Day 16, 12 6 2014, Interlaken to Brienz

I keep lists in my head of the best and worst of my travelling experiences.  For example, amongst the worst are the Prado art museum in Madrid, and the whole of the city of Naples.

Among the best are the Salvadore Dali museum in Cadaques in Spain, the upper Danube towns, our ride up the Col de Tourmalet in the Pyrenees and today’s journey to the Eiger and Jungfrau high in the Alps, going by train from Interlaken.  I concede that my list is so eclectic that it cannot be ranked, but this is as good as it gets in European tourism.  For souring spectacular grandeur there is nothing I have seen that comes close. Even photos do not do it justice, so I will restrict it to just one and a map to give something of the flavour.

I was here forty years ago backpacking around Europe and if anything I appreciate it more now in near perfect weather, rather than the heavy freezing weather of my first visit.

The trip took seven hours, and we arrived back in Interlaken by around 2.30.  We went back to the hotel retrieved our luggage and bikes and rode around the lake to Brienz.  We had a brief conference about continuing on but decided to stop.  As we checked in a large thunderstorm blew through, a great end to a near perfect day of tourism.

18Km for the day.

Roz says:  Absolute perfection, visual saturation!! Maybe a couple more photos!! And also very lucky us, early birds (7am train) get cheap train tickets and perfect morning light and no crowds. We saw that we could have taken the bikes up on the train and left them at Kleine S. while we did the Jungfrau expedition but we were VERY grateful we had not attempted the Grindelwald decent when the big thunderstorms descended this afternoon!

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