Grindelwald & Gimmelwald - July 9 2011

We are now in the Alps/Interlaken area of Switzerland. Our hotel is in a little town called Beatenberg about 15 minutes outside of Interlaken. I didn't know much about Beatenberg other then the reviews said it was located about 15 minutes outside of Interlaken. It is an apartment type hotel that I booked so we could have the convienence of a kitchen and laundry facilities for a few days. We arrived late in the evening as we were coming in from Bern and stopped at a grocery store to pick up some cereal, juice & milk for our breakfast the next morning.

As we drove around the lake into Interlaken it was just getting dark and we noticed a small village perched way up on the mountainside and wondered what tiny village was way up there. Turns out as we turned off the freeway and followed the signs to the town of Beatenberg we were about to find out it was where our hotel was located. There was a narrow 2 lane road that took us winding up and up and up the hill side until we came upon a few buildings with lights and found one of them was the hotel. It was about 11pm when we got checked in. We had a nice little apartment with a small kitchenette, living room, bedroom and bathroom. The living room sofa turned into a bed for Chris and Sophie and I took the 2 twin beds in the bedroom. Just off our living room was a balcony with table & chairs but it was pitch black out so we didn't know what was out there until the next morning when we woke up to this....

Pretty Nice huh? You will have to double click on the picture and blow it up to get the full effect. It was just beautiful.

A great location for eating our cold cereal each morning.
Sophie's being silly and practicing her roars.

After a leisurely breakfast we then headed down the mountain into Interlaken and up the canyon into the Lauterbrunnen valley. About halfway up the canyon the road splits to the right takes you to Gimmelwald and to the left takes you to Grindelwald. We decided to stop in Grindelwald first as we haven't been up that side of the valley before. Grindelwald is a famous ski resort town. The main street is lined with alpine sporting goods stores, fancy hotels and restaurants. We stopped at a grocery store to put together a picnic lunch and wandered around the town a bit.

Sophie found the town's park and we stopped and ate our lunch while she played a bit. There wasn't much else to do there unless you were into some serious hiking or just riding the gondolas so we decided to go back to the fork in the road and head to Gimmelwald. Obviously we weren't too impressed with Grindelwald as we didn't take any pictures there!

Chris and I have been to Gimmelwald twice before, there's not a whole lot there just a smattering of houses where the local farmers live. A few of them rent out rooms for travelers. There is 1 youth hostel in town and 1 restaurant. There is also 1 schoolhouse where all grades meet together in the same building K-12 and are taught by 2 teachers (a married couple) who live in the town. Once a month the school doubles as the church as the area pastor comes to preach.

It's just beautiful and fun to wander. The only way to access the village is to park in the large parking lot at the bottom of the valley floor and ride the gondola up.

Riding in the gondola

View of the valley floor below
The gondola stops at 4 locations. The first stop is Gimmelwald. The 2nd stop is a small town called Murren where there are a few hotels, restaurants and a grocery store. The 3rd stop is called Birg which basically just lets you out 3/4 of the way to the top peak to hike. (On our 2nd trip here a few years ago Chris and I got out at Birg and hiked about 4 hours down the mountain to Gimmelwald) and the 4th stop is the top of the peak which is basically a viewing platform and a restaurant.

We got off at the 2nd stop in Murren as we planned to hike the 30 minutes down to Gimmelwald. After the Gimmelwald stop you have to transfer and move to another gondola that takes you to Murren. As we started making our way to transfer, Sophie spotted a playground in Gimmelwald and wanted to stop and play. We had to make our transfer, so she was so sad and crying the rest of the way up in the gondola. A nice lady gave her a granola bar and she settled down.

The town of Murren

It started to rain on us
Views from Murren









The playground in Murren
About 5pm we decided to get dinner in Murren at a reccommended restaurant. It was our best meal of the trip. I got a chicken with blueberry sauce, with a side of pasta and broccoli. Yummy. Chris got some marinated pork chops with Rosti (Swiss Hashbrowns) Our waiter was a older Italian man who thought Sophie was the greatest thing ever. Chris taught her some Italian words to say to him and he just gushed all over her. It was really cute.
More Murren
Starting our hike down to Gimmelwald. It started raining again and Sophie starting dozing off.

She was asleep 5 minutes into the hike and Chris had to carry her the whole way.
Rain clouds coming in. It started raining pretty hard. We had to stop for a bit under a tree and take shelter while the rain passed. After about 10-15 minutes it stopped and we continued down.

Sophie woke up just as we were coming into Gimmelwald at the end of our hike.

Gimmelwalds Cheese hut
Cow bells
Views of Gimmelwald


We basically just wandered around taking in the views. We ran into an American family traveling with their 3 girls about age 10, 8 & 5. We chatted with them for a while about the area and places we were traveling. Sophie had fun playing with the girls at the park. We stopped in the little "Honesty Shop" which is a little room off someones house selling fruit, cheese and post cards. Just take what you want and leave your money in the little box. We picked up a few postcards.
When it started getting dark, we took the gondola back down to our car and drove back to the hotel.


I needed to do some laundry that night as well. Our hotel had a little laundry room just off the garage where guests could do laundry. I was down there for a few hours that night with a bunch of ladies from the Middle East. They all had their Muslim outfits on (sorry I don't know the correct terminology for the head scarfs). We had been surprised this trip to see so many from the Middle East traveling in Switzerland. Seriously there were tons of them. These ladies were from Bahrain, Dubai and Oman. It was interesting to talk to them a bit about where they were from and we helped each other out as we tried to figure out how to run the washing machines that were labeled in German.