Interlaken, Switzerland

We knew when we left Ins that we wanted to see the Thunersee, a large lake in the Alps. We rode the train to Bern and then to Thun, where we boarded the passenger ferry Stadt Bern. We parked ourselves on the top deck, applied sunscreen (although the horse had long since been stolen), and acquired beer.

The beer turned out to be important to our decision-making process. We had boarded the boat thinking that we would disembark in Spiez, but as we approached the dock our beers weren't empty, so we decided to stay aboard until they were. That turned out to mean disembarking in Interlaken. Upon arrival, we met with another outstanding technological advance: the hotel board. The hotel board is a display of all the hotels in the city, showing amenities, location, price, and availability, all updated frequently by telephone. Each hotel has a code number, and a free telephone on the board connects you to the front desk.

We quickly found a hotel with both a reasonable price and an Alpine view. By the next morning though, the skies had clouded over and the scenery was lost. So, our plan to visit Jungfraujoch (the highest train station in the world) was scuttled and we instead took a short hike to a hill overlooking the city and then went to the model railroad museum. We decided to leave Interlaken, beautiful as it is, because of the weather, but we plan to return someday to enjoy the scenery at length.

We left Interlaken by train to Spiez, then Zweisimmen, Gstaad & Montreux. At Zweisimmen, we boarded the "Panoramic Express" train. This one had windows that went all the way up the sides of the car and wrapped over onto the roof, so the views were tremendous. We had the whole car to ourselves for most of the trip, so we each had a window seat and we spent the ride with our eyes fixed on the scenery. We switched trains at Montreaux on our way to Geneva.