Investigating in Interlaken

Well, we were back to our Saturday excursions. Once Sarah, Iz, and Katelyn had gone, DJ was back to long, full days at the office----five days in a row instead of a day here and 2-3 days there. I was playing catch up here at the apartment. I hadn't done much cleaning and only minimal laundry was done while the kids were here, so I had "stuff" to do. So after a very normal week with lots of work and dirt, we were excited because the following weekend was a 3-day weekend with Monday as a holiday. Yes, the Swiss had another day off celebrating the day the Holy Ghost was given to the apostles. We decided to just make two day trips, or should I say a day trip and a day and a half trip. We spent Saturday in Interlaken, and then we came back to Basel so we could take care of our church responsibilites on Sunday.  After church on Sunday, we drove back down near Interlaken to a small little village, Lauterbrunnen, which is located in a glacier valley up near the Jungfrau..


Last summer (2010) when I came and joined DJ for most of a week for an "apartment hunting" trip, we got done early and worked it out so that we had a half day on Friday for some sightseeing. We went to Interlaken, but we spent most of our time having a late lunch and riding the funicular up the mountain on one side of the city so we could catch some spectacular views:

Since I had just met Dixie, my former BYU roommate, and her sisters there in May of this year, I had fallen in love with the old town and one of the two lakes (Thun)---things DJ and I didn't get to explore so much before.  So we spent the day checking out downtown and driving along the opposite side of the lake than where the main thoroughfare goes on our way home.  It was great fun.  Lots of beauty to suck in, and a good change from Basel.  First, however, we stopped before we got to Interlaken at a nice little Italian place on the lake.  There were big picture windows, and we could enjoy  the lake like this,  We actually were so close we could watch two guys who were fishing.



Exploring Old Town -

I didn't go crazy snapping pictures of everything we saw (I know I try to do that a lot, too much ---DJ isn't so excited about it).  I was more in a laid back, do whatever mood.  So there's only a few pics of the old buildings.

One nice hotel!

As I was taking pictures of these churchs, we heard a lot of commotion---A LOT OF COMMOTION.  

Turns out that there has just been a wedding (see the white limo with flowers on the hood?).  I missed getting a picture of the bride and groom (it took a minute to figure out what was going on and then to get there and get the camera out), but there was this procession following them with at least three drummers at the front and then a bunch of guys with cow bells.  I'm talking really BIG COWBELLS.  They had several sizes with different tones, and there was an rhythm to how they were played.  They swung the bells from left to right and back again in synchronization.  Quite interesting.



The gardens in Interlaken were beautiful; and yes, I got a little carried away:



Okay, so enough of those, but I love flowers.  Have had very little luck with them ever, but it's a dream of mine----maybe, someday.  You may have noticed a lot of white tents in the open area behind the flower beds.  They were gearing up for an International Yodeling Competition the following weekend!  There was evidence of it in town as well.  Look what we saw in one of the windows of a chocolate store (sorry for the glare):

There were other evidences that they were getting ready as well:

The less-traveled road going from Interlaken to the town of Thun follows the edge of the lake and has mountains jutting pretty much straight up on the other side.  The villages are built going right up the mountains in most places.  There's not very many spots to pull over and get pictures where you have a view, so these lame pictures were taken from, you guessed it, the moving car looking in between DJ and the steering wheel or out the back window unless they were of things on my side (the mountain side)---my justification for poor quality!





Those clouds just kept moving in!



I could put the following words "in a hat":  quaint, magnificent, ominous, charming, splendid, glorious, beautiful, exquisite, stunning, picturesque, gorgeous, lovely, and scenic.  I could pull them out one at a time and the single word would describe something within my eye-sight.  It was all wonderful to behold and in some cases even breath-taking!  It was another great Saturday jaunt in Switzerland.