by bus to Interlaken (between 2 lakes), in the centre of the country for lunch on a mountain-top.  Along the way, we made a pit stop in the beautiful town  of Lucerne.

 
 Lucerne is famous for this beautiful covered bridge, and I loved our time there - could have stayed all day!

There were MANY beautiful swans in the river, and I love swans!

 There was even a Starbucks along here to the right!

 This would make a nice jigsaw puzzle. 

 This beautiful castle overlooking the town apparently belongs now to a Russian.

A bride and groom waiting for the photographer.

The bells were calling us to worship in this beautiful church.  I would have loved to have stayed there long enough.

Like everywhere we go, there were a lot of bikes here - most of them not even locked up.

This made our hearts go pitter-pat!

We enjoyed some amazingly beautiful scenery out the bus windows on the way to higher ground.

They actually pulled the bus over and let us get out for a better look at this one!  This is one of the lakes that Interlaken is between - Lake Lungern, an artificially made lake.

We traveled upward to Grindelwald for a view of the Eiger, Monk, and Jungfrau peaks.  A cog railway took us up the rest of the way to Kleine Scheidegg, at an elevation of 2,061 metres, for a typical Swiss lunch.

Paul and I took a trail that led us even higher after lunch, during free time, for some spectacular views.

 We did some puffing at this altitude, but it was a great way to wear off some of the great lunch we enjoyed. 

Near the bottom of the picture, you can see a "snow shed" which lets the snow go over instead of onto the railway tracks during a slide.

 

These two appeared to be enjoying the view down over the valley.

 
 Brave fellow to be climbing to the top of this rock. 

 Later, we got on another cog train which took us down the other side of the mountain.  As we went through this little town, we noticed that there were no roads or cars, so was only accessible by rail.

I had never seen the edelweiss flower before - in fact, to be honest, I didn't know that's what the word meant.  Apparently it is a hardy little flower that only grows high up in the Alps. So pretty!  And I feel so fortunate to have seen it growing!