Nothing beats a day in the Alps!

After a LOOONG, crazy day yesterday, we hiked into Gimmelwald, Switzerland, our final destination of the day. It was a crazy journey filled with lots of trains and train stations. We started the day in Paris by walking to the bus stop and miraculously finding our way to the correct train in a gigantic train station that apparently services the entire rest of the continent. We spent a pleasant hour and a half in a nearly silent TGV (high-speed) train, which eventually deposited us in Dijon, France for a 4 hour layover. [This is already 3 modes of transport-walking, bus, train-and 1 leg of the journey.]

This was a beautiful location to have to kill some time! It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day (the previous days were all fairly cloudy, which the pictures probably gave away). So, since we had time, we stopped at the tourist office next door to the train station, grabbed a map (much to Ben's delight) and started exploring Dijon. We found a curious cathedral, beautiful Botanical gardens, and excellent little shops to supplement our lunch, which we'd gathered from local Parisian shops. Ben even found a bottle of local wine (since we were in the region of Burgundy) for us to enjoy. We ate our lunch in a shady park, explored some more, kicked back in another park, and finally got on our next train.

The rest of our trip was a blur of trains and train stations, which went as follows. From Dijon, train to Lausanne, Switzerland; from Lausanne, train to Bern; from Bern, train to Interlacken; from Interlaken, train to Lautebrunnen; from Lautebrunnen, cable car to Stechelberg; from Stechelberg, train to Murren; from Murren, we walked 30 minutes to Gimmelwald. More direct routes DO exist, but because a series of circumstances that we were confused about, this was the route we ended up having to take. But, it worked :-) However, the last several trips were all couched in unbelievable beautiful scenery, in the middle of which we are now residing.

Today, we took a cable car to the top of the Schilthorn, a 10,000 ft peak in the Alps, where one of the Bond movies was actually filmed (the restaurant at the top was the bad guy's evil lair :-)). We had amazing views and pictures. Afterward, we took the cable car down one more town, and then hiked the rest of the way back down to Gimmelwald. This sounds like it might be easy, only going down, but our legs are definitely tired!
For a quick introduction to Gimmelwald, it is a tiny town of a little over a 100, nestled in the Alps. It is almost entirely a farming community, and all the buildings are made completely of wood (walls, ceiling, everything). Everywhere you go, you can hear cows mooing and their cow bells ringing. There are a few B&Bs, but that's about it. Today we bought Alpcheese. We couldn't go till later in the evening when the farmer was home from making hay, and then we rang his home doorbell. He put his boots on, came out, and let us into the cheese hut. It was very cool :-) Anyway, that's just a bit about our time in Switzerland. One more full day here, and then on Wednesday morning, it's on to Venice!