Kandersteg and Murren, Switzerland

Hello all! We recently got back from a few days in Switzerland. We started off for Kandersteg, which is a very small town about 4 and a half hours from our house. Unfortunately, our GPS took us on a roundabout way through France (which is full of tolls and bad roads) so we didn’t arrive at our destination until 6 or 7 at night. Kandersteg is an “end of the road” town and to go any farther in this particular area of the Alps you must take a train. So we found ourselves a hotel with an excellent view and had dinner (no meal we had in a restaurant in Switzerland was less than $40- very expensive country!) I think I had a cup of soup for $9 and Jordon’s spaghetti was $23. But Kandersteg was a great place to stay and ideal for hiking. In the morning we took a gondola up a mountain (where the skiing would be excellent in winter) and hiked to Lake Oeschinnsee, which was breathtaking. For a Wednesday in October, there sure were a lot of Swiss out and about taking a vacation! The weather was perfect and even a little too hot. There were a few restaurants up there, which was amazing since this lake is out in the middle of nowhere. We had lunch by the lake, and unfortunately Jordon ordered “a quaterpounder with mushrooms and chips.” He was expecting a good-sized burger and fries. Reality was a slab of some type of meat (not ground beef) smothered in thick mushroom sauce and fries. No bun in sight. We have learned to not get our hopes up when looking at menus! We gondola-ed down and headed towards Murren, which was about an hour away. We passed through Interlakken and headed up into the mountains. We reached a small town where we parked the car and took another gondola up to Murren, which sits at 5,000 feet and literally on the edge of a cliff halfway up a mountain. Our hotel room was on the edge of that cliff so it was a little scary looking down but looking out and up we had spectacular views. The next morning we took the gondola up another 5,000 feet to the Schiltorn. From there you had 365-degree views of the Alps and could see the Jungfrau, which is the tallest point in Europe. There is a rotating restaurant up there, much like the Space Needle, but a little different view! The hiking was a little scary up there and it didn’t take much to lose your breath from the high elevation. Then we took the gondola all the way down, which was about a 30-45 minute trip and then headed back to Germany. We are already planning to go back in the winter!

 View out the hotel in Kandersteg

 Kandersteg is in the valley behind us, on our way to the lake!

 Lake Oeschinnsee! So beautiful, I have never seen water that color. 

 You could rent paddle boats and go fishing on the lake. So many people here were just building little fires and cooking brats or having a picnic lunch on the shore.

 Very steep hike! 

 View out our window in Murren. 

 At the top of the Schilthorn. What this picture doesn't tell you is that I am grabbing onto Jordon for dear life because there is a VERY long and steep drop a few feet behind us! 

 The Jungfrau behind us

 And you wonder why it's only Jordon in this picture??

 Paragliders were everywhere!