Day 26 ~ A Goodbye to the Valley

We have loved our time in the Lauterbrunnen Valley more than we can say. Well, Daniel was sick most of the time, so Stef had the better time, but still. This has been a complete fantasyland of natural wonders. If you like natural beauty, and we sure do, this might be the best place in the whole world. We hope you’re getting a sense of that. So it’s hard to accept that we’re leaving tomorrow. Every day, we discover some new thing that we would have loved to have had time to do, just within our little 10km or so radius. And that’s to say nothing of the areas we barely touched, like Interlaken and Thun. Start wondering about other parts of Switzerland, and, well, a lifetime here wouldn’t have been enough. What a place.

How do you close a chapter like this then? For us, it was by slowing down, loosening up the itinerary, and getting quiet. You’ll see it wasn’t an action packed day, but for us, it was a very high-quality one. We planned to sleep in, but were actually awake by 7/7:30. We lazed around the house all morning, made sure we understood our fairly complex travel plans for tomorrow, and didn’t roll out of the house until 1:00.

Stef hadn’t gotten her fill of Lauterbrunnen proper, and lord knows we wanted to take that heavenly train ride one more time in the daylight. We headed down for lunch, and a walk around.

We walked down a path to the river we hadn’t been down before, and saw what appeared to be permanent residences with lush gardens, a fridge where people buy cheese and butter on the honor system, and what was probably a daycare. The river was probably the brightest blue green we had seen it.

And of course we visited Staubach Falls. Between a pretty good breeze blowing the water, and radiant light that showed every drop, it was looking the best we’d ever seen it.

We made a spontaneous lunch choice that turned out not great, although the food was pretty good. We made our way back to Wengen, loving the ride all the way.

We’d been waiting all day for the clouds to lift from Maennlichen, a cable car destination waaaay at the top of a ridge over Wengen. We’d wanted to take this our whole time here, it was our last chance, and it was looking like the weather would not cooperate. Finally, at 4:00, we could at least see the station from down below. The visibility would be pretty hampered – certainly no long-distance alps views – but we’d be able to see Wengen and the valley, so we were pleased to take the ride.

Now friends, what made this cable car special is that you can ride on the top of it. Yes, we were definitely going to do that. We didn’t get a pic of us actually up there, but here’s the idea:

Yup. Definitely doing that. Here is what that is like:

Once at the station, we looked down over Wengen:

And over the other side to Grindelwald, far down below. And what do you know, even an alp or two. There’s a gondola ride to Grindelwald that we would have loved to take, but that will have to wait until our next visit.

And up at the top, we got to pet the cows! It’s hard to overstate what a big deal the cows are in the Swiss Alps. They are everywhere, they add serene charm, and they give us all this glorious cheese. To have waited this long to commune with a cow is kind of a shame – and we almost didn’t get to do it at all. Also, it’s hard to overstate how big the cows are in the Swiss Alps! Look at the size of these things! Stef and Dan for scale. We were very happy to have cow time.

And with that, it was time to head down for groceries and packing. Stef has been meaning this whole time to capture audios of the cowbells chiming through the valley. We’ve heard better, but at 6pm the day before we leave, this is what you get. You’ll have to crank the audio way up though.

So that’s it. Lauterbrunnen Valley, this can’t be the last time we ever see you. Thank you for all this magic.

Tomorrow, we are thrilled to have more Switzerland ahead of us for a few hours – a scenic train ride through an area all new to us, Interlaken to Montreux to Geneva.

Stef has been so sad about leaving Switzerland that she forgot to be excited about France! Here we come, and we are ready for a new adventure.