Brienz (BE)

Snapshot
Where - Swiss Alps region
Weather - cool and sometimes showers

I know the photos won't do it justice, but Switzerland scenery is breathtakingly beautiful. We stayed at alittle self contained apartment in Brienz which was a good place to access some of the mountains you may have heard a about such as the Matterhorn and the Eiger.

We had a really good day exploring a coup,e of areas that featured in some movies...mainly the James Bond movie - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (the George Lazenby one) where part of the movie was filmed at Piz Gloria. Even though the movie was about 50 years ago, they still have a whole exhibit there. We had to catch 4 cable cars to get to the top where you had views of the Eiger, Monck and Jungfrau mountain peaks. I also remember the Eiger mountain from the movie The Eiger Sanction (Clint Eastwood). We were lucky enough to go when we did because the clouds came rolling in and another hour later we would not have been able to see a thing.

After this we drove to the little place called Grindelwald which has a gondola going up the mountain. (Cable car = 50+ people standing, gondola = max 4 people sitting; guess which one I preferred!) We thought the gondola was only taking us up to the top of the hill we could see but it turned out that was only the halfway point, there was a whole other mountain to climb up. At the top there was a trek (an easy 25 minute hike - they said - hah! NOT!) While the path was even enough, it was the equivalent of climbing 50 floors and while I took several rest stops, I did make it and we donned our paper crowns, took a photo to prove that we were King (or Queen) of the mountain.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable day....the next day was raining so we cancelled any sightseeing and just relaxed . We are really winding down now and starting to feel ready to come home.Read more