Part un la Swiss

We’d been prompted by the price of trains in Switzerland and a need to be a bit more independent that we would hire a car. So after a quick night in Lausanne on the banks of Lake Geneva, and a confusing morning in the old part of Lausanne town (we are generally pretty good old town navigators but this place is a time warp), we hopped in our hire car beastie and headed for the mountains.

Well we didn’t go straight up but went through Gruyeres and to a cheese factory there (loving the free samples).


Can’t remember how heavy each one weighs but they are at least ½ meter in diameter and 15 cm thick.

We then went just down the road to the original Callier (Nestle) factory. It was ok, a bit of chocolate history and process and then out of nowhere just as you exit in an obscure corridor was a counter 10m long with all the different chocolates.

Note the excited look on Rach’s face


We didn’t need much dinner that night.

Just before tackling the Jaunpass, sugar high still in top gear.

On our first night, being the money scrapers that we are we just rocked up to a camping ground paid for tent sight and slept in the car. Not the best move, who knew Switzerland got so cold.

Hanging in the campground common room, as we didn’t have one ourselves.

Day two of our drive round Switzerland saw us go to the Interlaken / Jungfrau region. We stayed in Lauterbruten, a small low valley town below the Jungfrau mountains (Swiss Alps), which we couldn’t see as the mist was so thick.


We did go see a glacier waterfall network carved through the center of the mountains.

The next day and the mist was still hanging round and we decided it was better to just go for the alpine hike we wanted to do rather that hang around inside. So up the cable cars to the top valley towns (only accessible by cable cars, even for the locals) and off on the North Face hike.

Very eerie and very cold.

Instructions (click on video, pause and wait to load, press play)




We eventually started climbing higher and higher until we finally saw some blue sky.

Then a bit more blue sky and some close hills

And even more

And then suddenly the mist cleared and we were hit with the whole mountain range crystal clear in the bright blue sunshine. It was so awe inspiring and silent, easily the best thing we have done on trip so far.

Pretty hard to take a bad picture

After our walk we went up a series of cable cars to the Schittlehorn mountain station to get another view of the mountains. We ended up taking more pictures of the birds that circle the top than the mountains.

Hmmmm shall we walk down.

We really didn’t want to leave the area, that hike easily being the highlight of mine and Rach’s trip so far. But there was still more of Switzerland to see and not much time left to do it.