OtR: B1 to B2 … Arrived @ Beatenberg

Leaving Schloss Oberhofen, we drove straight to our base of operations for the next five days. Or we tried to!

You see, the coordinates we had for the property had our GPS unit routing us via a dirt road … warning all the time that vehicles were not allowed on that road! So, we did the next best thing … we flipped a u-ey, drove a few miles further to Interlaken, and re-programmed the GPS unit to take us to our apartment from there. Worked like a charm.

Interlaken is generally considered to be the gateway into the Berner Oberland … Bernese Oberland, in English … aka the Bernese Highlands. Situated between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, it occupies a lovely and convenient location for activities in the Jungfrau Region. Though many (many, many, many) people book their lodgings in Interlaken, we read enough about it to know that we didn’t want to be amid the hub-bub of what is essentially a service town.

So, we looked a little further afield. Eventually, we landed on a VRBO listing for a ‘comfort maisonette’ at the Dorint Blümlisalp … a park-apart resort in the mountain village of Beatenberg. Sure, it would mean driving roads with hairpin turns for 15 minutes each way — every day — to explore the region. No matter. One look at the view as we climbed higher and higher today confirmed that the choice of Beatenberg was right for us. That we could enjoy the same view from our balcony, hear birds chirping, and smell pine trees instead of exhaust fumes from cars … well, they were the double, triple, and quadruple confirmations.

Our apartment is a duplex, with the living quarters upstairs and the bedroom/bathroom downstairs. The small kitchenette is perfect to prep our own breakfast … and snacks/light meals at other times of the day. In fact, as soon as we settled into the apartment, we made use of the facilities to enjoy our first ‘meal-with-a-view’ here.

We’ve got tomorrow planned as a day of rest … with perhaps a short walk later in the day. We’ll see how it plays out.Read more