Interlaken Switzerland

Well, we were surprised by both the beauty and taken back by the prices in Interlaken. First of all Quinn will be able to vouche for my love of train rides and in saying that I am being completely sarcastic. I am not a fan at all. From Barcelona to Switzerland we got an over night 12 hour train ride which was supposed to have somewhat sleepable conditions... wrong. The chairs were insanely uncomfortable, there was a stale air smell that was making my head spin, and the people were just annoying in more ways then worth explaining. We were also abruptly awoken by the Swiss police asking for our passports around like 4am. I was unable to get a good nights sleep which ended up making Switzerland seem even more beautiful and breath taking since my drowsiness only added to my imagination. We pulled into this small town of around 5,000 people and found our hostel to be this cute little lodge with a restaurant/bar inside. Thinking we just entered heaven we set out to see the place. It didn't take long to realize that our pockets were not going to be so happy... coffee was 4 swiss francs, bread was like 5 a basic meal was 15-25... about the only cheap thing was beer and cheese and bread.

The views however really did make up for the money we were spending, most mornings we ventured as far as our tired legs would take us to see different mountain peaks and lakes. Interlaken means "between lakes" there is the Thon and Brien lake on either side, both equally gorgeous with teal blue waters, set deep in a valley with canyoning walls reaching heaven on either side. We were disappointed at the prices to take the cable car lifts up to the top of the two highest peaks, Jungfrau and Shlithorn (both over 100 swiss francs). Our first day there was occupied by taking the advice of Rick Steves and going on a 45 minute self guided walk of the city. We started out on Brahnhofstrasse st passing all the tourist type shops with souvenir cow bells and swiss watches. There were tons of Swiss watch shops and expensive stores, one which had 12,000 SF purses versace and gucci, you were not allowed to touch anything and if you were interested you had to wear gloves on your hands to protect the leather of the purses. We stole into this 18 story high hotel and went out on the terrace of the restaurant on the top to get a free look of the city from high up. Looking up you could see the para-sail gliders coming off Jungfrau mt.Our walk took us along the Aarse River which is this beautiful milky teal and blue color, it was so hard to believe it was real the color was so strange, it comes straight from the glaciers of the Alps. There is another city which once was separate from Interlaken but now is connected called Uterseen. We ventured through its town square and eventually found the cheapest place to get pizza! In the end we headed back to our hostel, tired, hungry, and excited for our next day which was to be spent hiking through the Alps (the cheap inexpensive thing to do around here is just walk)!