The Bernese Oberland

That title encompasses the central highlands in the Canton of Bern, and includes towns such as Interlaken, Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, and where we stayed - Mürren. The scenery was spectacular! On the train ride in, we passed this gorgeous lake…

… before entering the Lauterbrunnen valley (known for its 72 waterfalls) -

You can’t see it in the picture above, but Mürren is perched on the edge of the cliff deep in the valley on the right side.

This was the view from our hotel balcony, looking onto the Eiger and Munch mountains -

We arrived in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to make my 3 pm appointment to fly!

Yes, I went paragliding again (the first time was in Columbia in 2022, and was a relatively short flight). I had booked an afternoon time slot to help ensure that I could get a “double time” flight with the rising thermals that occur. Steve was my photographer for the takeoff. This is a video, so the usual comment applies - open this post in your browser by clicking the link at the end of the email -

My pilot took lots of stills while we were flying…

… and that one above was my favorite because of the enormous waterfall we flew over. The next shot shows how high over the valley we were before we descended -

did you notice who had the “controls” ?

Steve captured the descent and landing well, but you’ll have to forgive some of the issues in the middle. He was using my Nikon to film, and he doesn’t have all the hours with it that I have. :)

For those of you with weak stomachs, I won’t share the video we took while we were looping. It felt like riding a roller coaster that did 360 degree loops. Super fun!

The next day we did a “short” 4 mile hike near town and enjoyed fabulous weather…

… and views…

… and met some local friends -

And that evening, we got to see a family of wild goat-antelopes called Chamois -

be sure and enlarge the picture to see the beautiful facial markings

Mürren is a beautiful little town filled with flowers…

… and blessed with drop-dead backgrounds -

We were treated to a beautiful post-sunset sky as we enjoyed our al fresco dinner. Stay tuned for more adventures from the highlands!

Lucerne/Luzern

With the benefit of hindsight, we realized how spoiled we’d been with the peace and noncrowded conditions in Scuol, when we hit Lucerne. We’re in the middle of the high season, and the crowds everywhere reminded us of that.

The Chapel Bridge was built in 1333 over the Reuss river, near its origin from Lake Lucerne…

… and it’s the oldest covered bridge still existing in Europe.

We wandered a little through the old town…

… and filled our water bottles from a continuously running fountain -

We also took a cruise on Lake Lucerne, checking out the water front…

… ogling the places we didn’t stay…

… enjoying the scenery…

… and watching all those cooling off in the lake, avoiding the 90 degree heat.

All manner of watercraft were out…

… including cruise boats -

Ours was just a little smaller ;-) -

This looked like a fun apparatus for the young people -

Interesting architecture abounds…

… and boat houses are quite substantial -

The next day, we took a cogwheel train (the steepest in the world, with a maximum gradient of 48% !) to the top of Mt. Pilatus -

At the top of this 7,000 ft mountain towering over Lucerne, we were treated to awesome views of Lake Lucerne and the surrounding mountains. This is a video, so be sure and open this post in your browser by clicking the link at the end of the email.

We went for a long walk around the mountain side…

… checking out the wildflowers, like this Round-headed Rampion (aka Rapunzel Flower)…

… and when we returned, an Alphorn concert was going on!

The video I shot was just so-so, but I grabbed that shot of the instrumentalist, so you could see the horn and its immense size. In a later post, I’ll share a video of an impromptu concert we had during dinner one night.

(Just a note regarding future posts from this trip. They may be posted quite far apart, as we have just started our 11 day hiking adventure of the Tour Du Mont Blanc, and I expect to be wiped out most evenings, with little energy left for blogging. We’ll just have to see…)

I’ll close this post with an artsy shot looking back at the incline near the top, and the hotel there.

Scuol, Switzerland

We started our two week exploration of this beautiful (expensive) country in the SE corner where Romansh is the official and primary language, followed by German. This town came to my attention because of the sgraffiti used on the architecture -

This is a decorative technique that scratches through a coating on a hard surface to reveal an underlying layer of another color -

Just about every building in town had this…

… and almost every home had a rounded entryway -

There was a church on a hill that was very picturesque, but quite bothersome to me. It chimed the quarter hour all night and day [and we needed to have our windows open for breezes during the heat wave].

We did a little day trip to a nearby town, Tarasp, to tour a medieval castle built in 1040 -

The interior was neat (we couldn’t take pictures) but the views from the top were awesome -

Back in Scuol (pronounced “shkool”), we wandered around in the evening admiring the light of the “golden hour”…

… and I decided the siting of the church was pretty great, even if it was noisy. :)